Monday, March 2, 2015

Review: Hounded by Kevin Hearne

An interesting contemporary fantasy - and highly irreverent in its tone. Kevin Hearne's gods are just very powerful magicians. (And he implies, yes, that this does include Jesus and Mary, although it's not explicit).

Hounded touches all the bases - witches, vampires and werewolves show up, but not as much in the way of original creatures. His take on druidry is solid and he's done his research. And while his protagonist (first person) is at times insufferable, he does rather back it up. I'm not sure about some aspects of his characterization of the Morrigan, but he does keep her appropriately scary.

It's probably a funnier book than I found it - I enjoyed it, but could have done without the tea puns.

Oh, and Hearne knows his dogs, although there's a French poodle gag that gets old by the past page. Sorry. It was funny once. But the dog sidekick is written in a very entertaining way.

All in all, a pretty fun read, and remarkably little myth abuse given how many myths he's using.


Copy received at World Fantasy Con.

No comments:

Post a Comment