Everyone's favorite redneck warlock returns in book 3. Vic has been trapped in the underworld with Adam's cousin and Adam has to travel through death in order to save him (plus some other people).

I enjoy the Adam Binder series for the most part. It good gay fun and I grew up in Oklahoma so the setting is nostalgic. I'm also still a fan of the main character NOT being the most powerful being but still being useful and getting things done. I'm not a big fan of Vic being a "good cop" just generally not being a fan of our current police. He seems to be struggling with that himself so I'll continue to read the books.

An excellent conclusion to the Adam Binder series, in which the stakes are high, the realms extremely interesting, and the new character encounters disturbing and deeply meaningful by turns (or sometimes all at once).

<i>Deadbeat Druid</i> leaves off where David R. Slayton's second book in the Adam Binder series leaves off. Adam Binder is on a hunt to get his boyfriend, Vic, back from the underworld and there is nothing that's going to stand in his way. This MM Romantic Urban Fantasy series is a lot of fun and one I highly recommend to both MM Romance fans and Urban Fantasy fans. However, I wouldn't recommend jumping right into Book 3. If you haven't already read <i>White Trash Warlock</i> and <i>Trailer Park Trickster</i> I would definitely recommend you start there before jumping into this book because of the sheer amount of world building that Slayton has completed in the first two books.

I was lucky enough to receive an advanced reader copy of <i>Deadbeat Druid</i>, and I am very thankfully to the author/publisher for their generosity. However, my review is not impacted by that generosity.

Okay, so I am very excited for both David R. Slayton and this series. I remember reading the first book and was really glad to see it take off the way it has. I think the series has sometimes ventured away from what made the first book as fun by delving more and more into the mystical lands and away from how paranormal things impact what's going on in Denver. I also think the "trailer park" schtick worked for the first book, less for the second, and doesn't as much for the third. We see Adam growing in both his power and his understanding of the paranormal world. He's moved beyond his trailer park roots. In fact, you could argue that he'd moved beyond those roots before the first book really started (but that's another story and I don't like spoilers).

As a whole, this is a fun romp. It's a page turner and one that I would definitely recommend picking up today. But, start with book one if you haven't read the series.

Imagine, if you will, a collaboration between Stephen King and Lewis Carroll, writing a novel about life and the greatest of all mysteries, the after-life. Throw in a Warlock who has made a bargain to rid the world of his malevolent great-grandfather, and his Reaper boyfriend who disappeared into the Other Side and must be found—whatever the price. Add in allies and adversaries, hungry demons and roving ghosts, mercurial landscapes, and the past coming back for a haunt or two. If you can do so, you just might dream up something like David R. Slayton’s masterstroke of storytelling, The Deadbeat Druid. Maybe King and Carroll would have called it Adam in Underland. Or maybe that’s just me.

This story is told from both Adam’s and Vic’s points of view, so readers are treated to twice the imagination as they each make their own trip through the underworld in search of each other, and then a way out. Adam has been given the additional task of finding someone on Death’s orders: a living girl who must be returned to where she belongs. Failure is not an option if the balance between Life and Death is to be maintained. Much of the suspense in Deadbeat Druid relies upon not only what incomprehensible dangers the characters may encounter along the highways and byways of this unpredictable Underland, but in whether or not Adam will succeed in finding Vic, ending his great-grandfather’s reign of terror, and saving the woman he’s been charged to find. All while preserving something of his integrity, if not his mortal soul.

While indulging my every love of lush, evocative storytelling, Slayton has also developed a cast of characters who more than undertook the responsibility of this journey; they carried it admirably. Whether I liked the character or not, the point was that each and every one of them served their purpose in the story. They were real, flawed, curious, sinister, and, in some cases, larger-than-life. Through it all, Adam Lee Binder changes, grows, mourns, loves, and, despite what he has become, he remains true to who he is.

Deadbeat Druid navigates life and death, and because this is Adam’s world, Life and Death. It delivers Adam and Vic to a new beginning, not because it was preordained but because they went through hell and back to get there. It’s a story of family and all the complications and heartaches and conflict and love and bitterness that comes with them. It’s a story of magic and mysticism, where friends and allies aren’t always human. It is brilliant, lavish Fantasy.

Thank you to Blackstone Publishing/NetGalley for a copy of Deadbeat Druid in exchange for an honest review.

