Tricked

This book is a turning point in this series and is definitely not the place to start (to get the most out of this, you’d want to go to back to volume 1, Hounded — it’s a little awkward, as first novels are, but it contains a lot of necessary background information).

Over the first few books, we’ve developed relationships with several characters — Atticus, the POV character (who does appear here, along with his dog Oberon), and his various friends and acquaintances (neighbors, attorneys, a coven of Polish witches, police officers, gods and goddesses, etc.). Although a few of those characters appear in this volume, many are only mentioned as passing references. (Atticus’s apprentice Granuaile has a decent role in this one, though, if you liked her. She gets more of a personality as well, and we learn more about her motivation for starting Druid training.)

The mythology in this one is more Native American (Navajo, specifically) as opposed to Celtic. Atticus doesn’t always have the strongest tools to deal with the various culture-specific enemies/monsters he comes across and he has to improvise and I like that. Coyote, who has appeared previously in the series, is back. He has made a request of Atticus and it *seems* like his motives here are honest and upstanding, but Atticus is never quite sure, knowing Coyote’s trickster history.

In addition to helping Coyote, Atticus has to tie up all the loose ends of his old life and establish new identities for himself and Granuaile. So in the midst of his tasks with the Navajo, he is constantly having to leave to do other things. On one of these tasks, something happens (don’t want to spoil it) and Oberon gets hurt. It is agony getting through the next chapter or two — we want to know what happened to Oberon! Didn’t know I could get attached to a dog character like that, whose sole purpose seems to be comic relief, but I did. It was a good place in the series to put a moment like that, too. Atticus’s life is changing — is this small part going to stay the same or is it going to change, too?

There’s an interesting new element, and I can’t say it surprises me. Atticus and Granuaile seem attracted to one another and Atticus is choosing to take the honorable path of not abusing his power as teacher and avoiding romantic involvement in his student’s life (though we get the sense that, under other circumstances, he would like to). I will be interested to see where this goes. And the relationship would make more sense than some other couples I’ve seen thrown together in fantasy novels recently. But we will have to wait for a future volume for that. Another thing I like is that Atticus has doubts about past relationships (not just romantic ones) — did people truly care for him as a friend/lover/etc., or did they only want to associate with him for selfish reasons? He maintains a generally positive attitude, but it’s good to see those cracks in his shell. He’s not as much of a male Mary Sue as he appeared to be in the first volume.

The writing style is similar to past volumes. There’s a little infodumping on Navajo culture, but it’s more cleverly-disguised than usual. Atticus serves as a proxy for the reader, since this is one culture he hasn’t lived as a part of prior to this book. So he is learning and observing along with us. I much prefer this to long blocks of description or background information. The banter with Oberon is back, maybe not at its funniest ever, but still decent. Character development is a little better in this book than in the past ones — there are more emotional moments and background details offered, even for non-Atticus characters. It’s limited by the first-person POV, but it’s there.

This book seems to have concluded one arc of the series, but I know there are more volumes left. And I am curious as to what will happen next. I can come up with one carryover from this book and the previous one that may continue on in future volumes, but this was most definitely a book of conclusions and endings, as well. (Kind of nice to have one of those in the middle of an ongoing series. A good change of pace, and there’s plenty of room for new beginnings, too.)

I’m enjoying this series quite a bit and I’m planning to continue on to the next book pretty soon. I think Tricked is my favorite of the bunch (so far).

I am afraid that I do not feel that this book series is improving. One of the things that makes these books fun to read are the fairly hilarious dialogue between Atticus and his wolfhound Oberon and, luckily, this is still there. Unfortunately this is pretty much the only enjoyable element of this book and even this is somewhat diminished by Oberon being disabled for a good chunk of the book. Sure, Atticus and Granuaile are not too bad together but anyway, some lines of fun dialogue do not make a book alone.

The story in this book is fairly ludicrous and contrived. Apart from a few paragraphs at the beginning it does not really advance the main story very much. This I could live with if it did not feel like this story is mostly an ill contrived filler. Worse is that it seems to be put together only to give the author an opportunity to do some preaching about environmental issues and native indian affairs. The semi-bad guy Coyote wants to build windmills and solar power plants. Atticus goes away like some uber-hippie sabotaging coal mines and Granuaile reveals that she wanted to become druid to avenge some relative that is in the oil business? What the f? Thats just a load of things coming out of the rear end of a bull and certainly not what I want to read about in a book.

Even without these elements the story would not have been very good. We are talking about a 2000 year old druid who is tricked like a schoolboy by Coyote. Not funny. It is a shame really. This 2000 year old thing is really what intrigued me to start the series and could have been used to good effect but it really has just been wasted so far in these books.

These books have all been quite light reading and I was not expecting much in terms of plot but at this point I have serious doubts as to whether I want to continue this series. I am stubborn and really really do not like not to finish a book series that I have started so I probably will but the next instalment better be an improvement over this one.

I’m going to give you the recommendation I received from a friend to start reading The Iron Druid Chronicles “red-haired druid, Irish wolfhound, witches, werewolves, vampires, and Nordic gods. The books aren’t boring!”

If you’re thinking about buying book 4 you’ve obviously bought into all that. In this book I enjoyed the addition of rich indigenous myths of the American southwest. There are enough twists to keep you guessing what the core characters of Atticus, Granuaile, and Oberon. If you’ve not yet fallen in love with the idea of being bonded to your own wolfhound this volume will clinch it.

It would be hard to top the last book with its quest into Asgard to kill Thor!and this book’s plot is more modest, as is its body count. The pleasure of the humor and the magical, mythological world, however, are as strong as ever. Atticus is tricked by Coyote into battling skinwalkers and we’re treated to a course in Native American spirituality. One complaint: I didn’t think the Coyote and the vampire stories melded together very well. Usually Hearn’s subplots intertwine nicely and come together at the end, but these two seemed somehow too disparate. A small niggle, though, and I loved the end with Atticus and Oberon running through the fields and rolling in the clover. <i>I cannot tell you how wonderful it feels to run when you no longer have to do it.</i>

This book is an enjoyable morsel to keep readers entertained between major book releases, in the continuing saga of Atticus, an Iron Druid in modern day America.

In this story, Atticus, the 2100 year old Iron Druid, is found in the Arizona desert fulfilling a promise to setup a native American ecological mining operation. He chats to elementals to get gold moved to the unlikely location, and has to deal with a wide manner of mythical entities, whilst maintaining a low profile, having recently faked his own death. The real charm of the storyline, though, is how he interacts with the other characters, especially his attractive female apprentice, and his surprisingly articulate hound, Oberon. There are various visits from deities such as the Irish gods like the Morrigan, the chooser of the slain, who turns out to be not unlike someone’s eccentric hot single aunt. There are some casualties and some native American lore. I suspect the author, who lives in Arizona in real life, most likely was especially careful not to offend any native American readers by being disrespectful of their folklore. Oberon is the star of the show in some ways, as he is the funny man to Atticus’s straight man.

I would highly recommend this book to fans of the series and readers who like urban fantasy.

Galaxyaudiobook Member Benefit

- Able to comment

- List watched audiobooks

- List favorite audiobooks

- Bookmark will only available for Galaxyaudiobook member