Who doesn't love a book about a redhead chap with Irish heritage? Although Atticus is actually Irish, not like me with just family. Actually, he's more Irish than basically anyone has ever, ever been; two-thousand-year-old Druid and all that. What's interesting about this is that Atticus is convincingly quite a bit more powerful than most book heroes, but manages it well. There's no chapters of build-up for how he finally manages to overcome his doubts and pull off a complex magic thing to stop the bad guy; he can just march in and kick everyone's arse if he wants, because he's actually got the skills (and the nous to use them in some clever ways, I admit). Makes for a different sort of story than most. 

Atticus is pretty funny, I must admit. Still shruggingly pulling off feats between paragraphs that would be the climax of most other books, and he doesn't get too angsty about it either. It's a bit hard to see how the Druids got wiped out if they were all this nails, but a lot of what makes O'Sullivan as undefeatable as he is is having spent two millennia binding iron to his aura and crafting charms and so on, which others didn't and don't have.

Atticus actually changes things. Most urban fantasy stories stick semi-closely to the... "canon", I suppose you'd call it, the world of gods and monsters that mythology contains, and then make up their own bits. (This series is another example of All Myths Are True, of course.) But in this, Atticus kills a bunch of famous entities who aren't just made up for this book. This made me go: huh, this is new. Atticus's myth world doesn't look like ours does, now. This is an interesting new idea that I've hardly seen anyone do before.

Atticus vs the skinwalkers. These are different from the naagloshii in the Dresden Files. And Coyote is a total dick. Also I think I have actually successfully started reading Siodhachan as shee-ya-han as I'm supposed to, finally.

Granuaile takes on her first big task on her own and... fails. Not through any fault of hers, mind. Meanwhile, Atticus is busy being bossed around by the Secret Cabal (now revealed!) and his old archdruid, who is convincingly a pain in the arse but actually not a bad old git, in a rough-and-tumble sort of way. Also also, more secret agendas. Weirdly, I was convinced entirely by the Morrigan being dead and yet managing to still pass on the occasional message from the other side, but totally not convinced by that also being the case for another character who got killed a few books back (excuse me, I'm avoiding spoilers). Not sure why these two things seem so different, but they do.