This was a super fun read! It’s set in the same world as the Iron Druid books but you don’t need to have any familiarity with them to enjoy this book. (You should read that series too though, Oberon is a very good dog 😁)
I was lucky enough to get my hands on an eARC of this title and it’s been an awesome quarantine read. The author really excels in writing light escapist fantasy. They’re the equivalent of a silly action movie, no great classic of literature, but I’ve had a genuinely good time reading them all and they’ve all put a smile on my face.

Ink & Sigil is a return to the magical world introduced in The Iron Druid Chronicles with all-new eccentric characters to love and a whole new aspect of magic and the Fae to explore.
This time, our guide is a dapper, older Scottish gentleman who is a Sigil Agent who polices the Fae whenever they deal in the human world. He does this with the help of sigils created by Brighid (Queen of the Fae) and inks made of both magical and mundane ingredients. It all starts when Al MacBharraisis loses his seventh apprentice to seemingly accidental death and it leads to an unpleasant discovery that leaves Al in charge of a crazily enjoyable hobgoblin and a mystery to solve.
The cast of characters goes from eccentric to insane and are all incredibly enjoyable to read about. From MacBharraisis himself to the various Fae he deals with to the other humans who help MacBharraisis on his quest to solve the mystery, everyone brings something to enjoy to the story.
There is a small appearance by Iron Druid Atticus, but this story is all about Al MacBharraisis the Sigil Agent and the Fae's interference with our world. I think it can definitely be enjoyed on its own as it presents all the key players and fantastic elements incredibly well.
The only thing that might make this a bit of a challenge to read is that Hearne went incredibly authentic and writes the dialogue as true to Scottish as I've ever seen and if you've ever had a hard time understanding a Scottsman talk, then you're probably going to struggle a bit to read it. There's a pronunciation guide and it helps to try reading the lines out loud, but there was many a time when I had to read something over to make sure I understood it.
So besides the somewhat hard to decipher Scottish, I found absolutely nothing I did not like and enjoy immensely about Ink & Sigil. Hearne has once again created a world that is both familiar and magical and I enjoyed every word of it.

Huge thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the awesome sneak peek!

I loved this book. I have to mention that I am biased because I loved the Iron Druid Chronicles so much. I went in hoping to see my favorite characters from the druid series but there were only a few references to them and it turns out that I loved it because of that. I loved this book because it has lots of humor and action and new characters. It explores the life of a Sigil Agent named Al and his group of friends that begins to form from those that seem unlikely to do so. When is the next one??

The cover for this book is so amazing!!! I've caught myself drooling over it multiple times. It's 100% the reason I picked this book up to read. Didn't read the blurb or who the author was, just had to read whatever was behind that cover.

Thank goodness what was there was awesome! Loved this book so much! From the sigil magic to the lizard wizard van to all the hierarchy. ugh. I'm ready to reread it.

I'm a sucker for inks & pens, and the research the author put into the main characters craft is high five worthy. The book is life like and mystical. You can feel the time put into to making sure the setting is culturally accurate, and all lore lines up. Some books fail at sinking in real world dialect into a fiction novel but this book works so freaking well. I feared i was going to be referencing the authors notes and half confused at the crazy spellings, but it never happened. The flow of the sentences supported the dialect perfectly.

All of the characters are well crafted, and the personalities of each are distinct and compliment the story perfectly. The grey of the 'villains', to the grey of the 'good guys' so much yes for this one. I'm also here for the commentary on 'human' trafficking, and how the magical world is dealing with the same problems we are dealing with in humanity.

Book one hasn't even released yet, but I'm ready for book two. Also a poster for my wall of this cover *drooling*

I received this book via NetGalley.

Ink and Sigil is a spin-off of the Iron Druid Chronicles. You can start with this series and not miss anything. I'm already looking forward to the next one. As usual for Kevin Hearne it's full of great characters, wit and a compelling story.

"Ink & Sigil" is the first book in a new series set in the same universe as Hearne's "Iron Druid Chronicles." It introduces a new main character, Al MacBharrais, a Scottish Sigil master, trained and contracted to act as mediator between the Fae planes and our world. It's his job to enforce the laws that regulate Fae passage through the human world, and to report to the Fae gods when those laws are broken. We're also introduced to Al's office manager and bouncer Nadia, new hobgoblin acquaintance Buck, and a host of colorful side characters.

This was a fun, quick read that--much like the Iron Druid books--keeps a light comedic tone while occasionally touching on darker themes. I have to admit that I sometimes found the Iron Druid books a bit too flippant for my taste, but the tone actually works a bit better for me here where the stakes for the books are less world shattering and more personal. Al is a solid new main character, a sixty year old widower who enjoys gin and whiskey and has some flexible views on following human law. As a first book in a new series this works quite well. There's a solid plot that is wrapped up in this book, though with definite hints that things might flare up again in the future. There's also a more longterm mystery dealing with Al's backstory that is obviously going to be explored in future installments.

Anyone who enjoyed the Iron Druid books will almost certainly like this one as well. For those who didn't read Iron Druid but are interested in seeing whether they would like it without committing to a such a long series right now, this is a good entry point. I don't think it's necessary to have read Iron Druid before tackling this book, although it does of course give you some background on how this world works. I also really want to go to the gin bar in Glasgow that Al frequents.

(just a minor quibble, and this might be rectified in the future, but despite frequently thinking about how the death of his wife was the worst thing that ever happened to him, and how much he misses her, the wife is never given a name or any character details in the text. She's always referred to internally as his "dear wife" or some such, and we learn literally nothing about her except that she's dead now. It's a kind of strange omission.)

As a fan of Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid Chronicles, I was pleased to see that he was starting a new series set in the same world. This series focuses on a Scottish sigil master, Al MacBharrais.

Al uses special inks to create sigils to enforce contracts with various deities visiting our plane. His sigils can also be used to do things like make the holder invisible. Important when Al discovers that what he first thought was the accidental death of his apprentice (choking on a raisin) is actually part of a curse.

Al also discovers that his apprentice was trafficking in fae - luring them here to this plane, then selling them.

Ink & Sigil is more of the author’s humorous urban fantasy. Instead of an Irish wolfhound obsessed with sausages and poodles, Al has a hobgoblin named Buck Foi with a love for pranks. Since the dialogue is mostly Scottish dialect, I needed and appreciated the pronunciation guide. Very enjoyable and I hope there are more books in the series to come.

Thank youNetGalley and Del Rey for the ARC.

I’ve read some of the books in Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid series, but not the one that Al MacBharrais (MacVAREish) appears in. I enjoy their shared world but wasn’t sure what to expect from this new series. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and the characters. Once, the story got rolling, I had a hard time putting the book down and I disk to want it to end. I look forward to visiting these characters again and getting to the bottom of a lingering mystery from this book. The pronunciation guide at the beginning of the book was helpful both for pronunciations and getting me into the accent of the story.