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Trapped: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Five by [Kevin Hearne]

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Kevin Hearne

Trapped: The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Five Kindle Edition

by Kevin Hearne (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

1,397 ratings

Book 5 of 9: Iron Druid Chronicles

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After twelve years of secret training, Atticus O’Sullivan is finally ready to bind his apprentice, Granuaile, to the earth and double the number of Druids in the world. But on the eve of the ritual, the world that thought he was dead abruptly discovers that he’s still alive, and they would much rather he return to the grave.

Having no other choice, Atticus, his trusted Irish wolfhound, Oberon, and Granuaile travel to the base of Mount Olympus, where the Roman god Bacchus is anxious to take his sworn revenge—but he’ll have to get in line behind an ancient vampire, a band of dark elves, and an old god of mischief, who all seem to have KILL THE DRUID at the top of their to-do lists.

Don’t miss any of Kevin Hearne’s phenomenal Iron Druid Chronicles novels:
HOUNDED | HEXED | HAMMERED | TRICKED | TRAPPED | HUNTED | SHATTERED | STAKED

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322 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Del Rey
Publication date

November 27, 2012
File size

1417 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“It may be possible that Hearne and Atticus are the logical heir to Butcher and Dresden.”―SFFWorld

“[Atticus is] a strong modern hero with a long history and the wit to survive in the twenty-first century. . . . A snappy narrative voice . . . a savvy urban fantasy adventure.”—Library Journal, on Hounded

“Superb . . . eminently readable . . . plenty of quips and zap-pow-bang fighting.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review), on Hounded

About the Author

Kevin Hearne hugs trees, pets doggies, and rocks out to heavy metal. He also thinks tacos are a pretty nifty idea. He is the author of A Plague of Giants and the New York Times bestselling series The Iron Druid Chronicles.

--This text refers to the mass_market edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

You know those spastic full-body twitches you get sometimes when you’re almost asleep and your muscles want to play a practical joke on your brain? You startle wide awake and immediately get pissed at your nervous system, wondering what the hell that was all about. I’ve caught myself talking to it before: “Damn it, Dude”—yes, I call my nervous system Dude, and the Dude abides—“I was almost asleep, and now you’ve slain all the sheep I was gonna count.”

What I felt as I walked on the Kaibab Plateau was kind of like that, except it was Gaia doing the spastic full-body twitch. It was more of an uncomfortable shudder that I felt through my tattoos, like when you step barefoot into the garage in winter and your nipples pucker up. But, as with those nervous muscle spasms, I got irritated about it and wondered what the hell was going on. And while I wasn’t about to go to sleep, I was about to enjoy the culmination of twelve years of training an apprentice—and, save for the first few months of it and a harrowing episode halfway through, I’d conducted it all in peace. Granuaile was finally ready to become a full Druid, and we’d been searching for a place to bind her to the earth when I felt the tremor. I shot a question to the elemental, Kaibab, in the cocktail of feelings and images they use instead of language: //Confusion / Query: What was that?//

//Confusion / Uncertainty / Fear// came the reply. That chilled me. I’d never heard confusion from an elemental before. The fear, on the other hand, was perfectly normal: Despite their awesome power, elementals are afraid of almost everything, from placer mines to land developers to bark beetles. They can be real scaredy-cats sometimes. But they’re never uncertain about what’s going on with Gaia. Stopping in my tracks and causing Granuaile and Oberon to turn and look at me quizzically, I asked Kaibab what there was to fear.

//Plane across ocean / Early death / Burning / Burning / Burning//

Well, that confused me too. Kaibab wasn’t talking about an airplane. He (or she, if Granuaile had been the one talking to the elemental) meant an entire plane of existence, a plane that was tied to earth somewhere on the other side of the globe. //Query: Which plane?//

//Name unknown / God from plane seeks you / Urgent / Query: Tell him location?//

//Query: Which god?//

The answer to that would tell me what plane was burning. There was a pause, during which time I stalled with Granuaile and Oberon. “Something’s up with Kaibab. Hold on.” They knew better than to interrupt, and they took this news as an invitation to be on their guard, which was wise. Anything worrisome to the avatar of the environment you currently occupy should rouse you to a caffeinated state of paranoia.

//God’s name: Perun// Kaibab finally said.

