Action & Adventure
![Kevin Hearne - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_kevin_hearne.jpg)
Tricked: Book Four of The Iron Druid Chronicles
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In the fourth novel of the Iron Druid Chronicles, two-thousand-year-old Druid Atticus O'Sullivan must pay his debts to cunning trickster god Coyote, a task that includes battling undead creatures of the night as well as a relentless hound of Hel and the goddess of death who commands it.
"[Kevin] Hearne is a terrific storyteller with a great snarky wit. . . . Neil Gaiman's American Gods meets Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden."-SFFWorld
Cutting a deal with a trickster god rarely goes well for any human brave or foolish enough to try it, but Atticus doesn't feel like he has a choice. With members of the Norse pantheon out for his blood, he can't train his apprentice in peace, so he asks Coyote to help him fake his own death. The cost, however, might wind up being every bit as high as if he'd made no deal at all.
There are things hiding in the Arizona desert that don't want any company, and Coyote makes sure they know Atticus has arrived. And then there's the hound of Hel, Garm, who's terribly difficult to shake and not at all convinced that Atticus is dead.
Being tricked by a trickster is par for the course. But it's the betrayal from someone he thought was a friend that shakes Atticus to the core and places his life in jeopardy. The real trick, he discovers, might be surviving his own faked death.
Includes Kevin Hearne's novella "Two Ravens and One Crow"
Don't miss any of The Iron Druid Chronicles:
HOUNDED | HEXED | HAMMERED | TRICKED | TRAPPED | HUNTED | SHATTERED | STAKED | SCOURGED | BESIEGED
"[Kevin] Hearne is a terrific storyteller with a great snarky wit. . . . Neil Gaiman's American Gods meets Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden."-SFFWorld
Cutting a deal with a trickster god rarely goes well for any human brave or foolish enough to try it, but Atticus doesn't feel like he has a choice. With members of the Norse pantheon out for his blood, he can't train his apprentice in peace, so he asks Coyote to help him fake his own death. The cost, however, might wind up being every bit as high as if he'd made no deal at all.
There are things hiding in the Arizona desert that don't want any company, and Coyote makes sure they know Atticus has arrived. And then there's the hound of Hel, Garm, who's terribly difficult to shake and not at all convinced that Atticus is dead.
Being tricked by a trickster is par for the course. But it's the betrayal from someone he thought was a friend that shakes Atticus to the core and places his life in jeopardy. The real trick, he discovers, might be surviving his own faked death.
Includes Kevin Hearne's novella "Two Ravens and One Crow"
Don't miss any of The Iron Druid Chronicles:
HOUNDED | HEXED | HAMMERED | TRICKED | TRAPPED | HUNTED | SHATTERED | STAKED | SCOURGED | BESIEGED
Editorial Reviews
Praise for The Iron Druid Chronicles
"[Kevin] Hearne is a terrific storyteller with a great snarky wit. . . . Neil Gaiman's American Gods meets Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden."-SFFWorld
"[The Iron Druid books] are clever, fast-paced and a good escape."-Boing Boing
"Hearne understands the two main necessities of good fantasy stories: for all the wisecracks and action, he never loses sight of delivering a sense of wonder to his readers, and he understands that magic use always comes with a price. Highly recommended."-The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
"Superb . . . plenty of quips and zap-pow-bang fighting."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Celtic mythology and an ancient Druid with modern attitude mix it up in the Arizona desert in this witty new fantasy series."-Kelly Meding, author of Chimera
"[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
"A page-turning and often laugh-out-loud funny caper through a mix of the modern and the mythic."-Ari Marmell, author of The Warlord's Legacy
"Outrageously fun."-The Plain Dealer
"Kevin Hearne breathes new life into old myths, creating a world both eerily familiar and startlingly original."-Nicole Peeler, author of Tempest Rising
"[Kevin] Hearne is a terrific storyteller with a great snarky wit. . . . Neil Gaiman's American Gods meets Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden."-SFFWorld
"[The Iron Druid books] are clever, fast-paced and a good escape."-Boing Boing
"Hearne understands the two main necessities of good fantasy stories: for all the wisecracks and action, he never loses sight of delivering a sense of wonder to his readers, and he understands that magic use always comes with a price. Highly recommended."-The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