What is going on?

Deadbeat Druid is the third book in David R. Slayton's Adam Binder series. This review contains spoilers for the first two books (White Trash Warlock and Trailer Park Trickster). If you don't want major spoilers for the series, skip this section. Some background:

Adam Binder is a low-powered, young-adult warlock whose Trauma has led him to keep everyone at arm's length, even those he loves. Growing up gay and magical in a small Oklahoma town was hard, and his family didn't react well to either. It didn't help that Death was behind the scenes, manipulating the Binder family for her own long game. 

At the end of Trailer Park Trickster, Adam learns that his great-grandfather is a druid gone rogue (he was murdering his family's children in order to live forever). To make things worse, Adam's boyfriend fell into Hell. And Adam turned himself into a warlock, which is dangerous and painful. 

Sarte was right ... 

... Hell is other people. Or at least our unresolved issues with them. I'm not sure whether Slayton's depiction of the underworld is Hell or some sort of purgatory. But, in either case, the philosophical ramifications are mighty. The "Bad Place," as he imagines it, is not a place I'd want to be, but there is actually a sort of tranquillity to the horror of the demons and ghosts there. 

Closure is a running theme throughout Deadbeat Druid, which makes sense; I'm not sure if this is the last-last Adam Binder book, but it certainly feels like the end of a trilogy. At that level, this novel functions very well. Adam confronts the people he needs to and learns lessons he needs to learn. Deadbeat Druid cements his growth, which began in Warlock.  

I'm glad we again spend time in Vic's head (his POV began in Trickster). His personality is a stark contrast to Adam's, making it a welcome break from the wonderful chaos that is Adam's mind. Additionally, it's very effective to relive some of the events from Warlock from Vic's perspective, as we didn't get that at the time. 

You get a theme, and you get a theme! 

One of David R. Slayton's biggest strengths is that he seamlessly weaves many Big Ideas into what might otherwise seem to be a "simple" urban fantasy. Deadbeat Druid again touches on climate change -- though to a lesser extent than in Trickster -- as well as generational trauma and personal identity. In the life-or-death stakes of a book like this, it's easy to forget how young these characters are; the ease with which they talk about switching careers reminds you that they're in their early 20s. 

I really appreciated that Slayton dove deeper into what it means for Vic to be a cop in today's world. I loved Adam's radical acceptance. If I have any quibble with this book, it's the amount of time Adam and Vic spend apart. Throughout the series, we don't spend much time with them when they're together, which makes it somewhat hard to buy into their love. 

If there are more novels, I'd like to see them fighting things together rather than rescuing one another. It's a personal thing, but I prefer to read couples working together and through things rather than apart. 

Should you read it?

It's always interesting writing a review of a sequel. Those who've already read and enjoyed the other book(s) will read the sequel no matter what I say. So to those who already love the Adam Binder novels: Yes, yes, yes! Go forth and read Deadbeat Druid. It's every bit as wonderful and magical as the rest of the series. And to those who have yet to begin the series: You have about a week before Deadbeat Druid comes out. That's plenty of time to catch up. 


Deadbeat Druid is out on October 18, 2022. Pick up a copy at your local indie bookstore or library. 📚💀🧝‍♀️

This book seems great and I don’t want to downrate it despite barely starting it.
I had no idea this was book three in a series and if this had been made clear prior to requesting, I never would have requested it.
I hope to make time for this whole series in the future though!

Hear me out- it was good, but DNF 25% in because I didn't realize this was book 3 in a series! I feel so dumb because it's actually pretty good I just had no idea what was going on. It's a DNF for now until I read the rest of the series because I did like the writing and the premise a lot!

So, I did like this book, but I didn't feel like it was quite at the same level as the first two in the series. It felt like it was trying to do too much, while being kind of boring? As is evidenced by how long it took me to read it (2 weeks!).

I do like the characters in this series and I like the overall story, but in this one the two MCs, Adam and Vic were separated for almost the entire book. And then they finally found each other, for all of 5 minutes, and then they were separated again.

While I thought this book wasn't as good as the first two, I will absolutely read the fourth book, if/when it comes out.