Almost unconsciously, I sent //Shock// in reply, because it was truly my reaction. The Slavic plane of existence was burning, perhaps even dead? How? Why? I hoped Perun would have the answers. If he sought me in hopes that I had them, we’d both be disappointed. //Yes / Tell Perun location//

I’d also like to know how Perun even knew to ask for me—did someone tell him I’d faked my death twelve years ago? There was another pause, during which I filled in Granuaile and Oberon. Thanks to Immortali-Tea, they hadn’t aged any more than I had.

<Hey, isn’t Perun that hairy guy you told me about, who can turn into an eagle?> Oberon asked.

Yep, that’s the one.

<I’ve always wondered why he doesn’t shill for shaving cream or razors with twenty-five ultrathin vibrating blades. He’d sure move a buttload of product.>

I don’t know why, but perhaps you’ll get a chance to ask him.

//He comes// Kaibab said. //Fast//

“Okay, incoming,” I said out loud.

“Incoming what, Atticus?” Granuaile asked.

“Incoming thunder god. We should move near a tree and get ready to shift away to Tír na nÓg if necessary. And get the fulgurites out.” Fulgurites would protect us from lightning strikes; Perun had given them to us when Granuaile was just starting her training, but we hadn’t worn them for years, since all the thunder gods thought I was dead.

“You think Perun is going to take a shot at us?” Granuaile asked. She shrugged off her red backpack and unzipped the pouch containing the fulgurites.

“Well, no, but . . . maybe. I don’t know what’s going on, really. When in doubt, know your way out, I always say.”

“I thought you always said, ‘When in doubt, blame the dark elves.’ ”

“Well, yeah, that too.”

<I don’t think those are very practical solutions to doubt,> Oberon said. <They don’t leave you feeling satisfied. “When in doubt, eat your neighbor’s lunch” is better, because then you would at least be full.>

We stood in a meadow of bunch grass and clover. The sky washed us in cerulean blue, and the sun kissed Granuaile’s red hair with gold—mine too, I suppose. We had stopped dyeing our hair black because no one was looking for two redheads anymore. And after twelve uncomfortable years of being clean-shaven—my goatee had been distinguishable and damn difficult to dye—I was enjoying my new beard. Oberon looked as if he wanted to plop down and bask in the light for a while. Our backpacks were weighted down with camping gear that we’d bought at Peace Surplus in Flagstaff, but after Granuaile retrieved the fulgurites, we jogged over as best we could to the nearest stand of Ponderosa pine trees. I confirmed that there was a functioning tether to Tír na nÓg there and then looked up for signs of Perun’s arrival.

Granuaile noticed and craned her neck upward. “What’s up there, sensei?” she wondered aloud. “I don’t see anything but sky.”

“I’m looking for Perun. I’m assuming he’s going to fly in. There, see?” I pointed to a dark streak in the northwestern sky trailed by lightning bolts. And, behind that, at a distance of perhaps five to ten miles—I couldn’t tell from so far away—burned an orange ball of fire.

Granuaile squinted. “What’s that thing that looks like the Phoenix Suns logo? Is that him?”

“No, Perun is in front of it, throwing all the lightning.”

“Oh, so what is it? A meteor or a cherub or something?”

“Or something. It doesn’t look friendly. That’s not a warm, cozy hearth fire that you gather ’round with your friends to read some Longfellow while you toast s’mores. That’s more like napalm with a heart of phosphorus and a side of hell sauce.” The lightning and the fireball were turning in the sky and heading directly our way.

<Um. Hey, Atticus, think we should try that escape route just to make sure it works?> Oberon said.

I hear ya, buddy. I’m ready to scoot too. But let’s see if we can talk to Perun first.

The sky darkened and boomed above, making everything shudder; Perun was traveling at supersonic speeds. He crashed into the meadow about fifty yards away from us, and large chunks of turf exploded around a newly formed crater. I felt the impact in my feet, and a wave of displaced air knocked me backward a bit. Before the turf could fall back to earth, a heavily muscled figure carpeted in hair bounded out of it toward us, panic writ large on his features.

“Atticus! We must flee this plane! Is not safe! Take me—save me!”

Normally thunder gods are not prone to panic. The ability to blast away problems tends to turn the jagged edges of fear into silly little pillows of insouciance. So when an utter badass like Perun looks as if he’s about to soil himself, I hope I can be forgiven if I nearly shat kine—especially when the fireball whoomped into the crater Perun had just vacated and sucked all the oxygen out of my lungs.

