Druid Dynamics

I've written before about The Dresden Files series; I was slowly enjoying them until I hit the skids a bit on book three and decided to take a break before continuing. During that break, my plan was to cycle through a few different kinds of books to sort of "reset" my brain before book four. But in that process, I found another book that struck me as being very much like a Dresden Files book.

Hounded is the first book of The Iron Druid Chronicles, a long-running series by author Kevin Hearne. It's centered on Atticus O'Sullivan, a Druid who has survived for thousands of years and is now settled down in modern-day Arizona. The first book has an ancient nemesis finally tracking him down for a confrontation Atticus seems likely to lose.

I don't necessarily believe that Kevin Hearne sat down to deliberately create his own Dresden Files. Nor do I think that Hounded is a one-for-one re-rendering of Jim Butcher's universe. But there are a lot of superficial and not-entirely-superficial similarities here. The main character is a magic-wielding human making his way in a world populated with every kind of "thing that goes bump in the night" you can imagine. The story sets up fairly rigid rules for its supernatural critters, building a universe meant to last for many books.

Where Dresden has a "possessed skull" for a confidant/partner, Atticus has his loyal dog Oberon, to whom he can speak through the use of magic. Where Dresden has an ally in the Chicago police, Atticus has high-priced lawyers to get him out of trouble. Both Atticus and Dresden are, for lack of a better world, horny; a great deal of the prose is straight male fantasy, and particularly noticeable as both authors chose a first-person narrative for their series.

For reasons I'm not entirely sure I can put my finger on, I felt a little more drawn in by Hounded. It's entirely possible that I simply haven't "pushed through" to the better Dresden books yet (which, I hear commonly, come a little later in that series). Or maybe it's that Hounded doesn't have the same pervasive tinge of film noir style that Dresden has. But in any case, I'm sort of feeling like Dresden and Iron Druid are not books to be read in alternation.

I'd say Hounded is a B+, a solid enough start for a long-running series -- and perhaps my slight preference between the two. Not that it has to be a competition, though; I would wager that any fan of Jim Butcher would like Kevin Hearne, and vice versa.