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Literature: Iron Druid Chronicles

"Woah. He had ghouls on speed dial. My lawyer kicks so much ass.''

An urban fantasy series by Kevin Hearne. Atticus O'Sullivan, a 21-century old Druid living in Tempe, Arizona just likes to peddle fake magic items to hippies. Unfortunately, his peaceful life keeps getting interrupted. Then he gets out his Absurdly Sharp Blade and his iron necklace and proceeds to take names, often with the assistance of his lawyers, a firm made up of a pack of werewolves and a vampire.

The main series is:
  • Hounded (2011)
  • Hexed (2011)
  • Hammered (2011)
  • Tricked (2012)
  • Trapped (2012)
  • Hunted (to be released June 2013)
  • Shattered (TBA 2013)
  • TBA
  • TBA

Additionally, there are several other stories available:
  • Two Ravens and One Crow: A novella set between the events of Tricked and Trapped. It is only available on the Kindle.
  • A Test of Mettle: A short story, found here, that takes place during the events of Hammered.
  • Clan Rathskeller: Another short story, also on Hearne's website that takes place about ten months before the beginning of Hounded.
  • Grimoire of the Lamb: A novella set four years before the start of Hounded.


This series provides examples of:

  • All Myths Are True: Was something believed in by someone at some time? If the answer is yes, Atticus will probably be running into them.
  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Atticus notes that the villain in Grimoire of the Lamb needs to die because he's messing around with really dark magic that could kill part of the Earth, and because he has a way of undoing Druidic bindings and because he punched Atticus.
  • Artistic License - Biology: Elephant headed Ganesha using his trunk as a straw. As Atticus observes, he's a Physical God and they are talking in a dream, so it really doesn't matter if it shouldn't be possible.
  • Artistic License - Geology: This is invoked by Atticus when Coyote asks him to magically create a gold vein under some land where Coyote wants to build a mine. Atticus protests that this would be geologically impossible and will probably result in geologists all over the world questioning all they know about geology.
  • Ass Shove: Coyote does this because it's funny.
  • Berserk Button: Atticus tells Bacchus he's "a pale imitation of a better god" just to piss him off.
  • Big Bad: Aenghus Og in the first book is really the only antagonist that fits the trope effectively.
  • Bigfoot, Sasquatch and Yeti: Atticus thinks he killed the last two Bigfoots during his time in the Everglades. He also says he was the figure in the Patterson Film because he was bored at the time.
  • Can Not Tell A Lie: Anyone caught in the effect of Fragarach, the Answerer. It forces them to speak nothing but the truth.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Atticus has the widow MacDonagh pray for Mary with a very specific image and place in mind so he can go and get her to bless some arrows.
  • Contemptible Cover: Has shades of this at times, particularly Tricked, whose cover art could probably be mistaken for a stereotypical romance novel at first glance. The fact that all the novels are paperbacks doesn't help.
  • Cool Old Guy: Manannán mac Lir lets Atticus keep Fragarach because it pisses off Aenghus Og and helped Atticus get to North America long before that schmuck Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
  • Cool Old Lady: The widow MacDonagh is a good example. Atticus sits and drinks with her fairly often.
  • Crazy-Prepared: Atticus has had twenty centuries to improve his magic and craft powerful defenses against his enemies. He resides in Tempe, Arizona specifically because it is the place in North America where a Tuatha Dé Danann would be at his/her weakest and thus least likely to look for him.
  • Cultured Badass: Leif Helgarson, vampire, attorney at law, a match for Atticus in a Shakespearean quote duel, wears a tailored suit like he was born in it, and tear you, witches, or other vampires limb from blood-pumping limb.
    • Atticus is no slouch either, being an Omniglot scholar with a habit of killing whichever supernatural that decides to pick a fight with him.
  • Day Walking Vampire: Theophilus is said to be so old he can not only stay awake during the day but even walk around outside if the weather is sufficiently overcast. For reference, Leif, who is only slightly younger than Atticus and has the power to match a Physical God, has great difficulty remaining awake after sunrise.
  • Deity of Human Origin: The Tuatha Dé Danann are basically just super druids.
  • Druid: Obviously.
  • Domino Revelation: Magic animals, witches, gods & goddesses, werewolves, vampires, ghouls, demons, angels, and so more!
  • Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: The Morrigan. Death goddess natch.
  • Elemental Embodiment: Atticus, as a druid, is friendly with several of these. He's friends with an iron elemental who is particularly useful to him whenever he goes up against the Fae.
