Originally read when it was released in 2016, and re-read on audio in 2021 in preparation for finally reading the last book.

Having just re-read the entire series on audiobook over the last year, it's wild to see so many of Atticus's consequences show up to bite him in the ass - but also great to see how the long term relationships he's fostered are there to keep him standing.

Also loved that this penultimate book had a solid, emotionally-satisfying, non-cliffhanger ending to prepare us and let us get our bearings before we dive into Ragnarok in the final book.

Popsugar 2021 Reading Challenge #29: A book set in multiple countries.

Okay, it's been a full month since I finished this book. I wanted to cool down a bit so I wouldn't be writing this from a place of red-hot rage, but joke's on me because thinking about this book STILL ENRAGES ME.

If you go back to my reviews for this entire series, you'll see that it's been my favorite since I picked it up in 2011, the year the first 3 novels were published. I've been here since the start. Atticus has been listed in my Goodreads profile as one of my favorite literary characters since then. I didn't touch this book when it first released because I wasn't ready to leave this world.

I should have kept it unread.

Spoilers for the entire book from here on. And a ton of cursing.

Spoiler

Atticus has always been a hugely relatable character, even with his powers. He went from a scrappy, flight-not-fight dude to one of the most powerful magical people in the world, someone who made enemies and friends of various pantheons. But, he's always been down to earth -- literally. He's bound to the earth and all the life on it, and that always made him feel so, so human compared to the gods we meet throughout the series. Atticus has always been up against huge odds, but came out on top in the end -- or at least ALIVE -- thanks to his quick thinking, paranoid planning, and friends he's made. The way every book has wriggled him out of every climax has made sense for the character he is. He's made awful choices, and has had to live with the consequences. He's human.

Granuaile over time went from a fun, spirited character to...kind of too perfect. I just couldn't relate to her and her narrative at all by the time books 7 and 8 rolled around. And Owen was a breathe of fresh air at first, but then his narrative just turned into the Blame Atticus For Everything party and it became a real boner killer.

So...what the fuck went wrong? How did this series go from a building up of Atticus's triumphs and failures to the limp across the finish line ending we got??

I truly don't have an answer for that. I'm still too angry to think critically enough to come up with it.

We've spent about half the series building up to Ragnarok. Loki has always been in the background of the last two books, Ragnarok a thundercloud rolling in on the distance. The tension of knowing it was coming and was a result of Atticus's terrible decision making as early as book 3 was so good. We were building up to this epic battle, this epic conclusion.

We got nothing.

We got Granuaile off in Taiwan, one of the sites of a Ragnarok attack. She's mostly just learning martial arts and drinking boba tea with the Monkey King for the entirety of it, Atticus's way of sidelining her to keep her safe. She beats up a bunch of super powerful minor undead gods (I think?) because she's the Best And Most Powerful Fierce Druid Ever but then leaves when she realizes the Monkey King doesn't really need her help, and Atticus sent her there just to keep her mostly out of harm's way. (Put a pin in this, we're coming back to this bullshit later.)

We got Owen on the sidelines to keep him and his apprentice druid grove safe, but he's also on clean up duty to aid Gaia wherever possible as Ragnarok disrupts the world. He goes from Europe to America to South America to help the earth where he can, and while this sounded great at first, it just became a whole lot of NOTHING. It was cool when he was fighting the rock thingies in Europe! It was...okay...when he checks out something going on in America and finds out it's just the ice giants choosing to settle on Midgard instead of fighting in Ragnarok. Oh, and they're kinda helping fix global warming in the process. No big deal. Cool. Then we have him fucking traipsing around the fucking Amazon bound to a fucking sloth and it's Oberon 2.0 but completely insufferable because NOBODY ASKED FOR BULLSHIT BUDDY COMEDY IN THE FUCKING FINALE OF A FUCKING 9 BOOK SERIES? WHY WASN'T THIS IN BOOK 8???? FUCK THAT FUCKING SLOTH. FUCK.

Sorry.

Then we have Atticus at the helm of the fight against Ragnarok. There are some really nice moments at his cabin in the calm before the storm, but I still had issues it. Why is there a new person and dog at the start of this, seemingly out of nowhere? I found out it was because they were introduced in a short story collection and added to the druid family but what??? It felt so jarring to have them written in as if they've been there all along. I don't count short stories as critical reading to a series like this, so I hadn't gotten around to [b:The Purloined Poodle|30257379|The Purloined Poodle (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8.5)|Kevin Hearne|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1464013271l/30257379._SX50_.jpg|50729274], which is where these characters came from. What on earth was that decision making?

