books

Review of HUNTED (Iron Druid Chronicles #6) by Kevin Hearne

Hunted (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #6)Hunted by Kevin Hearne

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

By this point in the series, anyone reading about Atticus will know what to expect – he (and whoever chooses to be with him) will find themselves constantly in danger of losing life and/or limb. It’s the usual fast pace and humour taking turns with insight. What keeps things going is the fun of watching Atticus figure a way out of a current dilemma only to set things in motion for a future one.

In this book, he’s just finished devoting 12 years to training his druidic apprentice Granuaile and is ready to bind her to Gaia’s service. But first he has to deal with elves, dark elves, Olympian gods, vampires, and a backstabber among the Tuatha de Danaan. Those 12 years are probably the quietest he and the new druid, who is also his lover, are likely to have for a while, as they tumble from one perilous moment to another, trying to stay alive long enough to figure out what the hell is going on.

Though I rated this book four stars as I have the others, this was probably my least favourite of the series so far. In all of the past novels and short stories, the action is told from Atticus’s point of view. In Hunted, he gives a few pages to Granuaile and the result is less than satisfactory in my opinion.

When seen from Atticus’s point of view, the new druid is both fierce and funny with a perspective that is at once both similar enough to his to be compatible and different enough that he finds himself rethinking some of his notions. But Hearne seems to have trouble creating that unique view when Granuaile is the narrator – she loses her edge and the word choices make her sound like Atticus rather than herself.

Since she isn’t given many pages in which to narrate, this isn’t a serious fault. Because of what happens with Atticus, I understand why Hearne felt he had to give Granuaile the narrative, but it came off clumsy and not quite believable.

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Struggling With Modern Literature

“Personal cynicism, disillusionment and bitterness.” This is a sentence I found describing the thrust of modern literature. If true, it describes why I don’t read much of it. A Twitter friend told me that he doesn’t believe that real life has arcs. I disagreed, saying my own life has had plenty of arcs, a lot of them resolved in an unsatisfactory way. This is my reason for avoiding cynical, disillusioned, and bitter fiction. Since I worked so hard to not give in to feelings of despair, it’s unlikely I should find them entertaining even in fiction form. Thus, I find my reading solace primarily in genre fiction.

Recently, someone wrote about how genre fiction remains popular. It’s always around and probably always will be. It isn’t out of the ordinary, which is why it isn’t very appreciated by critics. This may be true. In which case, we genre writers may be like male Bower Birds, each trying to make our niche nests a little more inviting to potential readers, decorating and rearranging our prose into something pleasing to ourselves. We reveal ourselves in our individual glory and hope that others find us attractive. We are dismayed when a flashier bird gets the attention.

But do we have any intention of trying to be that flashier bird? Don’t think so.

Some of us write to entertain. Some of us write to answer our own questions. Some of us write to find out what we know. There are other reasons and combinations of reason. One thing that unites us is that we find genre writing pleasurable.

Come to the genre side – it’s fun here.