Atticus O'Sullivan, last of the Druids, lives peacefully in Arizona, running an occult bookshop and shape-shifting in his spare time to hunt with his Irish wolfhound. His neighbors and customers think that this handsome, tattooed Irish dude is about twenty-one years old--when in actuality, he's twenty-one centuries old. Not to mention: He draws his power from the earth, possesses a sharp wit, and wields an even sharper magical sword known as Fargarach, the Answerer.
Unfortunately, a very angry Celtic god wants that sword, and he's hounded Atticus for centuries. Now the determined deity has tracked him down, and Atticus will need all his power--plus the help of a seductive goddess of death, his vampire and werewolf team of attorneys, a sexy bartender possessed by a Hindu witch, and some good old-fashioned luck of the Irish--to kick some Celtic arse and deliver himself from evil.
Finally, finally got around to reading Hounded by Kevin Hearne. Had read some decent reviews of it a few months back and have the three books in my TBR pile. Today I finished Hounded, book 1 and it was pretty good,
Atticus is a very likeable character. He's kind of a smartass. But hey, what UF character isn't? I don't usually read whole books where there's a male narrator, it's just never come up. Sure there have been books when a guy narrates for part of the story, but not the whole thing. And this was pretty good like I said.
The hardest thing for me to overcome was the pronunciation of a lot of names. There is a glossary or key in the beginning of the book, but the names are Irish, from way back when, so it was a pain to keep going back and forth to read the "proper" pronunciation, so I didn't. I ended up just glazing over some of them or pronouncing them my old butchered way.
Besides that factoid, it was a good read. Very interesting and compelling. I didn't want to stop. Although another tiny tiny pet peeve I had was that the paragraphs ran long, so if I got sidetracked with another task--laundry--it made it hard to find my spot again or come to a quick pause and remember where I was. But that wasn't a major issue that bothered me, so no bigs!
One of my fave characters was pretty surprising to me, Oberon--he was Atticus's wolfhound/pet. Yet he and Atticus had a connection via mental link and were able to talk to one another, and Oberon is one funny canine! He's got the mind of a dog/canine and sees the simple pleasures in life. So he was quite enjoyable.
The storyline basically goes that Atticus has to protect Fragarch, the sword he owns that is a pretty powerful weapon. Enemies want it and will do anything to get it. It was hard keeping everyone on track, what I mean is that there a lot of characters to meet and it was hard to determine who was an enemy and who was a friend. More than one took me by surprise!
The ending wrapped up the story nicely, and it actually has a rather comical ending in the very last scene. There are few tiny loose-ends that will turn into plot threads for the next book likely which I will likely get to soon, but have other new releases that I want to read first!
Overall rating 3.5/5 stars
