Ink & Sigil – Kevin Hearne

4 Stars

Kevin Hearne is back in the universe of his much beloved Iron Druid with a new series Ink & Sigil. Readers unfamiliar with this universe will feel welcome, as the book doesn’t lean on prior knowledge, but fans of Atticus O’Sullivan will still find plenty of little nods to the previous series to feel connected and treading familiar ground.

Image from The Storygraph

Al MacBharrais is both blessed and cursed. He is blessed with an extraordinary white moustache, an appreciation for craft cocktails – and a most unique magical talent. He can cast spells with magically enchanted ink and he uses his gifts to protect our world from rogue minions of various pantheons, especially the Fae.

But he is also cursed. Anyone who hears his voice will begin to feel an inexplicable hatred for Al, so he can only communicate through the written word or speech apps. And his apprentices keep dying in peculiar freak accidents. As his personal life crumbles around him, he devotes his life to his work, all the while trying to crack the secret of his curse.

But when his latest apprentice, Gordie, turns up dead in his Glasgow flat, Al discovers evidence that Gordie was living a secret life of crime. Now Al is forced to play detective – while avoiding actual detectives who are wondering why death seems to always follow Al. Investigating his apprentice’s death will take him through Scotland’s magical underworld, and he’ll need the help of a mischievous hobgoblin if he’s to survive.

I really enjoyed Ink & Sigil. Al is a thoughtful old man who clearly tries to take care of those around him to the best of his abilities and tries to minimize harm. Nadia is an interesting, nuanced and strong (literally) character with a lot more depth than Hearne’s earlier women characters. The hobgoblin is amusing and provides needed humor and levity when the book sometimes goes dark. The characters are all a little unusual, making for a book that stands out from other Urban Fantasy novels I’ve read.

Aurora 88 fountain pen – image from Appelboom

I will say flat out that Kevin Hearne has sprinkled in all of my favorite things, so I am immediately biased to like this book. Ink & Sigil somehow surprised me by featuring….handmade inks and fountain pens. Why this is surprising with a title like that is beyond me. And yet it was. (I am notorious for not reading blurbs of books before I read the book – it’s right there in the blurb – enchanted ink!) Anybody who knows me IRL knows I love fountain pens and inks. I’ve got a tidy little collection of fountain pens (mostly TWSBI) and a slightly less tidy collection of inks. So it’s no wonder that Al and his story full of magical inks and beautiful pens instantly charmed me. I’ve added photos of three of the five pens called out in the story to this post.

Not only that, but Hearne then moved on to include gin and whisky quite prominently and with much fine detail in the story. Again, anyone who knows me IRL knows that gin and whisk(e)y are my go-to spirits of choice. There’s nothing finer on a hot day than a Gin and Tonic. Nothing better on a chilly evening than a dram of something brown and neat or a Manhattan or Old Fashioned.

Emerald green Visconti – image from Goulet Pens

Ink & Sigil is a book that pays attention to the details. Hearne takes care to tell us the color of Nadia’s nail polish, the brands and flavor profiles of the drinks consumed and the rich hues and ingredients in the inks included in the story. And it doesn’t get bogged down in the details. The story of Al, Buck and Nadia moves at a fairly brisk pace for a senior citizen and is full of wit, charm and mysteries to unravel. There were moments I literally laughed out loud, and others where I was very tense, wondering how the team was going to accomplish their goals.

Throughout the story, we discover some of what happened in the Iron Druid Chronicles and afterward through the lens of someone slightly more in the know than the average person, but without a front row seat. These callbacks help fans of that series keep their footing and timelines clear, but add depth and richness to the universe without being confusing for new readers, unfamiliar with the adventures of Atticus and Oberon.