  • The Fair Folk: They're the children of the Tuatha Dé Danann. They're frequently mentioned, but rarely have any significant presence.
  • Faking the Dead: Atticus does this at the beginning of Tricked, so as to disappear from the backlash of previous hijinks.
  • Fallen Angel: They're the first and strongest demons from the Christian end of things.
  • Fiery Redhead: Brighid. Emphasis on fiery. She's a fire goddess after all.
  • First-Person Smartass: Atticus.
  • From Bad to Worse: And how! The bad: He agreed to transport an expedition to Asgard to avenge millennia of jerkassery by Thor. Standing in his way? Only most of the Norse gods. The worse: Having succeeded in killing not only Thor but the Norns, Heimdall and Freyr, he's chased down by Thor's brothers and a bunch of other thunder gods. The shit that hits the fan: With the Norns dead, their prophecies are null, meaning Ragnarok can start early. With Thor dead there's no one to fight Jormungandr. With Heimdall dead there's no one to fight Loki. Who it just so happens has broken free and is bat-shit insane.
  • Gaia's Vengeance: In the direct sense, Atticus calling on Sonora as Gaia's champion when he's attacking by a demon at his house. Less directly, this is one of the primary schticks of Druids, but since Atticus was the only one for something in the area of two thousand years, he can't take a very active role in the whole avenging business.
  • Genre Savvy: Atticus survived twenty-one centuries by being very savvy about the events around him and gathering any information he can about his enemies and allies. This allows him to create powerful defenses and know when it is time to move to a new location.
  • Gods Need Prayer Badly: Well, not really prayer. The mere fact of knowing and thinking about them is sufficient, but active worship is needed for them to manifest, and how they do so depends on how those praying view them. Jesus notably dislikes manifesting because he always ends up looking pretty horrifying.
    • This can also cause multiple versions of the same god. There's several Coyotes running around Arizona.
  • The Grim Reaper: Shows up on his pale horse and everything in the first book. He's a decidedly creepy person.
  • Half the Man He Used to Be: Challenging a death goddess to a sword fight turns out to be one of Vidar's less intelligent decisions in Tricked.
  • Home Field Advantage: Druids are very Genre Savvy about this. Atticus has some very powerful enemies looking for him so he spent at least a century setting up his defenses. He befriended all the local nature spirits, allied himself with the local vampire lord and the local werewolf pack and put multiple layers of magical and mundane protections on his home and workplace. His ultimate home field advantage comes from an arrangement he has with Morrigan, one of his pantheon's Death Gods. As long as any battle he is in takes place under the jurisdiction of that god, Atticus cannot die in it. Unfortunately Aunghus Og was just as Genre Savvy and went to extraordinary lengths to nullify all those advantages including making sure that the final battle happened where Morrigan has no jurisdiction and could not (officially) interfere.
  • Hot Witch: Nearly every witch in the series. Most of them are actually extremely old and ugly, but are magically altering their appearance.
  • Hurricane of Puns: Atticus really likes puns, so he uses them for names for various tea blends. There's Virus Immuni-tea, Humili-tea, Mobili-tea and Immortali-tea among others.
  • Immortality: The various mythological figures cover almost every subtrope of immortality.
  • Immortality Begins at Twenty: Played straight with Atticus, but subverted with witches. They use magic to hide their real age.
  • Immortality Inducer: Atticus stays young thanks to drinking Immortali-tea.
  • It's Personal: Atticus didn't take well to Hel, the Norse goddess of the dead confronting him wearing the skin of the widow Macdonagh.
    • Before that, Aenghus Og first kidnapping Oberon and Hal, then drawing power from the Earth to open a portal to Hell, which killed the surrounding land for about twenty square miles. Both HUGE no-nos in Druidic law, and a personal blow for anyone intimately connected to the Earth (as all Druids are).
    • Similarly, Oberon being injured during the fight with Zdenik is what turned Atticus completely against Leif, since the latter had orchestrated the whole thing.
  • Jerkass Gods: A few. Thor and Aenghus Og stand out in particular. Lampshaded in the "Clan Rathskeller" short story, though in that case it was actually a subversion.
    Atticus: Gods can screw anything and anybody. For reference, see history.
  • Jerk Jock: Thor pretty much personifies this. He is a bully who will do as he pleases and only seems to obey Odin. He likes to play cruel practical jokes and sees nothing wrong with killing humans and supernatural beings for petty reasons.
