I’m not sure how to start this review without giving away the big shocker at the end of the previous book so I guess SPOILER ALERT – the leader of Cadogan House was staked and turned into ash. Ethan Sullivan lunged in front of Merit, to protect her from the stake meant for her, leaving her grieving along with the rest of the vampires that he had been leader of. I was quite surprised Ms Neill went that route, killing off a major character so […]
How much wood would a druid chuck if a druid could chuck wood?
Since Staked is the 8th book in the Iron Druid Chronicles, don’t start here. High level overview of the story: Atticus O’Sullivan is a Druid who has spent the last 2,000 years laying low from the Celtic gods as well as the vampires who wiped out all the Druids for some unknown reason. By the time the reader reaches Staked, Atticus isn’t the only Druid walking the earth, and he’s also very firmly on the radar of ALL THE GODS EVERYWHERE. (This is what happens […]
“I am not all human women… you are what all women fear in this world”
In my reading habits, I do not read too much fantasy. I have never been a fan of high fantasy, those works that are set in an alternate world. I struggled with The Hobbit for years before finally managing to get through the audio book last year, for example. I do better with “low” fantasy, stories set in the recognizable world which include magical or mythological elements, which is where books like Daughter of Smoke and Bone work much better for me. The Devourers, our […]
Always re-read your books, people. You never know what you’ll find if you go digging back in there.
I first read American Gods when I was twenty-five. It was only my second Neil Gaiman book; I’d read Stardust several months earlier and completely fell in love with it, so it seemed like a no-brainer to give this one a go, since so many people were over the moon about it. What I found was not what I expected. The book is long and meandering. Its characters inhabit the grey areas of the world. They do gross things, immoral things, right alongside utterly mundane and profound things. They […]