I did get a bit misty when the suggestion was made for Orlaith's puppies be given to Owen's grove to bind them all. Driving while wailing GIVE THE PUPPIES TO THE BABY DRUIDS!!! was not pretty.

Then Atticus, who is not very optimistic about his odds of surviving Ragnarok, gets to it. Finally, it's here. FINALLY, we get to see the culmination of 7 years and 9 books, we get to see his friends and allies come together to help him. We start with Jörmungandr the giant sea serpent, whom Atticus enlists Laksha to help with. I did feel awfully sentimental when I realized that this meant Laksha was giving herself up to kill the snake. She's been around since book 1, and I'd grown incredibly fond of her and her quest for karmic balance.

So she one-shots Jörmungandr in the aether and that's that.

Cool.

We jump to...um, Sweden? I can't remember, I think it was Sweden, where the real Ragnarok battle starts. It's cool! The whole fae host is there to fight alongside the Norse armies! Badass! A whole fuckin volcano rises through the planes and starts spewing lava all over the world as Surtr rises! Hell yeah! THE FUCKIN YETI FAMILY IS HERE TO FIGHT!!! YES!! I LOVE THEM!!!!!!

So the Yeti family one-shots Surtr and half of them die and that part of the fight is done.

...cool.

There's more fighting! Fand is here, after the deal made to get her back into the fold after her attempted coup d'etat! Then she dies, and Manannán is so sad that his wife is dead that he's cut down and killed instantly too. Atticus is sad for two seconds and then the fight moves on.

...okay.

Hel shows up all half gross, half beautiful and hell yeah, it's getting epic now!

So Coyote, who reluctantly promised to help Atticus, takes out Hel and she's done.

...what.

Half of Hel's draugar wander off. Garm is pissed and finds Atticus, who does his whole shapeshifting trick again. Loki shows up now, and the draugar start to fight again.

Granuaile, who is now infuriated at Atticus for sending her to Taiwan to keep her safe, shows up and FUCKING ONE-SHOTS LOKI TO TAKE HIM OUT.

AND RAGNAROK IS OVER???!?!??????

THAT'S FUCKING IT?

But oh no, IT GETS FUCKING WORSE.

Ragnarok is over. Thor is revived and a better person now, somehow. The Norse are like, thanks for helping, but guess what dude? You promised Freya to the ice giants way back in the day, and she demands retribution. Nobody does shit, like this was all planned ahead of time. Atticus is tired and on dead ground with no powers or healing and Freya takes his fucking tattooed arm off.

What. The. Fuck.

Was Ragnarok not supposed to be the ultimate consequence of Atticus's awful decision making in [b:Hammered|9595620|Hammered (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #3)|Kevin Hearne|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1438221107l/9595620._SY75_.jpg|14482655]? Were the hundreds and thousands of deaths laid at his feet as a direct consequence of his decisions in that book not to be on his shoulders for the rest of his long life? Was it not enough that he was ready to die in Ragnarok?

They had to have this bullshit?

And then to top it all off, Granuaile just leaves him there. She's so upset with him for deciding that he knows better by keeping her safe and away from the main battle, that she just leaves him bloodied and without an arm and in the midst of everyone who blames him for Ragnarok.

Atticus is allowed to leave (after being banished...) and goes to Tasmania, just to have Granuaile show up to break up with him. Apparently, being sidelined like that was enough for her to lose her trust and faith in Atticus, and when he's down and out, arm freshly chopped off, she comes back with clothes and items from their home in Oregon and tells him not to come back.

WHAT?

WHAT WHAT WHAT?

WHAAAAAAAT THE FUCK?????

She just DECIDES that they're done and banishes him from HIS HOME, along with Oberon and that other new dog?? SO ATTICUS CAN'T GO BACK TO HIS HOME. OBERON CAN'T SEE ORLAITH OR HIS FUCKING PUPPIES.

MAKE IT MAKE SENSE.

I understand that not everything needs a fairy tale happy ending. Atticus certainly doesn't; he's too old and has made too many bad choices in this series for us to think he'd get one.

But I at least thought he'd be content. I thought he could go home to Oregon and try to work out what just happened, work on being a better druid, work on his family and his life and his service to Gaia.

Not this.