"Superb . . . plenty of quips and zap-pow-bang fighting."-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Celtic mythology and an ancient Druid with modern attitude mix it up in the Arizona desert in this witty new fantasy series."-Kelly Meding, author of Chimera
"[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
"A page-turning and often laugh-out-loud funny caper through a mix of the modern and the mythic."-Ari Marmell, author of The Warlord's Legacy
"Outrageously fun."-The Plain Dealer
"Kevin Hearne breathes new life into old myths, creating a world both eerily familiar and startlingly original."-Nicole Peeler, author of Tempest Rising
Readers Top Reviews
Kindle
Another fun read exploring the world through the voice of Atticus. Everything sounds well informed and researched. Each character has a clear voice and motive. The story is paced well and we get further insight to the past, certain characters are fleshed out and after wrapping up loose ends from the last book it's exciting to see where the next book goes. Recommend this series to everyone I know. It has great humour, delightful characters, believable settings and is such a fun read I almost want to read each book in one sitting. If you like God's, myth, pop culture references, tense fight scenes, comedy, interesting character development and genuine page turners then this is the series for you.
Nick BrettK. J. Mill
I have been enjoying this series and this book was no exception, but perhaps was the weakest so far. Here we see Atticus repaying a debt to help out some Native Americans and coming up against Native American mythology (instead of the Norse Gods we have met previously) and some bad guys that even he can't deal with. Told as before with both wit and charm and humour from his hound Oberon. The joy of the previous books was his dealing with a variety of Gods and religions (a brilliant scene with Jesus in the last book) and how they all mingle and share existence (based on the model that Gods gain their powers from belief). Here there is less of that and a story that feels slightly padded, with much of Atticus explaining stuff to his apprentice/the reader. Some of his old friends and alliances are treated rather strangely and even the ending was a little...odd. So it was okay but not as entertaining or clever as the previous books. Be interesting to see where the author goes next, but he needs to freshen things up a bit and not rely too much on sausage related humour!
Sam Brown
This book is an enjoyable morsel to keep readers entertained between major book releases, in the continuing saga of Atticus, an Iron Druid in modern day America. In this story, Atticus, the 2100 year old Iron Druid, is found in the Arizona desert fulfilling a promise to setup a native American ecological mining operation. He chats to elementals to get gold moved to the unlikely location, and has to deal with a wide manner of mythical entities, whilst maintaining a low profile, having recently faked his own death. The real charm of the storyline, though, is how he interacts with the other characters, especially his attractive female apprentice, and his surprisingly articulate hound, Oberon. There are various visits from deities such as the Irish gods like the Morrigan, the chooser of the slain, who turns out to be not unlike someone's eccentric hot single aunt. There are some casualties and some native American lore. I suspect the author, who lives in Arizona in real life, most likely was especially careful not to offend any native American readers by being disrespectful of their folklore. Oberon is the star of the show in some ways, as he is the funny man to Atticus's straight man. I would highly recommend this book to fans of the series and readers who like urban fantasy.
GardorKindle DLynnH
I'm just annoyed that his supposed main character trait is paranoia, and yet every single book is him running headlong into some avoidable danger without caution or forethought. In this book he starts walking home in a dark desert with two supernatural hunters after him, instead of pulling out his cell phone (or budgeting his time better). He also gets attacked on the fourth floor of a hotel, why didn't he try for a ground floor room so he's closer to his source of power, and why didn't he bother to put up any wards? If his paranoia is the only reason he's survived this long, it's just a thin cover for plot armor. Also, I'd like an explanation for why he can absorb energy from the earth but somehow cobblestone acts as a buffer.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
The best trick I ever pulled off was watching myself die. I did a respectable job of it too-the dying, I mean, not the watching.
