Title: Shattered Series: Iron Druid Chronicles #7
Author: Kevin Hearne
Published: June 17, 2014
Genre(s): Urban Fantasy
Page Count: 352
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:For nearly two thousand years, only one Druid has walked the Earth—Atticus O’Sullivan, the Iron Druid, whose sharp wit and sharp sword have kept him alive as he’s been pursued by a pantheon of hostile deities. Now he’s got company.
Atticus’s apprentice Granuaile is at last a full Druid herself. What’s more, Atticus has defrosted an archdruid long ago frozen in time, a father figure (of sorts) who now goes by the modern equivalent of his old Irish name: Owen Kennedy.
And Owen has some catching up to do.
Atticus takes pleasure in the role reversal, as the student is now the teacher. Between busting Atticus’s chops and trying to fathom a cell phone, Owen must also learn English. For Atticus, the jury’s still out on whether the wily old coot will be an asset in the epic battle with Norse god Loki—or merely a pain in the arse.
But Atticus isn’t the only one with daddy issues. Granuaile faces a great challenge: to exorcise a sorcerer’s spirit that is possessing her father in India. Even with the help of the witch Laksha, Granuaile may be facing a crushing defeat.
As the trio of Druids deals with pestilence-spreading demons, bacon-loving yeti, fierce flying foxes, and frenzied Fae, they’re hoping that this time, three’s a charm.
I honestly didn’t plan on reading Shattered—the original charm of the series is wearing off and I’m mostly apathetic to it. But I did decide to read this, in hopes that things would see improvement, and out of curiosity to see how the “twist” that came up at the end of Hunted would play out. The verdict? The Iron Druid Chronicles continue to be light entertainment, but are hardly memorable. Which is fine, of course, but not my favorite thing ever. I’m thinking that there are only 2 installments left after this, and I can certainly stick around long enough to see how things wind up.
The most unfortunate aspect of Shattered, I think, is that it’s primarily a bridge book, with a group of characters that are fairly out of touch. Instead of the traditional single perspective, Hearne instead implements 3: Atticus, Granuaile, and now Atticus’s newly recovered archdruid, Owen. These three druids all have paths that diverge, so the story is stretched pretty thin over 300 pages. In some ways, I did enjoy having a variety of perspectives on situations, but it did make the story have a clunky flow, and there was no momentum because we had to follow three entirely different storylines.
Because of the diverging points of view, the central conflict of the book didn’t really come to the fore until very, very late in the game. The final battle scene in Shattered was important, but felt rushed, since Hearne had been juggling a lot of other things on the side for the majority of the text. More definitely could have been added, or simply a smoother lead-in to the climax.
As always, however, my favorite part of any Kevin Hearne novel is Oberon. This author is clearly a fellow dog-lover, and a huge reason I keep coming back to this series is the hilarious, goofy commentary that Oberon the Irish wolfhound has on anything and everything. It’s so much fun, and really just makes everything better. A very average, mediocre novel is improved with a talking dog (authors take note).
So altogether, Shattered was another step in the Iron Druid process, and at this point I’m very invested in seeing how it turns out. Also, I really like Oberon. Kevin Hearne isn’t my favorite author ever, but he keeps me entertained, and that’s not exactly high praise, but I don’t hate this book, either.
