A Sacred Grove (Chronicles of an Urban Druid, #2) by Auburn Tempest.
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ out of 5 stars.
Ye screw with this lass, ye get put on yer ass.
My outlook on life isn’t complicated—any day that passes when nobody tries to kill me or someone I love gets put into the ‘good day’ column. Simple, right?
Lately, good days have been hard to come by.
Since I totally ignored Da’s warning three months ago and flew to Ireland to embrace our super-secret heritage, I’ve seen the world in a different light—a mythical and magical light.
I am a Druid.
And even though Da and my brothers are all cops, I seemed destined to put out fires. Seriously, the scramble to survive never ends. From quests heaped on me from ancient ancestors, to trampy witches, to misogynistic hobgoblins, I’m pretty much screwed from the get-go. Oh, and don’t forget Barghest. Yeah, those druid Black Dog wannabes are still around and more determined than ever to see us eliminated.
Someone should tell them the best way to make sure I do something is to tell me I can’t.
Yeah-no, like Han Solo said… “Never tell me the odds.”
Look out, druid world Fiona is back and she’s fired up.
This is a good continuation from the first book in the series. Now the entire MacCumhaill family is in on the druid business and ventures off to Ireland. Of course they stumble over their fair share of unexpected adventure and despicable creatures along the way.
I really like this family. We have a strong female main protagonist backed up by a loving and tightly bound together family of equally strong and competent men.
I cannot believe that someone put in their review that the book was lacking a “female character with depth” and that Fiona was not “enough by herself to overcome the undercurrent of patriarchy running through the book.” That is nothing but a load of woke bullshit and is a, as usual with woke rants, very far from the truth.
If anything, it is rather the inverse. Fiona is a very strong woman, without the psychotic rants and whining hat some authors seems to feel compelled to write into the stories. Her brothers are, apart from being strong and competent, also loving and highly respectful (and protective) of women. Especially their sister of course.
Fiona as well as the rest of her family goes through quite a bit of development. Especially when it comes to her druid powers. I really like the dialogue, the rants and of course the action.
There’s a nice balance between dialogue, investigation, discovery and action. The latter usually involving various magical creatures. Bruin, her battle bear, is a really cool addition to the menagerie.
I also like that the personal growth of Fiona doesn’t involve some overly detailed detour into the land of urban sex.
During the course of the book Fiona and her family gains a few new friends, quite a few actually and not all of them are of the entirely human variety. Not only that but… well that would be a spoiler but the title of the book is well chosen.
PG's Ramblings 