Granuaile ducked and shrieked in surprise; Oberon whimpered. Perun was tossed through the air toward us like a stuntman in a Michael Bay film, but, upon rolling gracefully through the landing, he leapt back up, his legs churning toward us.

Behind Perun, the fire didn’t spread but rather began to shrink and coalesce and . . . laugh. A high, thin, maniacal laugh, straight out of creepy cartoons. And the fire swirled, torus-like, around a figure twelve feet tall, until it gradually wicked out and left a lean giant with a narrow face standing fifty yards before us, his orange and yellow hair starting from his skull like a sunburst. The grin on his face wasn’t the affable, friendly sort; it was more like the sociopathic rictus of the irretrievably, bugfuckeringly insane.

His eyes were the worst. They were melted around the edges, as if they’d been burned with acid, and where a normal person would have laugh lines or crow’s-feet, he had bubbly pink scars and a nightmare of blistered tissue. The whites of his eyes were a red mist of broken blood vessels, but the irises were an ice blue frosted with madness. He blinked them savagely, as if he had soap in them or something, and soon I recognized it as a nervous tic, since his head jerked to the right at odd intervals and then continued to twitch uncertainly afterward, like a bobble-head doll.

“Go, my friend, go! We must flee!” Perun said, huffing as he reached us and putting one hand on my shoulder and another on the pine. Granuaile followed suit; she knew the drill, and so did Oberon, who reared up on his hind legs and leaned one paw against me and the other on the tree.

“Who in hell is that, Perun?” I said.

The giant laughed again and I shuddered involuntarily. His voice was smooth and fluffy, like marshmallow crème—if the crème also had shards of glass in it. But he had a thick Scandinavian accent to go with the nervous tic.

“This p-p-place—is M-Merrica, yes?”

A twitch, a stutter, and an English-language learner. He’d drive me insane just listening to him. “Yes,” I replied.

“Hah? Who? Thppt! Raah!” He spat a fire loogie and shook his head violently. Perhaps this was more than a twitch. It might be full-blown Tourette’s syndrome. Or it might be something else, as the signs all pointed to a highly unpleasant conclusion.

“Who gah, guh, gods here?” He giggled to himself after this, pleased that he’d managed to ask the question. There was a disturbingly high squealing noise coming from his head, like the sound of fat screaming in a frying pan or air slowly leaking out of a balloon. The giant rested his hands on his knees and scrunched up his shoulders in an attempt to steady his noggin, but this had the unsettling effect of turning his flamelike hair to actual flames. The noise intensified. --This text refers to the mass_market edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0089EHIPO
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Del Rey; 1st edition (November 27, 2012)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 27, 2012
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1417 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 322 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

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1,397 ratings

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Kevin Hearne

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KEVIN HEARNE hugs trees, pets doggies, and rocks out to heavy metal. He also thinks tacos are a pretty nifty idea. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling series the Iron Druid Chronicles, the Seven Kennings trilogy that begins with A PLAGUE OF GIANTS, and co-author of the Tales of Pell with Delilah S. Dawson.

Customer reviews

5 star		71%
4 star		21%
3 star		6%
2 star		1%
1 star		1%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Matilda Trevelyan

"Marty Stu" Atticus - Warning! Spoilers

Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2018

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Another writer of fantasy immortals has again fallen down into boring convention.

I've read a lot of science fiction and fantasy and honestly, next to no author can write a realistic immortal or near immortal character. I've only found like maybe one or two authors who can.

Kevin Hearne is not one of them.

Convention:
Immortal/near immortal characters, despite having lived for thousands of years, still can't think their way out of a paper bag, still make impulsive decisions, still have emotions typical of a Jersey Shore reality TV show cast member. They've gained little wisdom over the centuries, and learned nothing in their thousands of years except how to fight with weapons really really well.

I'd hoped Kevin Hearne would be different, but no, slowly over the last 2 books, he's made Atticus his "Marty Stu". Atticus is his wish projection of himself. He even looks like him - take a look at Hearne's author picture.

If Atticus stopped taking his Immortali Tea, he would look like Anna Nicole Smith's 90 year old ex-husband, except 200 times worse. Only magic keeps him looking like a young surfer dude. Regardless of how he looks, he SHOULD have the wisdom, caution and understanding of someone who reached maturity and wisdom ages ago.

Humans can reach this level in less than 1/5 the time Atticus has lived.