Caran d’ache fountain pen with a rhodim skull and leather barrel by Peter Marino – image from Williampenn.net

It is hard to review a book set in the universe of the Iron Druid Chronicles without comparing it to the Iron Druid Chronicles, so I’m not going to try. Just from book one, I like Ink & Sigil more than I liked the Iron Druid books. Al and Nadia and the hobgoblin are more interesting, nuanced characters than Atticus, Granuaile and Oberon. For many readers of the series, Oberon was the best part of the books and frankly he turned me off of the books a lot. He was, even for a dog, very one note and crude. Granuaile didn’t get interesting until the final two books when she suddenly got a personality and Atticus always felt very “poor me” even when he was in a situation of his own making. Al, Nadia and the hobgoblin are completely different and I frankly like them much better. Where Oberon was the comic relief in Iron Druid, the hobgoblin takes that place in Ink & Sigil to a much funnier effect, at least to me. Nadia feels like Hearne took all of the (deserved) criticism about Granuaile to heart and wrote a character that looks and sounds like a real person. Hearne is a better writer in Ink & Sigil and it shows.

Overall, I really enjoyed Ink & Sigil and will be excitedly waiting for book 2 to come out. In the meantime, book 1 hits shelves August 25, 2020. If you pick it up, come back and tell me what you thought in the comments below.

I received an eARC from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Kill the Farm Boy – Delilah S. Dawson & Kevin Hearne

4 Stars

I apologize in advance for the insufficiently punny review that is about to follow. Nothing I could write could ever compare to the hilarity contained within these pages.

Cover from Goodreads

Once upon a time, in a faraway kingdom, a hero, the Chosen One, was born . . . and so begins every fairy tale ever told.

This is not that fairy tale.

There is a Chosen One, but he is unlike any One who has ever been Chosened.

And there is a faraway kingdom, but you have never been to a magical world quite like the land of Pell.

There, a plucky farm boy will find more than he’s bargained for on his quest to awaken the sleeping princess in her cursed tower. First there’s the Dark Lord who wishes for the boy’s untimely death . . . and also very fine cheese. Then there’s a bard without a song in her heart but with a very adorable and fuzzy tail, an assassin who fears not the night but is terrified of chickens, and a mighty fighter more frightened of her sword than of her chain-mail bikini. This journey will lead to sinister umlauts, a trash-talking goat, the Dread Necromancer Steve, and a strange and wondrous journey to the most peculiar “happily ever after” that ever once-upon-a-timed.

If you’ve been reading fantasy or been on the literary parts of the internet basically ever, you should be familiar with the concepts of tropes. They’re a little like cliches, but usually a bit more extended. “The chosen one saves the princess” or “Elves are beautiful and wise” and so forth. Kill The Farm Boy is constructed almost entirely of tropes.

HOWEVER….they’re almost entirely upside down and the result is hilarious.

On occasion, the banter, the puns and the trope flipping feels a little forced and contrived, which is why I knocked a star off. The “trying too hard” was distracting. But overall, the effect was, well, magical. Dawson and Hearne have given us a gift that not only skewers common tropes in fantasy, but also draws in elements of current internet culture and absolutely eviscerates them. For an example of this, please see the chapter with a troll. (OH EM GEE I LOL’d SO HARD I COULDN’T BREATHE.)

But, just as Kill The Farm Boy is making fun of the Fantasy genre, it’s still absolutely a fantasy story, full of action, adventure, romance and clever escapades. Dawson and Hearne DO know how to write a story.

Kill The Farm Boy will appeal to fans of Douglas Adams, Monty Python, and Hearne’s Oberon character from his Iron Druid series.

Kill The Farm Boy is on sale now, and I am eagerly awaiting the sequel, No Country for Old Gnomes.

Thank you to Del Rey for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest review. 

 

Plague of Giants – Kevin Hearne

5 Stars

I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. 

When I saw Plague of Giants pop up on NetGalley I was so excited! I’m a fan of Hearne’s Iron Druid series so I couldn’t wait to see what he thought up next!

I was definitely not disappointed! Plague of Giants is a brand new series – Seven Kennings – set in a brand new universe. Instead of an urban fantasy like Iron Druid, Plague of Giants is more of a traditional high fantasy. Epic adventure, bards, pre-technology society, magic (called kenning), kings, and espionage are all present.

Plague of Giants is a story within a story – a central bard ties different characters’ threads together as he shares the many stories of how the war we’re thrust into at the beginning of the novel came to be.

