Kevin Hearn’s
Iron Druid series has become my own special
sort of cotton candy – it’s light, fluffy, I know it’s bad for me, but I enjoy
it a lot anyway. While it’s billed as series, it’s more of a serial to me – the
books have much more in common with episodes than actual novels. And there is
nothing bad about that, except that treating like a series rather than a serial
will probably mean it ends soon than it should.
Anyway, Hunted (Indiebound, Book Depository,
Amazon) is the most episodic entry in the series so far. It picks up directly
after the cliffhanger ending of Trapped
(my review, Indiebound, Book Depository, Amazon) and consists entirely of
Atticus and company fleeing from a few Greek and Roman gods trying to kill
them. Yes, it still has the same humor, the fun wish-fulfillment action and all
that. And of course the ending is something of a cliffhanger for the next
episode, Shattered, which I’ll happily consume when it is released.
My only real
complaint (keeping things in the context of my opening sentence), is that
Hearne does a truly terrible job of writing the point of view of Granuaile.
They read like a 13-year old girl’s private essay of life where she is trying
like hell to sound profound – or perhaps a 14 year old boy’s imagining of such.
They do not read like the point of view of a grown woman with full agency and
independence from male imagined feminine ideals. If the points of view are
going to be so bad – keep it to Atticus and the dog.
Anyway,
these books are nothing more than fun asides from someone who lives in Arizona
and sets events in places I’ve been. I’ll keep reading and enjoying, but keep
in mind the context of my enjoyment if you’re looking for a recommendation.
2 comments:
> My only real complaint (keeping things in the context of my opening sentence), is that Hearne does a truly terrible job of writing the point of view of Granuaile.
Oh god, yes. It took me several months to get through her first chapter. It's nails on chalkboard bad.
I understand why he decided to have a two thousand year old immortal polymath's internal monologue sound like a generic geeky twenty-something in the first book - even if he somehow managed to pull it off, the urban fantasy audience probably wouldn't read it, but you can't have him think exclusively in Star Wars references *and* have his waitress girlfriend's point of view sound like she spent her childhood strapped into a chair, Clockwork Orange style, listening to an English to Portuguese to English translation of Sense and Sensibility on repeat *and* give her "TURBO EWWW" as representative piece of dialogue while outside her POV.
Stop the wankery, Kevin. Just give us man-on-dog banter and rampant deicide.
for the record though, I'd love to hear the perspective of a female reader on Granuaile's POV.
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