Hounded by Kevin Hearne

That's the author there holding the first book of The Iron Druid chronicles. The novel was Released in 2011 and was published by Del Ray Books.

The novel's main character is named Atticus O'Sullivan, or at least, that's the name he currently uses. One finds it best to change their name a few times when they've been running from an angry god for around two thousand years. Summed up shortly the plot is that a long long time ago Atticus wound up in possession of a magic sword. A particular god named Aenghus Óg would really prefer that the sword was with him and that Atticus was laying somewhere six feet under the surface of the earth. The book explains how Aenghus tries to get that to happen this time and how Atticus manages to (spoilers not really) not wind up dead in the process.

What matters most, and what I think is done well here, is the cast of characters. Atticus is a druid and has the proper bravado to make himself a proper lead role, but he's not foolhardy or invincible. I really liked Oberon, Atticus' dog. Yes, his dog is an important character. Through some special magicness Atticus is allowed to mentally communicate with his dog. And his dog is... well more or less what you'd expect a dog that could talk would be. He's sort of like an excitable child and it fits very well. In addition to him there is the shapeshifting goddess of death who Atticus has made a deal with for immortality, The vampire and werewolf lawyers he employs, and the sexy redhead possessed by a witch.

I read this book because it was said to be similar to Jim Butcher's Dresen Files (By the way, go read those books. Now. Seriously, get out of here and go read the Dresden files if you haven't) and I can see how people would say it's similar. It certainly is similar in some ways. The main characters are actually pretty damn similar. The description of Atticus I gave applies very much so to Harry if you replace the word "druid" with "wizard." But that being said I do like this layout for a lead character, and I'm not saying that no two characters are allowed to be similar. Nor am I accusing the author of copying Butcher.

In short, I liked it. I'll probably look into getting the next one soon to see what new bullshit Atticus and his buddies will have to deal with. So if you're into modern fantasy mixed with a liberal splash of older lore and mythology then I'm sure you could do a lot worse than this.

8.5 iron talismans out of 10