Staked (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #8)
Kevin Hearne
For Nigel in Toronto
PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
Some o’ the words in this book might not be immediately pronounceable for some readers because they have foreign origins. Heck, I needed help myself. But I like learning new words and how to say them, so I’m providing a wee guide here for a few names and such in case you’re of a like mind and want to know how to say them out loud. No one is going to confiscate your cake if you say them wrong, but you might score a piece of cake if you say them right. You know what? You should just have a piece of cake anyway. You deserve cake.
CZECH
Celetná = TSELL et NAH (A street in Prague)
Králodvorská = KRAH loh DVOR skah (A street in Prague)
Pet?ín = PET shreen (A hill on the castle side of Prague)
Ulice = oo LEE tse (Means street, basically. Interesting fact: The word is the same in Polish but they place it in front of the name and the Czechs put it afterward. So if you were speaking of Main Street, in Polish that would be Ulice Main and in Czech it’s Main Ulice.)
Vltava = Vl TAH vah (Big ol’ river that runs through Prague)
POLISH
Agnieszka = ag nee ESH ka (One of the Polish coven)
Bydgoszcz = bid GOSH-CH (City in Poland. I straight up admit to choosing it just to cause panic in my audiobook narrator. To English-speaking eyes those four consonants at the end look alarming. But they are actually two distinct digraphs that linguistically represent a fricative followed by an affricative: sz and cz. The sz is going to get you something like sh and the cz gives you ch. But when you pronounce that it’s all one syllable. Try it! GOSH-CH. Seriously fun.)
Ewelina = ev eh LEE na (One of the Polish coven. The letter w is pronounced like v in Polish.)
Mi?osz = ME wash (The white horse of ?wi?towit. That spiffy ? is pronounced as a w in Polish. And that o is pronounced like the a in wash, so there you have it.)
Nocnica = nohts NEETS uh (Slavic nightmare creature; nocnice, pl.)
Patrycja = pa TREES ya (One of the Polish coven. Basically as in Patricia but with a long e sound and no sh.)
Pole Mokotowskie = PO leh Mo ko TOV ski-eh (An expansive park in the city of Warsaw.)
Rado?? = Rah DOHSH-CH (Translates to joy. A neighborhood in one of Warsaw’s districts, on the east side of the Wis?a River.)
?wi?towit = SHVEN toe veet (That cool little ? indicates an n sound at the end of the vowel. Slavic god with four heads.)
Weles = VEH les (Spelled as Veles in most other Slavic countries but the pronunciation is nearly universal. Slavic deity of the earth, enemy of Perun.)
Wis?a = Vee SWAH (River that runs right through the center of Warsaw.)
Wis?awa Szymborska = Vee SWAH vah Shim BOR ska (Polish Nobel Prize winner for literature. Great poetry.)
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book begins in very different place from where Shattered left off; if you missed the novella A Prelude to War, you might wish to read it first to understand why the initial chapters are set where they are and some of the references to Loki and Mekera. You can find it in the mini-anthology Three Slices, available in ebook or audio. Or if you can’t wait, you can just dive in to Staked!
I have many people to thank abroad for their help in getting the details right. Any mistakes you find are of course mine and not theirs.
Thanks to Jakob and Simon of Otherland Buchhandlung for the German bits and to Florian Specht for his help navigating Berlin; I’m grateful to Rob Durdle for helping me with French; turbo thanks to Grzegorz Zielinski for showing me around Warsaw and pinpointing the location of Malina Soko?owska’s house, as well as the black poplar tree in Pole Mokotowskie; much gratitude to Adrian Tomczyk for his companionship and translation help in Poznań, and then helping with further language questions once I got home; cheers to my amazing Polish readers who greeted me at Pyrkon and were so very gracious; thanks to Tomá? Jirkovsky and Martin ?ust for good times in Prague and Brno; and I’m very grateful to Ester Scoditti for her guidance in Rome. Mega-turbo-gonzo thanks go to Nadine Kharabian for the tour of spooky places in her great city, where I finally figured out why you never want to be Nigel in Toronto. And gratitude to the fine people at the Royal Conservatory of Music on Bloor Street for enduring my questions about the Lady in Red.
Tricia Narwani continues to be an editing genius and I’m astoundingly fortunate to work with her and the entire Del Rey team.
And deepest thanks to my readers for saying hi online and in person, having fun with Iron Druid cosplay, naming their puppies Oberon and Orlaith, and all the other unbearably awesome things you do. You all deserve a sausage. With gravy.
In a Denver coffee shop, August 2015
IRON DRUID CHRONICLES
The Story So Far
Atticus O’Sullivan, born in 83 B.C.E. as Siodhachan ó Suileabháin, has spent much of his long life as a Druid on the run from Aenghus óg, one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Aenghus óg seeks the return of Fragarach, a magical sword that Atticus stole in the second century, and the fact that Atticus has learned how to keep himself young and won’t simply die annoys the heck out of Aenghus óg.
When Aenghus óg finds Atticus hiding in Tempe, Arizona, Atticus makes the fateful decision to fight instead of run, unwittingly setting off a chain of consequences that snowball on him despite his efforts to lie low.