So why is Hearne writing him like he's a horny teenager? He only LOOKS like one, he isn't one. Why is Atticus all but panting over Granuaile like a virginal 15 year old? I got so sick of his mental 'battle' to not 'give in' when you knew damn well he would.

I'd hoped for better, that Hearne would not allow his Atticus to fall to the typical convention of every other writer.

Ye gods, even John Wayne was so embarrassed at being 24 years older than one of his leading ladies in one of his movies that he stopped agreeing to being cast as a romantic lead. Now THAT is the correct attitude of a mature and wise man who knows he looks ridiculous chasing after women young enough to be his daughter.

Atticus salivating over Granuaile is just disgusting.

He's old enough to be her great grand father dozens of times over. He should be wise enough to know better, but no, despite the line between teacher and student, he makes sure she knows he's lusting over her so she'll fall in the sack with him as soon as she 'graduates'. Which she does, and Hearne makes sure the readers know they did it full time for 3 days with a dog watching and making commentary. Gag.

SO disappointing to know, even in the magical world, when a old coot like Atticus uses magic to make himself look younger, he still prefers REAL young women, and not wise women his own age who use magic to make themselves look younger. Guess he doesn't like the mental competition? Probably, since Atticus never tires of conversations about sausages or poodles with Oberon, which I grew tired of 3 books ago.

Just goes to show, for some men, no matter how old - real world or fantasy - there is no place for older women.

In Hearne's world of Atticus, there are only ancient men who only look young and real hot young women. Ancient women witches who make themselves look young - like Atticus does - are looked on with disgust and real old women are treated like grandma. There is no inbetween.

Atticus SHOULD be attracted to wise women of his own generation who are also magic users and do what he does so they have something in common. Granuaile is a child compared to him. I'm hoping Hearne is trying to point that out by making 30 something year old Granuaile act like a 19 year old in this story. She's "Oh, wow"ing and "That's incredible..." like a high school graduate who just went to Europe. She also pouts, and is a braggart fighter (Hearne has her beating gods in matches when they've had centuries of practice and her less than 12 years. Yeah riiiiiiiiight.)

How nice it would have been to see them settle into a real partnership based on mutual respect and for Granuaile to come into her own wisdom and to be sophisticated and discerning and to have found lovers her own age along the way and for Atticus to have encouraged that without offering himself up as a potential partner.

But nope. Old grandpappy goes after MUCH younger woman and wins her. Yuck. Just yuck.

Ever see the movie "American Beauty"? Middle aged character Lester spends much of the movie lusting over underage teenage high school cheerleader Angela. He lusts over her so much, she notices and flirts with him outrageously. At a key point in the movie, she finally gives in and his reaction? Does he do an Atticus and spend 3 days in bed with her?

Nope. Lester comes to his senses and realizes she's a child compared to him - and he gently, fatherly, tells her to get dressed and to leave.

Wish Atticus had done that.

So I gave a couple of stars for the world Hearne has created. It is compelling. But his two main characters - one of them supposedly thousands of years old - have devolved. Atticus the character is no longer interesting. We used to be able to see the modern world through his older eyes, now he's basically any modern guy you'd meet on the street who can do magick. Hearne might as well have made him 25 years old. He acts like one.

Hearne writes Granuaile - a 30+ year old woman - like a college girl on Spring Break. He seems unable to write a woman character where her primary qualities are NOT her looks. What do we know about Granuaile? She's a red head barmaid with quite a rack that Atticus - and most male characters in the books - are looking forward to seeing.

You know a little bit about her father and her Midwest mother, but that's pretty much it. That's all the characterization we get of her.

So, Hearne writes Granuaile as a hot bar girl. In this book Granuaile pouts and gives Atticus the silent treatment for about 2 chapters before coming clean with what's bothering her.

Her problem? She's upset that all the ancient gods she's meeting are not like Jesus.

Really.

Atticus has supposedly been training her for 12 years. Training her on what? Obviously not anything like ancient myths or comparative religions. She's clueless to Paganism 101 - that the majority of ancient pagan gods had nothing to do with being a role model for mortals. The ancients had morals and ethics but those concepts had little to do with their religions. That's the hardest thing a modern person converting to paganism from Christianity has to get their mind around. 12 years in, Atticus never has mentioned this to his apprentice.

Not sure I want to continue the series. Atticus is now a disappointing dirty old man and Granuaile is not clever or interesting.

9 people found this helpful

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Sneaky Burrito

still good if you can get past the uneven pacing

Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2015

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I think this is very much a transitional book in the Iron Druid series. It builds a lot on events of the previous books and you will be lost if you haven't read those. So my first piece of advice: don't start with this one!

