So, with Hammered, Hearne has done a lot of things well.

In fact, I don’t think it would be such a bad thing should Hearne turn his pen to stories of this type to flesh out some of Atticus’s past. Each ‘episode’ was entertaining and could work as a short story or modern fable in their own right. Hearne’s method for this bonding worked very well as he paralleled the Canterbury Tales, allowing each of Atticus’s four companions to tell their tale of woe at the hands of Thor. In order for the group’s strength, and more importantly Atticus’s ability to transport the group to Asgard, to be assured, they must bond. MacDonagh, and last but certainly not least, taking care of his Irish Wolfhound Oberon.Īlong the way of the narrative, Atticus’s group of three – Atticus, Leif the vampire, and Gunnar the Werewolf – grows to include Perun, the Russian God of Thunder, and the Finnish wizard Väinämöinen. Of course, since plotting to kill a major god isn’t enough for one Druid, Atticus is beset by a sect of Kabbalistic Russian Jews calling themselves the Hammers of God, warnings from the Morrigan, the increasing time spent tutoring his Druid-in-training Granuaile, keeping watch over his widow friend Mrs. In his initial journey into Asgard, Atticus befriends Ratatoskr a giant squirrel as he travels along Yggdrasil and makes his presence felt in the land of the Norse gods. As part of his preparation, Atticus journeys to Asgard early in the novel to retrieve an apple from Iðunn’s tree, which grants youth, as payment to Laksha, the sorceress who assisted Atticus defeat the Bacchants in the previous volume Hexed.

Knowing what a difficult task lay ahead of him, Atticus goes about intensive preparation and scouting while also discussing the mission, and potential ramifications, with no less than Jesus Christ himself. The brimming sub-storyline from the previous two books –the hatred all pantheons and the majority of supernatural creatures hold for Thor, the Norse God of Thunder – comes to a full head in what closes out the initial trilogy.Īs a result of enlisting the aid of his Viking vampire lawyer Leif Helgarson in the past, Atticus made a promise to help the vampire get into Asgard so that the vampire could attempt nothing less than the murder of a god. The story of the last living Druid, Atticus O’ Sullivan, continues in Hammered the third volume of Kevin Hearne’s entertaining Iron Druid Chronicles.

Hammered by kevin hearne