This story is placed within the same world as the Iron Druid Chronicles, but those characters are not central to this story.  This series is about an almost-normal human Scotsman and his hobgoblin…

Al MacBharrais has a singular magical ability - he can cast 'spells' using enchanted ink; he's called a Sigil Agent.  So it's not the sort of power that can go head-to-head with real evil-doers; his skills are more appreciated for their subtlety.  He keeps order between the Fae world and humankind.  But he has two major problems: he is under some unknown curse whereby people who hear his voice for an extended period of time will conceive a deep and uncontrollable hatred of him, losing him his only family. And the other is that he is unable to keep and train an apprentice; they keep dying in freak accidents.  During his investigation into the curse that kills his apprentices, he acquired a hobgoblin who wishes to be known as Buck Foi…as Al made it clear that any other transposition just wouldn't work in human society. Makes me snigger every time I think of it.

Al really wants some downtime to focus on discovering the source of his twin curses; but many things distract him.  Such as: an Irish Death Goddess who wishes to experience real love and even, gasp, online dating.  Buck is determined to pull off the ultimate heist which will make him a celebrated hob; and Nadia, Al's office manager who is a lot more than that, has fixated on manifesting a superior god. All of this is almost more than Al can manage.  The Irish Death Goddess still has her deadly powers which tend to explode whenever she encounters a typical arsehole.  Al worries over what kind of heist will satisfy Buck; and he really worries about Nadia creating a new god - even if this new god celebrates cheese and whisky and only consumes violent people.

Each of these threads wend around each other with Al trying to keep all the balls in the air.  And the big fun in this story is watching Hearne maneuver them into affecting each other.  On top of all these problems is a very persistent and annoying detective who is trying to link Al and the strange little man who has been sighted at more than one heist location.  Oh, almost forgot…Al has an unrequited longing to connect with his favorite librarian but feels constricted because of his curses.  Since this is the last in the trilogy (I think), we really do need closure on all these threads.

I observed in the last review that this story, while in the Iron Druid universe, is really druid-light.  They do, to this reader's satisfaction, make an appearance but it's really about the function of sigil agents.  We learn a great deal more about why and how they work; which was fascinating.  But, you know what?  I think the trilogy - and especially this last book - is really about love.  I don't recall reading anything else that speaks so strongly about love without abusing the word or the notion.  Awesome resolutions aside, mostly what I felt after I turned the last page was contentment and warmth.  Really, a very nice way to end a story; there should be more like this.   ~~ Catherine Book

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