Saturday, July 6, 2019

Book Review: Hounded by Kevin Hearne


Goodreads Summary: Atticus O’Sullivan, last of the Druids, lives peacefully in Arizona, running an occult bookshop and shape-shifting in his spare time to hunt with his Irish wolfhound. His neighbors and customers think that this handsome, tattooed Irish dude is about twenty-one years old—when in actuality, he’s twenty-one centuries old. Not to mention: He draws his power from the earth, possesses a sharp wit, and wields an even sharper magical sword known as Fragarach, the Answerer.
Unfortunately, a very angry Celtic god wants that sword, and he’s hounded Atticus for centuries. Now the determined deity has tracked him down, and Atticus will need all his power—plus the help of a seductive goddess of death, his vampire and werewolf team of attorneys, a bartender possessed by a Hindu witch, and some good old-fashioned luck of the Irish—to kick some Celtic arse and deliver himself from evil.
Goodreads Rating: 4.12 stars with over 68,000 ratings
Genre Listing: Fantasy, Urban Fantasy, Paranormal, Fiction, Magic, Mythology
Goodreads Challenge: 13/50
2019 Reading Challenge: #20 a book published by Penguin Random House (find the whole challenge here.)

Book Review:

My friend Tress over at https://songstress7.wordpress.com/ has been recommending me Hounded for ages, and I finally got around to reading it. It seemed like an easy fit for Penguin Random House since they own Del Rey that publishes Hounded.

When I first started reading it, I wasn't sure if I'd like it. I must have liked it a lot more than I thought because before I knew it I was 40% in and annoyed I'd have to put it down to go to bed. It's a relatively short read that moves extremely fast. There's not a lot of dull moments in the story, which I appreciated. Druids aren't a class of supernatural I've read much on, so I was interested to see a take on their magic. I hope that the rest of the series gets more into the magical aspects.

Along with the druid type of magic, there were a lot of Gods introduced that I hadn't read about before. I think that The Morrigan was the most interesting to me of the Deity characters. She doesn't want to be seen as taking sides but clearly does. She is mysterious, turns into a bird, and seems to feed on death. What's not to like?

There was a decent amount of humor and snark in Hounded. It reminded me quite a bit of The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. There was quite a bit of similarity between the two books, and I think fans of The Dresden Files would like The Iron Druid Chronicles if they haven't already read it. There's lots of different supernatural creatures, a snarky main character, and lots of action. Overall, I really enjoyed Hounded. I'm hoping that the next book gets a bit more in-depth into the magic, as that tends to be my favorite parts of fantasy books. 




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