  • Kansas City Shuffle: Coyote is working on pulling this off in Tricked, after a fashion. He's actually being totally up front about wanting to help the Diné, but notes that no one will believe that he's being altruistic, so the greatest trick of all is that he isn't tricking them when they think he is.
  • Knight Templar: The Hammers of God, a multi-religious military organization that targets Atticus because he was present when Aenghus Og opened a portal to Hell.
  • Last of His Kind: Atticus is the last of the ancient Celtic druids. Only the Tuatha Dé Danann still follow the ancient traditions and they're gods. Atticus can train new druids but the training takes years and over the centuries none of his apprentices lived to complete the final rituals.
  • The Legions of Hell: Recurring bad guys and frequently show up in large numbers.
  • Loophole Abuse: A druid's offensive magic is based on this. Druids cannot directly harm a living being using their magic or the magic will kill the druid on the spot. However, the rules of druid magic do not prohibit indirect harm. So while you cannot just stop an enemy's heart with magic, you can have a hole appear under him to trap his legs so you can cut his head off with a sword.
    • Atticus' discovery of a loophole in the interaction of magic and iron resulted in his creation of a powerful amulet that lets him resist many types of magic. This makes him way more powerful that a normal druid and able to fight gods.
  • Magic A Is Magic A: Atticus' magic has very specific rules lined out, but most of the magic seen follows specific rules even if they aren't explicitly stated.
    • Witches can do some crazy things, but other witches know what they're capable of and how they do it.
    • Magical artifacts seem to follow extremely specific rules.
    • Averted by Jesus who's strong enough to do whatever the hell he wants how he wants with his miracles.
    • A big part of why Atticus is so powerful is because he experiments with the rules of druid magic and was able to find solutions to problems that seemed impossible to the much older and powerful Tuatha Dé Danann
  • Magic Music: Väinämöinen is capable of it when he shows up in the third book. Also, Frank's Blessing Way in the fourth book.
  • Master of Your Domain: Atticus has gotten very good at this over the years. Morrigan teaches him a useful related technique in the third book.
  • Mother Nature: The elemental spirit of the entire earth. Atticus communes with her every decade or so. Takes a few weeks because her concept of time is severely disproportionate to his (fondly reminisces about the time of the dinosaurs like it was just last week)
  • National Stereotypes: The widow MacDonagh is terrified when she sees Atticus kill a man but becomes quite accepting when Atticus tells her the man was British. She is old school Irish about such things.
  • Nature Spirit: The elementals that Atticus can talk to. They range from a local iron spirit to the Sonoran Desert.
  • Nested Story: In the third book, the participants in the raid on the Norse plane tell their stories about why they hate Thor and want him to die.
  • Noodle Implements: Atticus never explains how he intends to use granny panties and a bag of marshmallows to punish Coyote for his duplicity.
  • No Pronunciation Guide: Mercifully averted, as the series makes heavy use of Irish (and later, Old Norse) words and names which are not pronounced anything like they look to English-speakers. (For instance, Atticus's original name is Siodhachan O'Suileabhain, pronounced roughly "Sheehan O'Sullivan.")
  • The Older Immortal:
    • Pretty much every significant character has an extended lifespan. Some try to use this as a gauge for threat level (Atticus is probably X hundred years old, but I'm surely older, and therefore stronger!)
    • In the Thor Revenge Squad, Gunnar is the youngest, being around three hundred years, while Atticus' 2100ish is the highest confirmed age with Leif being slightly younger. Zhang Guo Lao's age is never specified, but he should be over 4000 years and Vainamoinen (Finish culture hero) and Perun (Russian god) are probably older.
  • Omniscient Council Of Vagueness: Ganesha's group, a collection of gods from various pantheons. Ganesha is the only identified member.
  • Our Demons Are Different: They're basically the standard medieval Christian demons, but they smell really, really bad.
  • Pals With Jesus: In the third book, Atticus has lunch and a drinks with Jesus. They briefly reminisce about moving the treasure of the Templars and planting false clues.
  • Percussive Prevention: The Morrigan is not shy about using violence to remind Atticus not to do anything stupid. Not that it helps much but...
  • Physical God: All of them.
  • The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Malina and her coven are on the payroll of several companies as consultants. They mention that they don't actually do anything (just like real consultants), but get paid very well for what they don't do. Justified since they're using magic to convince people to give them free stuff.
