Two Ravens and One Crow | Kevin Hearne

Two Ravens and One Crow (The Iron Druid Chronicles #4.5) by Kevin Hearne published 04 September 2012

Six years into the training of his beautiful apprentice, Granuaile, a large crow swoops down and transforms into none other than the Morrigan, a goddess who insists that Atticus come with her at once. He must leave his apprentice behind, along with his Irish wolfhound, Oberon—and he must also leave his sword. The Morrigan has always taken extreme pleasure in pronouncing the Druid’s mortal danger and imminent doom, so the fact that she won’t reveal the purpose of their journey makes him very nervous. Of course, any time the Celtic Chooser of the Slain drops in unannounced, it’s never good. When she does let slip that she’ll be saving his life in the near future, Atticus is left to wonder . . . will he soon be giving his legions of enemies something to crow about?

How was it? Set 6 years after Tricked, this interlude is legit, unlike Goddess at the Crossroads but kind of like The Eye of Horus, this story moves the Iron Druid Chronicles forward. It has character development and action.

Nevertheless, I groaned when it started to be about his attraction to his apprentice. He’s sharing his creepy thoughts with us, great 😒 – because they did come off as creepy to me – but at least Oberon’s commentaries made it much better. Besides, is it just me, or was it never really established that the Morrigan could hear Atticus’ thoughts? It was mentioned she could infer them by listening to Oberon’s not outright hear him.

Hearne briefly tried to sale us on a celibate Atticus, maybe in an attempt to clean up his image, to make him prince charming materiel? It gave me a good laugh. I’m not dissing the piece, in fact it’s a tightly written short story. In less than 100 pages Hearne manages to bring mystery, tension and action in an entertaining short story that also closes a story-line or two.

The action here is very visual and like most of the series might warrant an animated adaptation since the male and female nudity would hinder a live-action adaptation, at least in America.

For some reason, I always figured that Atticus stayed young, never really got to be old and gray so I loved learning more about him. Two Ravens and one Crow felt like a progression over filler, worth the time.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

You can check out or get the book here: US | EU

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