The key to dying well is to make a final verbal ejaculation that is full of rage and pain but not tainted in the least by squeals of terror or pleas for mercy. This was my father's wisdom-about the only shred of it that has managed to lodge firmly in my mind all these years. He died while trying to steal somebody else's cows.
It would be an ignominious end today, but before the common era in Ireland, it was honorable and manly to die in a cattle raid, as such theft was called. Before he left to meet his doom, my father must have had some dark premonition about it, because he shared with me all his opinions about dying properly, and I will never forget his final words: "A man's supposed to shit himself after he dies, son, not before. Try to remember that, lad, so that when your time comes, you won't make a right girly mess of it. Now f*** off and go play in the bog."
Like many silly codes of bravery and manliness, the meat of my father's instruction on how to die well can be distilled to a simple slogan: Die angry at maximum volume. (Dying silently is out of the question; the world's last Druid should not go gentle into that good night.)
During infrequent spates of morbidity, I used to speculate on my eventual manner of death. I figured it would happen on a city street somewhere, cut off from the power of the earth, unable to summon a magical mulligan that would let me see the sunrise. But at the same time, I hoped it would be in a cool city with a bitchin' name, like Kathmandu or Bangkok or maybe Climax, Michigan. I never thought it would be in a dried-up place called Tuba City.
Situated in the southwestern portion of the Navajo Nation in Arizona, Tuba City rests on a red sandstone mesa with no visible means of economic support. The first question I asked when I saw it-besides "Where are all the tubas?"-was, "Why is anybody living here?" The red rocks may have a stark beauty to them, but beyond that Tuba City is nearly treeless, dusty, and notably lacking in modern amenities of dubious worth, like golf courses and cafeteria-style dining. It does have a reservoir and some pastures nestled into a canyon, but otherwise it's puzzling why nine thousand souls would adopt an address there.
On the north end of town, where the BIA Road intersects with Indian Route 6220, a large white water tower juts out of the desert. It overlooks a few dilapidated trailers on the very edge of the city, and then there is naught but a rocky mesa with scattered shrubs gamely trying to make a living in a few inches of sandy soil. I'd flown to the top of the tower as an owl, carrying a wee pair of binoculars in my talons, and now I was camouflaged in my human form, lying flat, and peering northeast into the barren waste where I was about to die.
The dying had to be done. The Morrigan had seen it in a lucid vision, and she doesn't get those unless it's really dire and inevitable, like James Earl Jones telling you in his Darth Vader voice, "It is your desss-tiny." And, frankly, I probably deserved it. I'd been very naughty recently and, in retrospect, epically stupid. Because I couldn't bear to break my word, I'd taken Leif Helgarson to Asgard to kill Thor and he managed to pull it off, but we killed a few extra Æsir in the process and turned Odin into a drooling vegetable. Now the remaining Æsir were slavering for me to shuffle off my mortal coil, as were several other thunder gods who took Thor's demise as a personal affront to all things thundery.
After building flaming funeral ships for their dead and resolving to avenge them-for some people approach vengeance like an all-you-can-eat buffet-the Æsir sent Týr and Vidar after the surviving members of our company. I had no idea where Perun or Zhang Guo Lao were hiding, and I hadn't an inkling of whether Hrym and the frost giants ever made it out of Asgard. Leif was safe, because they saw Thor smash his skull with Mjöllnir; thanks to the peculiar regeneration capabilities of vampires and the dutiful attentions of Dr. Snorri Jodursson, Leif hadn't quite died, but it would be some time before we knew if he'd make a full recovery.
I, on the other hand, wasn't safe at all, because I had people to look out for. Perun could spend the next century as an eagle and they'd never find him. Zhang Guo Lao, I'd heard, was capable of true invisibility when he stood still; since he could go full ninja, they'd never get him either. I could go to a nice plane somewhere and be safe-I could even take Oberon and Granuaile with me-but without true contact with the elementals of earth, Granuaile woul...
The best trick I ever pulled off was watching myself die. I did a respectable job of it too-the dying, I mean, not the watching.