The writing wasn't great. The climactic showdown was over with little fanfare. There was too much filler and not enough forward momentum - probably because there wasn't much in the way of actual Ragnarok.

Damn. What a cheap, emotionally manipulative, incoherent ending for this series. It's a blow in the gut for me. It feels like I've been let down on every single level.

I do still recommended the series because most of it IS good. The first three novels are fantastic, and really held up when I did a full series re-read on audio. I'll just pretend that my Atticus is still the relatable dude from the first few novels and leave it at that.

*****

What the actual fuck was that??

*****

I've been putting off reading this for nearly 3 years now, but it's finally time to put on my big girl panties and finish up this series. I never want it to end, but all good things must.

This is a weird one for me because on one hand, I can totally understand the world building and the author's desire to use real world events to shape the fabric of this fantasy world and process cultural trauma.

On the other hand, the novel takes a complete left turn half way through and left me stranded on the side of the road to watch the story keep going without me.

Weird character choices were made, and it's like all the characterization and build up from the first half didn't matter anymore. Nezha and Rin are suddenly good friends after 2 pages of apologies? Rin is super committed to Altan to the point where she's following in his obviously deranged plans without question? We're supposed to believe the Cike are Rin's new found family, even though it never, ever feels like she is close to them, they're just sort of all there?

Not to mention how tough a pill it was to swallow the very last parts of the book. I can appreciate how great it is to have a main character make terrible decisions, and how Rin eventually got there. I can. But it didn't feel earned, in the end.

Originally posted at The Wandering Fangirl.

Received from NetGalley, this has no outcome on this review.

This cover looks SO COOL and makes up for the summary, which is a bit wanting. Noli Braddock is a girl with a mind of her own, and in an era of proper ladies, corsets, arranged marriages and the occasional steampunky transport, this means she’s viewed as wrong and sent to a reform school. It’s a horrible place, where an attempt is made to beat the individuality out of Noli until she’s a “proper” lady. But on mid-summer’s eve, she unknowingly makes a wish in just the right place at the just the right time, and ends up in the Otherworld, also known as the land of the fae. She’s a girl gifted with something called the Spark, and her sacrifice would keep the fae magic from collapsing in chaos and killing the entire fae civilization.

It all seems like such a cool idea, and I have to give Suzanne Lazear credit for it, but the entire thing simply falls flat in the execution.

For one, there’s barely much of a steampunk side to this novel. Noli is interested in building things, sure, and when we first meet her she illegally rides a hovercar she built out of scrap, but that’s about it when it comes to steampunk. It’s this joyride that’s the last straw on the proverbial camel’s back for the law and for her mother, who sends Noli to a reform school. This is where the novel nearly lost me entirely. I’m fine with a story doing things to move a character down a certain path, but…was all the abuse really necessary? It’s probably a personal thing, but I nearly put the book down because of it.

Second, there’s a love triangle. Yep. Mood killer. There’s Kevighn, who is the fae in charge of finding girls with the Spark for the sacrifice, and there’s Steven, who has been Noli’s best friend since they were children. The way Noli handles things here is smart, I do have to give her credit for that, but there’s so much see-sawing and waffling on what’s improper, etc etc etc.

Third — and I know this is silly but it really annoyed me — I got so sick of seeing the words “hoyden” (meaning delinquent) and “dollymop” (meaning loose woman) while I was reading. It’s like Lazear found the words out of some dictionary for the time period, and liked them so much that she used them over and over and OVER. They also seemed to be the only true period words out of the entire novel. I’m definitely not an expert in language, but nothing about the language screamed historical; everyone seemed to be speaking and thinking in a much more modern way than I’ve read in other steampunk and historical fiction novels. The only things that seemed to be right were dollymop, hoyden, and Noli being scandalized about wearing a sleeveless dress during the daytime or corsets on the outside of a dress. (You lie, book cover. You lie!)

Fourth, the ending was so rushed and seemed as though it was tacked on because the book needed closure in one or two aspects so that the rest of it could stay wide open for the second in the series. It was too neat, too simple, and the cliffhanger wasn’t much of a cliffhanger when the title of the chapter gave everything away.

I didn’t mean for this review to be entirely negative, but not one of the few things I enjoyed about the novel were strong enough to outweigh everything else. There were so many places to go and things to explore, but they all got left by the wayside for a problem that was wrapped up too easily, and for romance that had no true feeling to it.

What a delightful little read. Review to come.

This was strange in some ways, but I was thoroughly engrossed from start to finish.