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maxtrommelen 's review for:
Hexed
by Kevin Hearne
adventurous
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I came across the series while putting together my (preliminary) selection of books to read for the bingo and was confused. I read Hounded (book 1) all the way back in 2020 and from what I recall it did cool things with mythology, especially Irish mythology, and was a somewhat shallow if fun, fast-paced urban fantasy adventure. Perfect "my brain is on vacation, give me the popcorn" reading. Then, why did it take me so long to read other books in the series?
Well it turns out: I remembered the good (or entertaining, more like) and forgot about the bad. Specifically, the rampant sexism. The male gaze in Hexed is intense. All women are described as sex objects and little else. Atticus' apprecentice is hot and he is so horny for her, he has to recite baseball facts to avoid mentally stripping her nude. In the span of two chapters (maybe only one), Atticus is sexually assaulted by a goddess (forced consent is no consent. Also this is a good thing just because) and propositioned by a second. He then humiliates and lectures this second goddess in an astounding display of Male Rationality™ that I still cannot wrap my head around. It is that bad. Even the set-up of the book is sexist, in hindsight: a group of non-evil witches need Atticus help to defeat the evil witches because they're not powerful enough and they need the Powerful Manly Man Druid to save them. At times the book felt like it was two-thirds of the way towards becoming full-blown harem erotica but that it was just too afraid to go for it.
The plot of this book is all over the place. I'm not going to dive into it much: if you've read the blurb, you know everything of that happens in the book, except for how big some breasts are. The start of the book is incredibly messy and so much time was spend on people telling Atticus to please kill Thor that I thought I accidentally started the wrong book (book 3, Hammered, is all about killing Thor). Hexed takes up more time wrapping up loose ends from Hounded and setting up Hammered than it does setting up its own plot. Shortly summarised: a group of German witches who want to settle in town to do evil stuff.
These Hexen (who are basically described as the stereotypical 'big titty goth GF') are nazis. Except, the books takes great pain to make clear that "uhm actually they weren't nazis, they just used the nazis for their own ends" and also they encouraged the nazis to invade Eastern Europe for reasons. I'm not sure why the author felt the need to associate the evil witches with the nazis only to backpedal their association so that they weren't actually involved with the Holocaust. Needless to say, this didn't improve the already shallow plot of the book.
To be fair, it didn't actually matter who the Hexen were and what their goals were, because they were only present in the last quarter or so of Hexed. Dealing with them was barely an inconvenience too. They were one-trick ponies and incapable of doing anything meaningful. In fact, none of the plot matters though because Atticus is the definition of a Gary Stu. Nothing inconveniences him, his enemies are incapable of harming him in the slightest (except for his ear which was also damaged in book 1) and, though he gathers allies at various points in the book, he generally ends up saving the day all by himself anyway.
Small pet peeve of mine: Atticus, a milennia old Irish druid, constantly conflates 'Irish' and 'Celtic' mythology/culture. They are not the same thing at all (Celts are people who speak a language belonging to the Celtic language group. 'Celtic' is not an ethnicity or even a single culture) except in modern parlance. I wouldn't normally make an issue of this except that Atticus is incredibly proud of being from Iron Age Ireland. His Irish identity is a major part of his character (insofar he has depth) but apparently he cannot be arsed to be consistent about it. 'Celtic' and 'Irish' cannot be used interchangeably when speaking about history! Then again, I wonder how much research the author did into the Celts because at some point Atticus proclaims that being entirely nude all day is the default for Celts so...
Do I recommend this? No obviously not. I guess that people looking for a male power fantasy might like this though.