Ink & Sigil: From the world of The Iron Druid Chronicles, by Kevin Hearne (Del Rey)
A delightful, stand-alone book and introduction to a whimsically wonderful system of magic, complete with supernatural beings and Glaswegian (that’s Glasgow-ian) accent. Not to mention its pervasive sense of raunchy humor. Before getting started, the author provides an introduction with pronunciation and dialect guide. I found the language hilarious, never mind the characters and plot, because when I moved to this (remote, forested) area, there was a pub a few miles out of town. The White Cockade (check your history for the meaning) was owned and bartended by a Glasgow émigré with an accent roughly equivalent to talking around bits of glass. The only way to understand him was to turn off the front part of your brain and let the words seep in through the back of your skull. Several minutes later, all would be made clear. Which resulted in interesting timing of conversation. Nice guy, though. Great cook of pub food.
So here I am in a first-person Glaswegian dialect narration, whooping with laughter and in general enjoying the story immensely. That’s pretty much all you need to know, other than there’s a reason why the Sigil Master’s apprentices keep dying of such causes as eating scones with raisins. To make matters worse, the above-mentioned Sigil Master has been cursed in such a way that if he speaks directly to a person long enough, they are seized by a sudden and violent hatred of him, no matter how loving or trusting their previous relationship was. Although Ink and Sigil swept through a page-turning climax to a most satisfying ending, I hope to see more of its characters.
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