Kevin Hearne has become a force in the genre since he launched his career with The Iron Druid Saga, adding two more series to his resume in that time. Well, with Ink & Sigil, another series is added to that impressive oeuvre. Set in the same world of deities and world mythologies of The Iron Druid Saga, Ink & Sigil focuses on an older, mustachioed gentleman by the name of Aloysius (Al) MacBaharrais who is one of a select group of people who are essentially deputies charged with keeping rogue gods and deities in check though the use of magical Sigils.
New York Times bestselling author Kevin Hearne returns to the world of his beloved Iron Druid Chronicles in a spin-off series about an eccentric master of rare magic solving an uncanny mystery in Scotland.
Al MacBharrais is both blessed and cursed. He is blessed with an extraordinary white moustache, an appreciation for craft cocktails—and a most unique magical talent. He can cast spells with enchanted ink and he uses his gifts to protect our world from rogue minions of various pantheons, especially the Fae.
But he is also cursed. Anyone who hears his voice will begin to feel an inexplicable hatred for Al, so he can only communicate through the written word or speech apps. And his apprentices keep dying in peculiar freak accidents. As his personal life crumbles around him, he devotes his life to his work, all the while trying to crack the secret of his curse.
But when his latest apprentice, Gordie, turns up dead in his Glasgow flat, Al discovers evidence that Gordie was living a secret life of crime. Now Al is forced to play detective—while avoiding actual detectives who are wondering why death seems to always follow Al. Investigating his apprentice’s death will take him through Scotland’s magical underworld, and he’ll need the help of a mischievous hobgoblin if he’s to survive.
OK, one thing to get out of the way…Ink & Sigil is a great entry into Kevin Hearne’s fiction. Although it is set in the same world as The Iron Druid Chronicles, aside from a mention of the main character and his hound, zero foreknowledge of those books is required for readers to being reading about Al’s story.
When one Al’s latest apprentice is killed (and the seventh apprentice he’s taken under his wing), events are set in motion. For starters, his apprentice had a goblin trapped, which Al eventually hires to be his assistant. Hearne, always ready with a pun, gives the goblin the name of Buck Foi. Oh, and by the way, Al has a more obvious curse – the longer people hear his voice and talk with him, the greater their disdain for him will grow. Including his own flesh and blood, so Al employs a text-to-voice app to communicate.
As Al begins to investigate his protégé’s murder, he learns of a human trafficking ring and realizes his curse is double what he thought. His patron saint Brighid, who enlisted him to use his Sigils to vanquish rogue dieties, is able to help Al learn that the longer people are close to him, specifically apprentices, the greater the chance that they’ll meet a dire fate. Complication upon complication, as it were.
I’ve read just about all of Kevin Hearne’s fiction so take that for what it is worth to you….but I found Ink & Sigil to be immensely enjoyable. Hearne does a lot of things in a relatively small amount of story (just about 300 pages). First and foremost, he tells a damned entertaining story; he is a natural storyteller. He also injects some really potent themes into the story. Human trafficking? Holy crap is that a nightmarish, real-world horror. The subject is treated with the gravity it deserves.
The novel is told through the first person narration of Al (thankfully, Kevin did not employ the Scottish accent in Al’s inner dialogue with us). Much of any story told in first person relies on the character, and Kevin Hearne has given us a wonderful, extremely likeable protagonist for this book and series. In some ways, Al himself is at a handicap, he’s at a disadvantage when it comes to communicating and he suffers from bouts of depression since his wife passed away (not a spoiler, this happened before the events of the novel). Another element that sets Al apart from your typical fantasy protagonist is that he is a senior citizen, in his 60s. Granted, Hearne’s most popular protagonist, Atticus the Druid is centuries old, but Al is a normal human. All these elements combined make Al one of the more unique protagonists in the genre.
Much of the novel takes place in Scotland, and along the way, Al samples various foods and drink (particularly Gin, his friends sample some local craft beer I’m dying to try now called Drink Beer Hail Satan out of Nottingham England), lending an extremely immersive feel to the story. Kevin notes in an afterword that he traveled to Scotland and his love for his time in that great nation shines through. I want to visit that land even more than I did before opening this novel!
Ink & Sigil delivered above and beyond what I expected – I’ve come to expect superb storytelling from Kevin Hearne. This book delivered that in spades and then some. I wasn’t expecting such a weighty subject like human trafficking to be a major plot point, but here we are. As I said, Hearne gave the subject the weight it deserved.
Great for long-time fans of Kevin Hearne and his Iron Druid Chronicles, and a perfect entry point for Kevin Hearne’s fiction, Ink & Sigil was a great novel and a perfect example of how to launch a new series. This is sure to be one of my favorites of 2020.
Highly recommended.
© 2020 Rob H. Bedford
Book One of Ink & Sigil
Excerpt | Published by Del Rey Books | August 2020
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
