Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Mini-Review: Hunted by Kevin Hearne

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:

Megazver said...

> 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.

Neth said...

for the record though, I'd love to hear the perspective of a female reader on Granuaile's POV.

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