There are seven societies at the center of our story and each society is built around their own specific form of kenning, and each of those broad kennings has specialist sub-forms of kenning or magic. One has kenning related to water, another to fire, a third to wood and plants, a fourth to earth and a fifth to air. (I do have those out of official order. Fire is referred to as “the first kenning” so there is an order of discovery.) You may recall that the series is called the Seven Kennings. You’ll have to read Plague of Giants for more information about Kenning # 6 and #7.

The kennings and societies built around them feel much like the elemental societies of the Avatar: The Last Airbender or Legend of Korra animated shows on Nickelodeon. If you’re familiar with The Last Airbender, then the quote “Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked” will feel very appropriately applied to Plague of Giants. 

Hearne weaves a rich tapestry of complex characters that drive the story forward. He jumps from character to character, fleshing each out with different POV sections. It’s in these different sections that we meet a variety of diverse characters. Hearne has obviously taken some of the general criticism of High Fantasy as a genre – that it’s painfully white and heterosexual – to heart. His cast of characters includes more than one LGBT character and more than one non-white race – including POV sections from characters of those non-white races. It’s heartening to see someone so prominent in the fantasy world do something to address the yawning chasm where diversity should be. Characters are given space to breathe and grow and ponder the ethics of their decisions.

I will admit that I was afraid that in his shift from lighthearted urban fantasy to high fantasy, Hearne would swing too far toward a stiffer storytelling and lose some of his signature humor that charms us all in the Iron Druid series. I am glad to be wrong. Hearne’s humor is deftly applied and just as satisfyingly clever. Many of Hearne’s fans adore the dog Oberon in the Iron Druid series, but I find the dog to be pretty obnoxious and the opposite of charming. (The dog’s obsession with females is kind of gross and sexist.) I’m pleased to find no parallel character in Plague of Giants. Instead, Hearne takes the best of Iron Druid’s wit and humor and injects it into The Seven Kennings. I found myself laughing out loud and rolling my eyes at the best (worst) puns.

Plague of Giants is a masterfully written pivot for Hearne and I’m simply dying for the next installment of the series, A Blight of Blackwings. Do yourself a favor and run right out and buy this for yourself.

Plague of Giants is the first in Kevin Hearne’s new series, Seven Kennings, and will be released October 17, 2017.

Urban Enemies – Joseph Nasisse

4 Stars

I received an eARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Urban Enemies is an anthology containing 17 short stories from a slew of big-name authors in the Urban Fantasy genre.

The authors contributing to this collection had a fine line to walk. Each of their stories is set within their own larger universes, so they’re tasked with writing a story that will 1 – not alienate readers new to their universe (and maybe even convince them to pick it up?) and 2 – satisfy readers already familiar with their characters and storylines. I felt like most of the authors pulled this off. I will note, that I was somewhat disappointed that not all the stories were actually about villains – some were just anti-heroes.

I’m not going to do a story-by-story rating, as I might if these stories were standalone because it wouldn’t be fair. I’m already biased to prefer the stories from authors’ whose series I read – Jim Butcher, Seanan McGuire, Kevin Hearne – over the authors who write series I haven’t even heard of.

Of the authors I’m already familiar with, I really enjoyed Kevin Hearne and Seanan McGuire’s contributions. Both were satisfying and added dimension to their universes. I was disappointed with Jim Butcher’s contribution – not because it was a bad story but because it’s a reprint. Not a new story, it’s been printed in earlier anthologies.

About half of the authors I wasn’t familiar with I was intrigued enough by their villain or worldbuilding that I plan to check out at least the first novel in the series. In particular the stories by Craig Shaeffer, Caitlin Kitteridge and the editor Joseph Nassise. Other stories were either major turnoffs or just not my thing.

Overall though, I enjoyed the collection. I didn’t read anything particularly standout in either direction as good or bad (it’s hard to like stories about unlikable characters.) If you’re a fan of any of these series, check this collection out. If not, these stories may not be the easiest entry point into these universes, but you might find one you like (or like to hate.)