I like these novels – I've read all three – but for some reason the details of what happened in the last one (including who some of the characters were) did not stick in my mind, so I needed a good recap to get me back up to speed. I didn’t quite get it. (I still don’t remember who Vran is or what he has to do with anything.) I like this series but something about it does not fully connect with me – I always feel like I don’t totally understand what’s happening or why, or I don’t fully feel the weight of certain scenes or emotions. I found that this feeling tended to get stronger the longer I read. I also found myself going back to try and figure out what I’d missed more than once – and sometimes I couldn’t figure it out.

It’s still a good series - it goes to some interesting places, it’s great for representation, and the main characters and their relationships are pretty solid, especially the family dynamics. It’s just not as cohesive as I would have liked. I’ll probably still read the next one, if there are more, though!

CW: mention of child abuse and homophobia (past)

Representation: Gay & bi main characters, Latino main character, Black major characters

This is a solid installment of a wild, thrilling, and fascinating trilogy. I wish there was more Vic, and less wandering, but the ending was satisfying, and I hope for short stories in the future or even a spin-off. The urban fantasy mixed with some wry commentary about life in the South makes for an engaging read.

A thrilling third book in a great, queer series about magic in the most unlikely of places and in the most unlikely of humans. Really love this series.

I really enjoyed this final installment to Adam’s story. I had a really hard time putting this one down due to its fast pace and everything that was happening that rarely left the characters time to breath or myself for that matter. I really wished that I had spent some time rereading the first two books though. I really think reading these books right after each other would have a huge impact on seeing the character growth and the expansive world building better.

All of the characters, even some of the minor ones, show tremendous growth throughout the series, but I think Adam and Vic are the two that show the most changes. In this book Adam demonstrates strengths that I never thought he would achieve and his ability to believe in himself and in his family have surpassed all of my expectations. Vic also shows such a change in his abilities and in his understanding of both Adam and the world he lives in. It is so well written and so believable that these two characters could go through what they do and still come out the other side stronger and better.

That said, the world building also continues to get better and stronger. I loved the version of the underworld we get in this book. It is quite different than what we usually get in fantasies, but it is in total keeping with the world that the author has already developed. It was scary at times, and the demons were not what you would expect either, and their role in the underworld was also quite different. An amazingly well done job.

The plot is also well done and quite riveting. There are a lot of themes, but probably the most prominent one is generational trauma. The Binders have had a lot of tragedy and untold horrors in their family that have affected every generation. Adam works really hard in this story to change that narrative and even though the scars are still there by the end you can tell that the family is on the road of healing and changing for the better.

A well done urban fantasy with very relatable characters and some awesome world building. A series that I hope to reread in its entirety sometime in the near future. I look forward to spending time with these characters again and seeing their journey come to a close once again. This is a series that I highly recommend.

DEADBEAT DRUID by David R. Slayton is a fantastic finale to the series. I loved reading more of Adam's adventures, and I felt like Slayton delivered on promises made to readers throughout the series. Highly recommended for fans of the first two books!

Fans of David Slayton's earlier two Adam Binder books won't be disappointed. The plot here takes a turn for the mythological, as Adam heads to the underworld to track down his love, Vic -- and along the way, he will come to terms with his paternal family, and revisit a significant (if unpleasant) part of his childhood.

This concludes Adam's story, which is a shame -- there is more to cover in this world.

Adam Binder and his crew find themselves split up and searching in Hell, and all the things they encounter culminate in a neat little solution that could easily be the end of the series or just a pause between installments if David R. Slayton decided to continue the series. I certainly hope he does! I really appreciate his fantasy world where the different realms all bring something new and fresh to the genre. I also really liked the generational aspect of the novel and families of all types working together despite their differences.

DEADBEAT DRUID is the third and final instalment in the Adam Binder series and picks up straight after TRAILERPARK TRICKSTER.
Like the previous books, I absolutely flew through DEADBEAT DRUID, unable to put it down. The stakes are higher than ever and the magic feels woven through the characters, their world, and their histories, in a grounded and beautiful way. I love how authentic and relatable the characters (and their problems) are. The story has a rough, battered quality to it that complements Adam’s life and world perfectly.
I'm honestly devastated these books are over, I would've happily read a sprawling, double-digit-level series. However, if a brilliant series must end, this is the way you want it to go out.
The conclusion feels earned, pulling through elements from both the previous instalments so that the ending is unpredictable but organic and inevitable. There are a few opportunities opened and left to breath, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed that, someday, Slayton finds a way to continue Adam and Vic’s story.
I've rated all three books in this trilogy five stars and I can’t recommend it enough.
Perfection.