The key to dying well is to make a final verbal ejaculation that is full of rage and pain but not tainted in the least by squeals of terror or pleas for mercy. This was my father's wisdom-about the only shred of it that has managed to lodge firmly in my mind all these years. He died while trying to steal somebody else's cows.
It would be an ignominious end today, but before the common era in Ireland, it was honorable and manly to die in a cattle raid, as such theft was called. Before he left to meet his doom, my father must have had some dark premonition about it, because he shared with me all his opinions about dying properly, and I will never forget his final words: "A man's supposed to shit himself after he dies, son, not before. Try to remember that, lad, so that when your time comes, you won't make a right girly mess of it. Now f*** off and go play in the bog."
Like many silly codes of bravery and manliness, the meat of my father's instruction on how to die well can be distilled to a simple slogan: Die angry at maximum volume. (Dying silently is out of the question; the world's last Druid should not go gentle into that good night.)
During infrequent spates of morbidity, I used to speculate on my eventual manner of death. I figured it would happen on a city street somewhere, cut off from the power of the earth, unable to summon a magical mulligan that would let me see the sunrise. But at the same time, I hoped it would be in a cool city with a bitchin' name, like Kathmandu or Bangkok or maybe Climax, Michigan. I never thought it would be in a dried-up place called Tuba City.
Situated in the southwestern portion of the Navajo Nation in Arizona, Tuba City rests on a red sandstone mesa with no visible means of economic support. The first question I asked when I saw it-besides "Where are all the tubas?"-was, "Why is anybody living here?" The red rocks may have a stark beauty to them, but beyond that Tuba City is nearly treeless, dusty, and notably lacking in modern amenities of dubious worth, like golf courses and cafeteria-style dining. It does have a reservoir and some pastures nestled into a canyon, but otherwise it's puzzling why nine thousand souls would adopt an address there.
On the north end of town, where the BIA Road intersects with Indian Route 6220, a large white water tower juts out of the desert. It overlooks a few dilapidated trailers on the very edge of the city, and then there is naught but a rocky mesa with scattered shrubs gamely trying to make a living in a few inches of sandy soil. I'd flown to the top of the tower as an owl, carrying a wee pair of binoculars in my talons, and now I was camouflaged in my human form, lying flat, and peering northeast into the barren waste where I was about to die.
The dying had to be done. The Morrigan had seen it in a lucid vision, and she doesn't get those unless it's really dire and inevitable, like James Earl Jones telling you in his Darth Vader voice, "It is your desss-tiny." And, frankly, I probably deserved it. I'd been very naughty recently and, in retrospect, epically stupid. Because I couldn't bear to break my word, I'd taken Leif Helgarson to Asgard to kill Thor and he managed to pull it off, but we killed a few extra Æsir in the process and turned Odin into a drooling vegetable. Now the remaining Æsir were slavering for me to shuffle off my mortal coil, as were several other thunder gods who took Thor's demise as a personal affront to all things thundery.
After building flaming funeral ships for their dead and resolving to avenge them-for some people approach vengeance like an all-you-can-eat buffet-the Æsir sent Týr and Vidar after the surviving members of our company. I had no idea where Perun or Zhang Guo Lao were hiding, and I hadn't an inkling of whether Hrym and the frost giants ever made it out of Asgard. Leif was safe, because they saw Thor smash his skull with Mjöllnir; thanks to the peculiar regeneration capabilities of vampires and the dutiful attentions of Dr. Snorri Jodursson, Leif hadn't quite died, but it would be some time before we knew if he'd make a full recovery.
I, on the other hand, wasn't safe at all, because I had people to look out for. Perun could spend the next century as an eagle and they'd never find him. Zhang Guo Lao, I'd heard, was capable of true invisibility when he stood still; since he could go full ninja, they'd never get him either. I could go to a nice plane somewhere and be safe-I could even take Oberon and Granuaile with me-but without true contact with the elementals of earth, Granuaile woul...