  • Police Are Useless: The police quickly zero in on Atticus as the suspect in the death of a park ranger but are in fact manipulated by his enemies. However, on their own they still prove to be a constant problem to Atticus who has to use his lawyers and various illusions to get them to back down. In the second book it is played straight because the police simply are not trained to handle rampaging supernatural beings that are immune to bullets.
  • Post Modern Magik: Ghouls with refrigerated trucks, car chases with chariot riding gods, werewolf attorneys, and handgun wielding Nazi witches.
  • Psychopomp: Several show up, but the main one is the Morrigan who made a deal with Atticus that she will never choose him and take his soul beyond.
    • It's important to note that he only has protection from her and not other psychopomps. She's the default person to bring him to his afterlife, but it won't stop any other death god from taking him if he dies in a situation that falls under their purview.
  • Respawning Enemies: Coyote threatens to gather up all the other Coyotes and become this for Atticus if he doesn't do what he wants.
  • Shout Out: Numerous. Atticus is One of Us.
  • Snarky Nonhuman Sidekick: Atticus' dog Oberon generally makes humorous remarks to him psychically; frequently while he's talking to someone who can't communicate with animals.
  • Squee: We are treated to a somewhat extended discussion of this in Hexed when Atticus finds out that Leif is famous in the Vampire community. Atticus asks Leif if other vampires squee when they see him, and confesses that he has squeed over meeting "Neil Fucking Gaiman".
  • Super Speed: The Skinwalkers
  • Take That: "Now go and stake some vampires. Especially the sparkly emo ones."
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill: Druid magic cannot be used to kill or harm directly. It is okay to give yourself super-strength and do it with a sword.
  • Time Dissonance: The spirit of the Earth fondly reminisces about the time of the dinosaurs as if it were just last week.
  • Too Stupid To Live: Vidar, big time. Challenged the Morrigan, a goddess who can choose who dies in battle, to a sword fight. You can imagine how well that went.
  • Trickster Archetype: Coyote plays shows up frequently and Loki is mentioned, and will be the primary antagonist for the next book.
  • Trickster Mentor: Atticus' old Archdruid was prone to smacking him with his staff when he wasn't paying attention or concealed something from him, and is mentioned to have thrown a pissed off rooster at Atticus. Nevertheless his tutelage allowed Atticus to survive for the last two thousand years, and it's implied that he himself may still be alive as well, as Atticus mentions never having seen him in Tir na Nog.
  • The Unseen: Thor until Hammered.
  • Valkyries: They show up in the third book. Morrigan is apparently friends with some of them.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: Many characters can shapeshift.
    • All Druids have a different set of animals they can turn into: A hoofed animal for speed, a clawed predator for fighting, a bird to fly around as and an aquatic animal for swimming.
      • Atticus can assume the form of a stag, a hound, an owl or an otter at will.
      • Granuaille can turn into a horse, a panther, a hawk and a sea lion.
      • The Morrigan turns into a "battlecrow".
      • Manannán mac Lir can turn into a killer whale or a great shearwater.
      • Aenghus Og is mentioned to be able to turn into a swan.
    • Werewolves are werewolves.
    • Coyote is Coyote.
    • Skinwalkers can change into different animals as long as they wear cloaks woven from that animal's skin. They take on the abilities of that animal, which is the main reason that Coyote doesn't want to risk dealing with them himself.
  • Weird Beard: The Hammers of God use magic to turn their beards into Combat Tentacles.
  • Weirdness Censor: Attitus is very careful not too attract to much attention to himself so people are more likely to dismiss anything strange going on around him. It is a constant source of frustration that his neighbours are too inquisitive.
    • Leif, a thousand year old vampire, is very confident that people will dismiss the events at the stadium as just gang warfare. Considering that Leif killed over sixty rival vampires during one night and left all of their bodies for the police to find, Atticus is not so sure but does not have time to worry about it too much.
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: Druids like Atticus or the Tuatha Dé Danann can handle immortality fairly well due to their training and bond with nature. When Atticus tried to share his immortality potion with some of his children, after a few lifetimes they started going insane.
  • You Are a Credit to Your Race: The widow MacDonagh, otherwise unlikely to give a British person the time of day in a clock shop (to put it mildly), considers William Shakespeare to be quite brilliant, being quite possibly "the only Brit worth the milk he sucked out of his mother's tit."
  • You Kill It, You Bought It: Atticus killing Thor leads Odin to demand he take on Thor's role in Ragnarok, or at least find a suitable replacement.
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alternative title(s): Iron Druid Chronicles
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