Hexed by Kevin Hearne

Review by Alexius White

What happens when you kill a god? Easy, all the other gods want you to kill their enemies (or Thor). This is one of the things Atticus O’Sullivan finds out in Hexed, by Kevin Hearne. Hexed is the second novel in the Iron Druid Chronicles. The first novel in the chronicles is Hounded, and the third is Hammered. I have already read Hammered. I loved it and gave it five stars.

Hexed picks up about three to four weeks after Hounded ends. At the end of Hounded, Atticus, the last of the druids, has killed Angus Oag, a Celtic god. The area around Tony Cabin is destroyed. Gunner, a lawyer and leader of theTempe,Arizona pack of werewolves, will not allow his pack members to go on any more adventures with Atticus. Due to the fact, on the last adventure members of Gunner’s pack were killed helping Atticus.

Hexed, like the other novels takes place in Tempe, Arizona and is told thru the eyes of Atticus. Hexed covers about four to five days at the start of November. The novel actually opens the night of November 1^st.  The novel also brings into play several characters the readers have seen before like Malina Sokolowski. She is the leader of the Sisters of the Three Auroras Coven of witches. A few members of her coven were also killed at Tony Cabin. Another character is Laksha Kulasekaran. She is an Indian witch who has the power to possess the bodies of others. She can push their conscience out of their body and kill them. (It sounds much cooler when you read it.) Another character is Rabbi Yosef, and his beard. By beard I do mean the one on his face. (Again you have to read it.)

The main thing I like about the novel is all the different fight scenes. I love a good vs evil smack down. Hexed has several of them. One of the fight scenes involves Atticus, Coyote (the Native American trickster god) and a fallen angel. The fallen angel was one of the several nasty beings release from hell in the last novel. Now, the fallen angel is terrorizing a high school and eating people. At first, Atticus wanted to wait a while before going after the fallen angel. He wanted to come up with a good plan for how to deal with the angel. However, Coyote saw things very different. Coyote explained to Atticus that he, Atticus, would have a bigger problem on his hands then a fallen angel if he didn’t kill it the next day. Another of the fight scenes involved a fire hell whip pulled out of thin air by Malina. No, the whip was not to kill Atticus, but for a ram demon that had just escaped from hell.

On the same coin, one of the things I didn’t like about the novel is that Atticus doesn’t get any rest time between smack downs. He goes from one battle to another battle to another. He has no real time to recharge or rest. When he does rest, it is short lived, and it doesn’t take long before something else comes along to deplete his energy. This was a little hard for me to grasp.

The main downside, for me about the novel, is the feeling that Hexed is a prequel. I don’t mean a prequel to say it is the book before the third novel. I mean that Hexed could never be a standalone novel because the reader will feel like he/she missed something or should follow it up with something. I got the feeling that a lot of the deals and events that take place in Hexed are just there to set up the third novel, Hammered. At first, I thought I felt like this just because I had already read Hammered. Then I read a few reviews by other reviewers who had read the first novel but not the third. A great number of them said the same thing.

Overall, I really liked Hexed. I have already reread it twice and will be recommending it on my goodreads pages. I give it 3 stars.