Reviewed by: Rabid Reads.After SHATTERED, I had concerns that THE IRON DRUID CHRONICLES may be taking on water with an excess of POVs, mythologies and threads. STAKED slowed its roll a bit by limiting the amount of chapters from Owen and Granuaile’s perspectives, and I certainly can’t find fault in Kevin Hearne’s comedic writing style, but the female druid continued to annoy me, and when compared to some of this series’ epic stories, I found that the conclusion to the two century-long vampire sa...

This is really just 2/3 of a good book, The Granuille chapters suck so badly I dropped it two stars. I was a huge fan of the series from the first book, being a huge fan of Celtic mythology. New takes on that pantheon were always welcome to me. I have taken the journey with Atticus and Oberon against celtic gods, evil witches, The norse gods, Native monsters, and evil vampires. I never particularly cared for Granuille, seeing her as entitled, smug and pretentious with daddy issues, but hey, she

The problem with using alternating POVs is that if they are not equally appealing to the reader then the overall book can be spoilt. As a long term Atticus fan I enjoyed this book despite the fact that Granuaille got far too much air time. She becomes increasingly annoying with her endless lecturing about saving the earth. I actually agree with her philosophy but do not like being lectured in a novel.Nevertheless I enjoyed the rest of the book extremely. There's an enormous amount of action and

Hal 🙁I'm so in love with Owen 😄 Especially listening to him on audio. The narrator does his Irish accent perfectly! He's a bad ass Druid and he's always got something to say. It usually involves fecking, shat and arsehole. Lol. He's great. Oberon a daddy. Hmm ......

One of the charming things about the Iron Druids books is that thin line Hearne walked with Atticus between hipster doushebag and endearing character. It worked because the hipster stuff was mostly just the external stuff, while he was actually an unapologetic and joyful, arcane warrior most of the time. While that's still true, he seems to be tipping more and more towards the doushebag side of the line.Owen is... fine, but his POV needs to be used very sparingly, and it needs to be used properl...

There's a lot to love here and a small portion of sausage, too.Or actually, there's a ton of sausage and other massive meat products being consumed in this novel by a certain hound, but more importantly, this novel is practically All Meat. I mean, aside from a few Doggie BathTime stories, we're inundated with action, action, plot development, a bit more action, and a big hunking slab of action to go down with not a single piece of lettuce. No buildup required or necessary, assuming you've been r...

Why does GoodReads let people rate books that aren't even published yet?

I guess I’m a Kevin Hearne groupie.I’ll join the fan club, wear a T-shirt, hang out at his booth at Comic Con, get a tattoo – well, no, I’m not getting a tattoo.But I PRE-ORDERED this. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. Sure, I’ve went to the store and picked up a copy as soon as it was on sell, but I was like the people camped out at Wal-Mart. I couldn’t wait!Staked, his 2016 Iron Druid novel and 8th novel in the series (there are also several short stories and novellas - and yes, I’ve r...

I didn't have high hopes for this one after being severely disappointed with the previous instalment but it still managed to disappoint me all the same. There was a lot of back and forth, literally travelling back and forth between planes and countries, a whole bunch of characters running all over the place (again) and a hell of a lot of nothing.Seriously. Nothing happened in 85% of this book, not a damn thing worth mentioning. Then at the end some stuff happened and it read as though this sudde...

Another well-written story in this fantasy series. 8 of 10 stars

Iron Druid Atticus O'Sullivan has a vampire problem and he has decided to once and for all take care of that by staking the ancient and power crazy Theophilus. And, he will need some allies to help him to that. But, both Owen Kennedy and Granuaile have their own problems. Owen skipped packing custom to a troll many years ago and now he learns that a troll has a very, very long memory. Granuaile is trying to rid herself of the mark that Loki has put on her, but with the help of Odin will she perh...

I don't normally add anything after I finish a book but I'm kinda pissed with how this story ended and the story in general and needed to rant even if no one will care. Since the third book the story has been going downhill. Every book after that is just a continuation of consequences from that one book. Atticus had great potential but it just seems that all he does is make puns talk with his dog and get blamed for EVERYTHING that goes wrong in the world. You would think after two millennia of

The thing Hearne needs to understand, something many other authors fail to understand (I'm looking at you Butcher!), is that "fans" of a series only have so much patience. Then, they become distracted by other series that are more proliferate in their publishing. When a new book comes out in a series that's popular but hasn't had a new release in a long time (1+ year), fewer readers are going to be passionate about picking it up.The Jedi-series of books (Hearne's and others) is an established fa...

3.75 stakes.This one is focused on Atticus solving his vampire problem once and for all, Granuaile figuring out what to do about her Loki problem as well as confronting her past, and Owen finding his place in modern times. Kevin Hearne delivers pretty much what you’d expect from this series if you have read the previous books. Fun urban fantasy with paranormal & mythological flavors mixed in. I am still not a fan of him switching to multiple POV’s a few books back, but at least there were hints

A lot of humor is this installment. Oberon and Owen both had me laughing my ass off! Still, there were moments of sadness, and I was worried for our characters more than a few times. Atticus' doubts at the end made me a little nervous and I hope it isn't an issue in the coming books, but I have a feeling there will be some troubles in their little paradise coming up. I'm wondering why (view spoiler)[Granuaile didn't tell Atticus about her encounter with her stepfather? Will her vendetta against

I am annoyed.I may revise my stars upwards once I actually get to finish this book. Unfortunately I had to stop reading almost as soon as I started. Why? Because if you haven't read the novella "A Prelude to War" (buried within the Three Slices anthology) you're missing the first 3-4 chapters of the damn story. I got maybe 10-20 minutes into this book, went back to Shattered (the previous book), and still couldn't figure out why I was SO confused. Then I did some googling and discovered that you...

I'm glad that the vampire problem is finally dealt with in this book. It needed to be tied up and resolved. Especially as Ragnarok has to be getting closer than ever. There are lots of good things here to deal with, but I admit that I got more than a little irritated with some of the characters in this book. For the most part they aren't main characters, only secondary ones, but the irritation is coloring my view of the book some.I know not everyone loves it, but I'm greatly enjoying the multi-P...

That’s it. I’m caught up with everything published in the Iron Druid Chronicles so far. And I’m sad that I have to wait for the next book, but at least I only have to wait until April! Honestly, how this book ended could’ve been the end of the series. Unlike most of its predecessors, there was a legitimate ending here, one that didn’t in some way set up for the next installment. However, this is the first book in the series that made me feel a bit lost. I know there are short stories between man...

Don't worry. This fan will be there to purchase the next installment. It really doesn't matter how long I have to wait between books.(George R. R. Martin this includes you!). And to those that give up because it took too long to publish the next book, you are going to miss out on something great. True lovers of the story don't care that they have to wait. We may grumble impatience but that is only because we thrive on the story! (Jim Butcher, this includes you too!) So take your time Mr. Hearne,...

I think this series has jumped the shark. The high point of the Iron Druid Chronicles, for me, was the third book, Hammered, where Atticus helped vampire Leif attack Asgard in order to kill Thor. Tricked was a very good one, because it featured the Coyote character, and Luke Daniels voice on that character was so good. Trapped was pretty exciting, and it introduced a 2nd narrator, Granuaile, which worked in that one because of a certain event there. Atticus' mentor Owen was added as a third narr...