The overall arc of the series is definitely evident here, but I kind of don't feel like this book is a unified whole. It was more a series of parts that happened roughly at the same point in time, but the narrative wasn't entirely cohesive. I'm sort of willing to put up with that in a longer series where many of the books are already published (as was the case here). But if I had read this right after it was released, and without the next volume available, I would probably not have been very happy.

In this book, a lot of what Atticus (the POV character) has done/said previously in the series is coming back to haunt him. Unintended consequences and all that. Although in previous volumes, his sense of morality has been just a bit different (presumably due to the time and place he was raised), he's got a strongly human side here. I think he does feel some guilt for what he's done (or let be done) in the past, and some of the actions he takes are attempts to make amends for that (especially towards the end, with the Norse goddess Freyja).

I'm not sure that appropriate amounts of time were spent on each part of the story. There was a rather long sequence in, say, the first 2/3 of the book, where Atticus's apprentice Granuaile was finally being bound as a druid. (Kudos to the author, by the way, for basically saying "twelve years passed" without describing them in agonizing detail.) Of course there are interruptions and celebrations, and the interruptions do serve to further both the plot of this book and the series arc. But Granuaile's tattooing (the final step in being bound) took a long time.

And then events that had been simmering earlier in the book got short shrift. The final battle scene was quite brief. And Oberon (Atticus's dog) kept getting left behind rather than going on adventures with Atticus. It's almost like the author was given a page limit he couldn't surpass, or else he got tired of writing and had to finish something up. The epilogue seemed out of place, as well. (It fit with the events of the story but shouldn't have been an epilogue since it was setting up the action of the next book.)

That being said, there were some things I did like. Atticus's changing relationship with the Norse gods is interesting. I also liked the introduction to the dark elves and assume we will be seeing them again soon. Atticus's attitude towards Granuaile is refreshing. He does exhibit a desire to keep her safe -- but he fully respects her martial abilities, as well, and he expects her to make her own decisions and not to blindly follow his lead. I think this attitude is fitting, considering what Atticus has to say about female warriors in the Celtic pantheon.

Also well-done were the islands where time moves differently, and the way Atticus both introduces them and uses them to his advantage later (and Granuaile's reaction to them, as well -- simply because it was genuine and Atticus did not expect it to be so). We're starting to see what elements make a Druid and what elements make an ancient (Atticus) or modern (Granuaile) human, to separate Atticus as a person from the idea of a Druid. (And yes, Atticus is somewhat immature here. There's no way around that.)

The setting for this book is quite a bit different from previous novels. Most of it takes place in/on different planes of existence and/or in remote places. There are few scenes in cities and we do not experience Arizona or the Colorado desert as we did before. So this takes a bit of a detour from urban fantasy. I'm fine with that because I read a lot of traditional fantasy, as well. But keep in mind that it *is* a switch from previous books.

The writing style is pretty much the same. Granuaile can now hear Oberon's thoughts, as well, and the author employs this to humorous effect. We get a couple of guest narratives; these have become a staple in this series. Yeah, they're kind of like big infodumps, but they provide necessary background and there aren't really any other ways to work that information in. I would not say there's a great deal of character development, but there are bits and pieces. It's about average for a first-person POV novel that's later in a series.

In the end, pacing was a bit uneven and the plot was not really unified (nor was it neatly tied up at the end), although there were also enjoyable elements and I thought the worldbuilding was great. At any rate, I'm going to continue reading the series because I *am* invested in what happens going forward. 3.5 stars.

5 people found this helpful

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Larry Bruce

I've enjoyed the Chronicles so far

Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2018

Verified Purchase

I've enjoyed the Chronicles so far, except this book. I think Hearne has given in to power creep for his characters, which makes then less interesting and Granuaile is now written as if Hearne was writing a female character back in the 60's... she's tough because she's all emotional and mysteriously upset at things... ya know... like women always behave (all emotion). ... very disappointing. That whole animosity with the Norse that was set up over the past couple of books?... meh... resolved by a brief mention of an event that occurred 'off stage'.. to me, that's lazy writing and story telling. I'm hoping this isn't the beginning of suck...

One last thing: If you're a gamer, the best way to decribe Granuaile's character in this book: The player of Granuile is clearly the DMs girlfriend.