I want to start with a big thank you to Blackstone Publishing and NetGalley for sending me an electronic advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Deadbeat Druid by David R. Slayton is the final instalment in the Adam Binder series. As sad as I was to see this series come to a close, I was more than excited to get back into this universe after the massive cliffhanger that the second book ended on! I mean, our love interest being sucked into a black portal of death? Seriously!

This book does not disappoint.

After having lost what matters most and learning the true identity of the warlock preying on his family, Adam is reeling from what was supposed to be a final confrontation with the man who’s been picking off his family. Instead of the victory he’d been hoping for, Vic had fallen into a trap that had sent him into the realm of the dead… where none living are meant to be.

But Adam is bound by debt, oath, and love. Blazing his own trail into the underworld to get Vic back, he plans on putting an end to the warlock once and for all.

If only things were that simple.

Starting off immediately after the previous book, Deadbeat Druid jumped right into things. We come to Adam in the hospital, healing from the showdown with the druid. He’s not alone, but for all intents he might as well be with how little he can feel from Vic.

There was so much that I loved about this book. So very much! I read most of it in an afternoon, simply because I wanted to find out what happened next so much!

The best part about this book is the magical setting. Slayton absolutely kills it with the urban fantasy setting, and Deadbeat Druid isn’t the outligter. With a magic system just as well-defined as it was in the first two books, the underworld was vivid in all its darkness. The descriptions of death and demons were so interesting, and Slayton painted such a vivid picture!

Despite the journey the characters go through, there was a part of this novel that felt especially character driven in a really interesting way. We get to see a lot more from all our cast, getting to know Bobby, Wren, and even Jodi! It was super interesting to learn a little more about all of these different characters.

I especially loved the chance Adam and Bobby had to bond even further! Finally coming into his magic, it was refreshing to see Bobby open up more and more to his brother. He seemed lighter in this book, something that was good to see after he had been so weighed down by grief.

Speaking about magic, we get to see Adam really flex his magical senses in this one! He performs feats of magic that we hadn’t seen from him before, and I was cheering him on each time he did something slightly badass! There are a number of times when he uses his magic in a way that would have seemed almost impossible to first-book Adam, and I really loved this stark character growth!

I have… a lot of mixed feelings about what happens with Adam’s dad. It wasn’t my favourite part of the book by any means, but I also think it was a fairly apt representation of letting go of past hurts and moving on. Adam doesn’t have a big emotional moment with his father, and I never would have expected him to!

This was the first book in this series that I read traditionally, and I was worried I was going to have a hard time getting into it after loving the audio so much, but that wasn’t the case at all! Slayton’s writing continues to be clear and concise, and the magical system is unique and well-executed. The final instalment of the Adam Binder series wraps the entire story up neatly, completing each little arc that was started in the first two books.

Just like the first two, Deadbeat Druid is an easy four-star read to me that I highly recommend!

Fast paced with twisting storylines and great, well thought out characters. Excellent ending to an excellent series. I purchased this for my library and will definitely recommend it to everyone looking for a great fantasy read!

I have mixed feelings about this book series. I went in really wanting to love it, but having finished the final volume, there are just too many things that I feel dissatisfied with. I'll start with the things I did enjoy.

I really liked Adam as a main character, and I enjoyed most of the supporting cast, especially Argent and Death. I loved seeing Adam's journey, and I enjoyed watching him learn how to confront the problems thrown at him with his limited power, experience, and knowledge, and still come up with ways to outsmart or outmaneuver them. I also loved the setting, rural Oklahoma, and I was very glad that we got to spend a little more time here in the last book, Trailer Park Trickster. However, this book suffered from the same problem the first book did, which is that we didn't really get to spend enough time in the setting, and instead spent most of the story elsewhere. I'll come back to this in a moment.

I also liked the complicated family dynamics explored in the story, with Adam's struggle to forgive his mother and brother, the complexity of his love for Sue, his mixed feelings for Jodi and Noreen, and his hatred mixed with sympathy, anger, and mercy for his father and great-grandfather. I thought that was a very poignant and realistic depiction of generational trauma, forgiveness, and recognizing that you can't always just cut bad people out of your life, even if they deserve it. Sometimes the only real solution, as impossible as it feels, is to work towards that forgiveness in order to get on the road to healing. I love it when stories explore those gray areas between black and white, and I thought this story did a good job with that.

