Trapped by Kevin Hearne

Title: Trapped
Series: Iron Druid Chronicles
Author: Kevin Hearne
Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Del Rey (November 27, 2012)
Release Date: November 27, 2012
Language: English
ISBN-10: 034553364X
ISBN-13: 978-0345533647
Source: NetGalley
Goodreads     Amazon

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. [Goodreads]

Review

I have been somewhat disappointed with Trapped.  Y’all know I LOVE the Iron Druid Chronicles.  I’d marry them and have little Iron Druid Chronicle babies if I could.  But, Kevin, you let me down a little bit.  This was the least entertaining of all the Iron Druid books.  At least it’s not the last.  And I’m just as excited about book 6 as I was about this one. 

There was an overarching feeling of melancholy that seeped off of every page of Trapped. There seemed a dramatic lack of humor that is an integral part of the Iron Druid formula.  Don’t get me wrong, there were some funny stuff:

Giddy Euphoria seized me and I shivered with it.  A squee welled up in my throat because I felt cool again—impossibly, inhumanly cool, like Laurence F***ing Fishburnee—but I suppressed it savagely; if I squeed out loud, all the cool would be gone. [page 118]

Granuaile finally asked a question into what passes for silence in the city: “Do vampires have balls?”

“I don’t know.” [page 147]

I need to preface this next one for those who haven’t read these books.  Atticus can speak to his wolfhound, Oberon, through their minds.  It sounds far fetched, but is crazy funny at times.  Atticus’s words are italicized, Oberon’s are between the < > symbols (anyone know what to call those?) See:

Not everyone can be bribed with meat, Oberon.

<They can’t? Oh! You mean they’re vegetarian.>

No, they eat meat.  It simply doesn’t sway their decision-making process.

<Well, that…that’s just wrong, Atticus! Are they monsters? It’s like they have no moral center!> [pg. 155-6]

But it felt that many of the attempts at humor just fell flat.  More so than just that, Atticus’s voice seemed a little off—not near as snarky and irreverent as he normally is.  More introspective and contemplative.

I understand the attraction of forgiving gods.  There are times, like this one, during which I wish for nothing so much as forgiveness for my trespasses, and if I could truly feel such forgiveness, I would cling to the source of it like a newborn to his mother’s breast.  But Odin doesn’t forgive.  Nor do the Tuatha De Danann. [pg. 215]

There were lots of things going on, and maybe that was part of the problem.  There was no one enemy, no one problem to solve…  There was this thing and that thing and the little issue of binding Granuaile to the earth, and, oh yeah, that other thing.  There were so many little things that my head kind of spins trying to remember what they all are.  Trapped lacked the great and glorious battle that exists in the other books.

I can appreciate the need to move a series along, and realize that not every book in a series is going to be as awesome as the others.  Trapped felt a little disjointed, a little underdeveloped, and little like a vehicle solely to move the story on, but with a cliffhanger of an ending.

Y’all know I LOVE these books.  Y'all know, then, how disappointed I am that I merely liked this one.

3 Moons

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