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 procceeds to take names, often with the assistance of his lawyers, a firm made up of a pack of werewolves and a vampire.

• Hounded (2011)
• Hexed (2011)
• Hammered (2011)
• Tricked (2012)

Tropes used in Iron Druid Chronicles include:

• 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.
• 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 their know about geology.
• Ass Shove: Coyote does this because it's funny.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Deity of Human Origin: The Tuatha Dé Danann are basically just super druids.
• Druid - obviously.
• Elemental Embodiment: Atticus, as a druid, is friendly with several of these. His pet iron elemental 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 only show up very briefly at the beginning of the first book.
• 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.
• First-Person Smartass: Atticus.
• 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: Most gods and mythological figures derive their strength from how many people believe in them.
  • This affects how the gods manifest. 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 and an American Thor who's based on the comic.
  • Averted by the Tuatha Dé Danann, who are just extremely powerful humans.
• The Grim Reaper: Shows up on his pale horse and everything in the first book. He's a decidedly creepy person.
• Immortality: The various mythological figures cover almost every type of immortality.
• Hot Witch: Every witch in the series. Most of them are actually extremely old and ugly, but are magically altering their appearance.
• Immortality Begins At Twenty: Played straight with Atticus, but subverted with witches. They use magic to hide their real age.
  • Atticus could probably be any age he wants but prefers being in his twenties
• 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.
• 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 consider themselves 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 seem Beyond the 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.
• 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 has tea with her every decade or so.
• 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 Brittish. 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.
• 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.
• Physical God: All of them.
• 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.
• 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 they want to.
• Respawning Enemies: Coyote threatens to gather up all the other Coyotes and become this for Atticus if he doesn't do what he wants.
• Snarky Non-Human Sidekick: Atticus' dog Oberon generally makes humorous remarks to him psychically; frequently while he's talking to someone who can't communicate with animals.
• 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.
• Trickster Archetype: Coyote plays shows up frequently and Loki is mentioned.
• Valkyries: They show up in the third book. Morrigan is apparently friends with some of them.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Many characters can shapeshift.
  • Atticus can assume the form of a hound, a stag, an otter, or an owl at will.
  • Werewolves are werewolves.
  • The Morrigan turns into a "battlecrow".
  • Coyote is Coyote.
• 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.