Review: Trapped (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #5)

Author: Kevin Hearne
Series: The Iron Druid Chronicles
Published: November 27th 2012
Publisher: Del Rey
Mass Market Paperback, 290 pages
Source: Publisher for review
Buy: The Book Depository


Well, look at that! Once again, everyone’s favorite druid Atticus O’Sullivan somehow managed to anger just about every deity from every pantheon worshiped by mankind. (Well, everyone except Perun, but that’s understandable – Perun is Slavic and our gods are all kinds of awesome. Not too bright, but awesome.) This is turning out to be a special talent of Atticus’s, and a good thing too, or we would have nothing to read about.

After twelve (!) years of training, binding Granuaile to earth should be cause for celebration, not yet another problem on Atticus’s list. But with everyone chasing them for some reason or other, finding a quiet place to bind Granuaile and turn her into a full druid is proving to be somewhat... difficult.

Oh, but Hearne loves his lectures! He can’t seem to control himself. With each new book, the stories that slow down… no, make that completely block the plot progression become longer and longer. I appreciate well-built worlds. I even appreciate mythology lessons. But Hearne is taking it all just a bit too far. By the time I reached the last part, I barely even understood what was going on.

The romance we’ve all been waiting for it’s finally here and let’s just say it’s a bit underwhelming. Five books we’ve waited for Atticus to finally find someone worthy of him, someone interesting and competent enough to live and fight by his side, and now that he has, I expected... more! Fireworks, at the very least. I love them both separately, but together, they do nothing for me.

I really thought the previous book, Tricked, was a one-time disaster, but now I’m beginning to think that someone stole Hearne and replaced him with some pod person. There's just no way that the same person could have written those first three books and these last two, it’s just not possible. I’ve rarely seen a series so completely and thoroughly ruined.

When I lose interest in a book, it usually happens around the middle, not during that last, most exciting part. With Trapped, I struggled through the middle, true, but the last part was more than I could handle. Instead of building the tension and ending with a really god action scene, Hearne inexplicably had Atticus and Granuaile sit down and listen to some long, unnecessary and mostly boring story. This has pretty much become his modus operandi: they run, they win a fight against all odds, meet someone willing to tell them a story – twenty pages of pure boredom ensue. Rinse and repeat.

This is where Atticus O’Sullivan and I go our separate ways. However, keep I mind that the series still has many fans and that those first three books make it worth your time. Please don’t hesitate to read them because the fourth and the fifth aren’t as good. You’d be missing out on a lot.