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    Carniepunk: The Demon Barker of Wheat Street
    Carniepunk: The Demon Barker of Wheat Street
    Carniepunk: The Demon Barker of Wheat Street
    Ebook42 pages42 minutes

    Carniepunk: The Demon Barker of Wheat Street

    By Kevin Hearne

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    About this ebook

    From the New York Times bestselling author of Hounded—“a superb urban fantasy debut” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)—comes an Iron Druid Chronicles short story in the captivating Carniepunk anthology.

    The ancient Druid Atticus O’Sullivan gets more than greasy corn dogs and flat soda when he visits a carnival in Kansas to which his apprentice, Granuaile, drags him. He runs across a barker with a strange power over the crowd: attractive women leave their men and disappear into an unmarked tent, never to be seen again, and the men wander away, forgetting that they ever had girlfriends or wives. When Granuaile falls under the barker’s influence and enters the tent, Atticus isn’t about to forget it and move on. He and his Irish wolfhound, Oberon, pursue her and discover the horrifying secret to the carnival’s success.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPocket Star
    Release dateSep 8, 2014
    ISBN9781476793504
    Author

    Kevin Hearne

    Kevin Hearne is the New York Times bestselling author of the Iron Druid Chronicles. He’s a middle-aged nerd who still enjoys his comic books and old-school heavy metal. Visit him online at KevinHearne.com.

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    Reviews for Carniepunk

    4/5

    47 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A good short story with much demonology information.
    • 3/5
      Sold as an e-book, this was a short story that first appeared in the CarniePunk anthology. It happens during the time that Atticus is training Granuaile to be a druid, at a small traveling carnival in Kansas. There are demons, imps, ghouls, a long fight scene, and mental smart-aleck talk with the dog. Great fun. Not deathless literature.
    • 4/5
      It needed more Oberon. ;)
    • 3/5
      I read this a couple of years ago. Didn't love the other stories in the collection, but this one was good -- slightly creepy, but satisfying.
    • 5/5
      First, I have to say I love the play on words with the title and Sweeney Todd. It sets the stage perfectly for this adventure of Atticus, Oberon and Granuaile at a carnival. There is something ominous about carnivals, and Hearne takes full advantage of that atmosphere to weave a story that takes place about mid-way through her training.Our trio gets lured into a “freak” tent that isn’t just ripping people off of their money, but of their lives. Atticus faces off against a Grim Reaper who is literally creating hell on Earth. The story is inessential to the series as a whole, but is highly enjoyable none-the-less. Sometimes, an exciting adventure without the high stakes faced in the novels is just what readers need between installments.

    Book preview

    Carniepunk - Kevin Hearne

    titleflower

    The Demon Barker of Wheat Street

    An Iron Druid Chronicles Short Story

    Kevin Hearne

    (This story takes place six years after Tricked, the fourth book of the Iron Druid Chronicles, and two weeks after the events of the novella Two Ravens and One Crow.)

    I fear Kansas.

    It’s not a toe-curling type of fear, where shoulders tense with an incipient cringe; it’s more of a vague apprehension, an expectation that something will go pear shaped and cause me great inconvenience. It’s like the dread you feel when going to meet a girl’s father: Though it’s probably going to be just fine, you’re aware that no matter how broadly he smiles, part of him wants you to be a eunuch and he wouldn’t mind performing the operation himself. Kansas is like that for me. But I hear lots of nice things about it from other people.

    My anxiety stems from impolitic thinking a long time ago. I am usually quite careful to shield my thoughts and think strictly business in my Latin headspace, because that’s the one I use to talk with the elementals who grant me my powers as a Druid. But once—and all it takes is once—I let slip the opinion that I thought the American central plains were a bit boring. The elemental—whom I’ve thought of as Amber since the early twentieth century, thanks to the amber waves of grain thing—heard me and I’ve been paying for it ever since. The magic doesn’t flow as well for me there anymore. Sometimes my bindings fizzle for no apparent reason, and I know it’s just Amber messing with me. As a result, I look uncomfortable whenever I visit and people wonder if I’m suffering from dyspepsia. Or maybe they stare because I don’t look like a local. I’d fit right in on a beach in California with my surfer dude façade, but at the Kansas Wheat Festival, not so much.

    Said Wheat Festival was in Wellington, Kansas, the hometown of my apprentice, Granuaile MacTiernan. We were visiting in disguise because she wanted to check up on her mother. We’d faked Granuaile’s death a few years ago—for very good reasons—but now she was worried about how her mom was coping. For the past few years she’d been satisfied by updates from private investigators willing to do some long-distance stalking, but an overwhelming urge to lay eyes on her mother in person had overtaken her. I hadn’t been able to fully persuade her that it was a bad idea to visit people who thought you were dead, so I tagged along in case she managed to get into trouble. Granuaile said I could look at it as a vacation from the rigors of training her, and since I’d

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