One person found this helpful

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Marty TTop Contributor: Fantasy Books

Taking care of business isn't always easy

Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2017

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This is book 5, you need to read the previous books for the full world building. Twelve years have passed and it's time for someone to be bound to the earth, and of course it's not going to be easy. Many adventures occur and much traveling by our Druids is done. There are lots of complaints that Atticus is 2100 years old and he should grow up, you have to remember that most of all his years were spent quietly tending to the earth, not getting into trouble. It's only been recently that he made a bad decision that has snowballed into his own form of hell. If he had questioned some of his choices, or really thought about what this God/godless is going to get out of the deal they present to give him help, he may not be running for his life so much. Now it's cleaning up his messes that he has made while trying to keep the end of the world at bay, and it's quite a ride. Granuaile and Oberon give him company and backup to take care of business in a humorous, and clear thinking plan of action, and not too many guesses who is after him in Hunted.

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Top reviews from other countries

Clackers

Going off the boil slightly

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 11, 2013

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I loved the earlier Iron Druid books and passed them onto friends in that evangelical way you do when you find something new and great. I was disappointed by this one though. Considering the backdrop is a possible apocalypse nothing much happens. The characters hide a bit, get discovered and have a little fight, then more hiding, more fighting etc. Even the dialogue with Oberon seems forced this time.
Also twelve years has passed but really there is no sense of which year this is set in. Given that the first book was written in 2011 (and presumably set then)this must be set in around in 2023 yet no mention of any changes to the world is really made. Presumably the economic crisis is resolved enough that Greece still has a relatively booming tourist industry (Hearne gets bonus points from me for setting the Greek action in a couple of towns I know).
I'll continue reading the series to find out what happens but I preferred the earlier ones where the antagonists were small scale local nuisances rather than world affecting gods.

Kromm

Very nice

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 15, 2013

Verified Purchase

I have only a few things to say about the book.
Mostly, I liked and enjoyed it.
The characters are eminently likable and the powers they have
is well limited so they are not overpowered.
The language used is really good to read, funny, witty, able
to get the feel of the story and circumstances across.

Unfortunately, this is not as good a book as the previous ones, there are some story
hanging points and the ending suffers, somehow the book has a piece-meal feel to it and
the parts seem too random and not integrated well.
The book finishes in a cliff-hanger but instead it feels unfinished and leaves a bit of an
disappointed impression.

It is not all bad, in fact it is an enjoyable book. However if the previous part had been at the same level as this one, I would not bother reading the next one.

Of course it

One person found this helpful

Sam Brown

Gripping Page Turner

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 7, 2013

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This is several books in from when we are first introduced to the Iron Druid and his world. I have read all the books published so far in this series, with this one the latest release. I would say this book is up to the same standard as the others, i.e. a good page turner. The characters are developing far from the first book. The apprentice graduates in more ways than one and begins to take on a more than support role in the storyline. The iron druid himself seems to be needing to confront his internal demons as much as external enemies. Various gods show up and there are some high octane fight scenes. By the end (no spoilers) I was left wanting more, but satisfied with the book. Highly recommended.

One person found this helpful

Wing Chiu Li

Trapped The Fifth Installment of the Iron Druid Chronicles

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 2, 2013

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The entire series is about the last druid Atticus. For almost 2000 years he has been a fugitive and hardly a master of his own fate. In America, however, he finds compelling reasons to make a stand against his enemies and make it his permanent home. Along the way, there are hilarious escapades as he deals with all manner of supernatural threats.
Being alone, he is forced to make faustian deals in order to get the firepower to fight enemies which are literally gods but at last, in this 5th book, he is managing to train his 2nd and only living apprentice, the lovely Granuaile. Now, it could be two druids instead of one against a plethora of threats including the original force which annihilated the druidic order.

Sacrificing a little humour and entertainment, this is still a very enjoyable book. This book sets develops both plot and characters leading to a cliffhanger that sets up the scene for Atticus and Granuaile to fight back against the mysterious antagonist which killed all the ancient druids leaving Atticus the lone survivor.

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Another entertaining read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 12, 2014

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Yet another pantheon making a full appearance. I thought the Bacchants would be making a comeback and here they come. Again highly entertaining it is too. Politics start coming to the fore as well here and show some depth of understanding from Atticus - well he has to have learned something in 2000yrs!!

Granuaile is really coming into her own and is becoming herself rather than a side kick - I can't wait to see what happens with her :)

Keep reading. It's worth it :)

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