I also really liked the magic system and the larger-than-life immortals we get to meet, such as the elves and reapers and Death. I think the magic system was functional and unique. I loved the way John's story concluded and the inclusion of Chaos/Life as the antithesis to Death.

All right, now on to my issues with this book.

The alternating viewpoints of Vic and Adam were interesting; I didn't care much for Bobby in the first book, and I much preferred getting to see things from Vic's perspective in the second book, so I'm glad that continued in this installment. However, I think this really did a number on the pacing, especially in Vic's parts; where he is forced to relive his worst memories over multiple chapters seriously dragged, and I found myself getting desensitized to the horror after the first time it happened. I feel that too much time was spent in certain areas like this, and too little in other areas.

I think the story could have done with a couple further rounds of revisions to reduce redundancy and tighten up some arcs and loose threads. There seemed to be no consequences for Vic's experiences with the memory-eating demons, for example; he vaguely implies that he's been irreversibly changed by having those feelings stolen from him, but this is never again addressed, acknowledged, or shown on the page, so what were the actual consequences of that?

Adam also spent a long time going back and forth about his feelings about his father, which (though I noted above that I appreciated the exploration of his feelings), I feel that the end result was rather anticlimactic. He made the decision not to come out to his father's spirit, and then immediately goes back on that by kissing Vic in front of him, and absolutely nothing is made of it; his father barely reacts, and Adam doesn't have any sort of confrontation or conversation about it. I just wish there had been a slightly more emotionally satisfying endpoint to that particular subplot, after all the time and energy that was spent on it.

I was also disappointed by what happened with Vic and Adam's connecting thread. That played such a big role in their relationship and in the story itself, and for it to suddenly disappear and not come back? I think I understand what the author was getting at, that they needed to learn how to be in a real relationship without the thread interfering, but it was also implied that the thread was a) keeping them both alive, so what happened to that point? And b) that it's how immortals marry, so does this mean that Adam and Vic are divorced? Can it be repaired, and if so, why didn't they repair it? It just seemed like the author had too many ideas for metaphors about the thread and didn't fully commit to any of them, so the message of the thread being broken is totally muddled.

Lastly, I think overall the story just feels so alien from its initial presence that I don't really know what I just read. With the first chapters of the first book, I had a notion of what the story would look like and where it might go, but it didn't stay within those parameters, nor did it really return to them. There were traces of the "white trash" aspect throughout the three books, namely with Adam's relationship to his family, but otherwise all of it got dropped somewhere along the line. Adam's money troubles kinda just vanish after he gets the job with Jesse's shop, and I don't think that was a neat way to address the issue of poverty. Adam goes to a bar in that first chapter of the first book, and only later do you find out he's only 20. Does he have a fake ID? Do people just not care in the South? It was implied that he regularly drinks and/or attends bars, and yet he never does after that first visit. I dunno. I think I just wanted the story to focus more on the setting and the initial premise, but it just kept roaming off rather than leaning into it, and so its identity felt muddled.

Other things were off too (what ever happened with the sheriff? So he's dating Adam's mom now? But what happened to the investigation into Adam and the trailer explosion? Didn't he ever find out whose bones those were???? They were in the midst of that whole mess when Adam ran off to the underworld to save Vic, and then when they got back it was never brought up again!), but in general I think my complaints boil down to what I said above: this story could have used a few more drafts. It could have used a harder hand from the editor and a clearer vision from the author.

Overall, it was an enjoyable read, and I liked enough about it to say that I would recommend it to readers, but I just wish that it had been more tightly written.

Deadbeat Druid is the third book in the Adam Binder series. It begins immediately after the events of the second book and involves a road trip to Hell, a lesson or two in how people change, a heaping dose of dealing with trauma, and adds to the wonderful world that David Slayton has built with this series.

I'm not going to talk much about the plot, but I will say that I enjoyed it immensely and that there were echoes of books like Stephen King and Peter Straub's Talisman scattered throughout.

The real strength of this series, for me, lies in the characters. I found myself rooting for people I thought I wouldn't, and I felt genuine concern that everyone would get out alive.

Deadbeat Druid brings the story of Adam Binder to a stopping point, but I hope that there are further stories exploring this world and expanding on this cast of characters.