Summer Knight by Jim Butcher

After a break, I’ve gone back to the Dresden Files.  My fiancé has nearly caught up to me (he’s on the third book in the series), so I felt the need to keep ahead of him.  What a good thing it is that he’s indirectly pushed me, because Summer Knight goes beyond the first three books in the series into creating an actual Dresden mythos, rather than being more reliant on traditional folklore to tell the tale.  I think this stretched Butcher more as an author, and the result is an engaging and eminently readable book.

The book starts off where a Dresden Files book usually starts off — with Harry in dire financial and emotional states.  Instead of being offered a well-paying job by a desperate woman, however, he gets a shock.  His faerie godmother has traded her claim over him to the Queen of Winter, Mab.  She offers to release him from all obligations to her if he performs three jobs for her.  The first she tasks him with is to clear her of the murder of the Summer Knight, the guardian of the opposing faerie court.

Not so bad, right?  Well, he is also tasked with passing a test from the White Council of Wizardry, which also involves the faerie courts.  If he isn’t able to pass the task, he’ll get turned over to the vampires (whom he started a war with in the last book).  This would not be a good thing.  No pressure, but Dresden has a lot riding on his shoulders — and the return of an old flame makes things even more complicated.

Summer Knight brings something completely new to the Dresden Files series.  We get an actual second world to explore.  There are some old characters making a return, but something feels really fresh and new about what Butcher is offering the reader.  It may be that I just haven’t read enough in the topic area, but, other than the names, I think a lot of what he delivers is out of his imagination in a different way from the other books.  It feels creative in the most basic sense — he’s making a new world for us to explore, with new characters and situations.

I really think that Summer Knight is the best of the Dresden Files books.  There’s a lot to keep track of, so it keeps the brain working.  Dresden’s path in this book is by no means predictable, and the fact that we’re taken on a wondrous trip through both Chicago and the Nevernever makes it special in a different way from the books that precede it.

Rating: 5/5.

Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett

I’m a bad Terry Pratchett fan.  I don’t read the DiscWorld books within their subseries; I read them as he published them.  I was, then, a little rusty on what happened during the last book that dealt with the witches — I vaguely remembered it had to do with a fairy godmother and travel on the witches’ parts.  Once I got back into their world with Lords and Ladies, though, I slipped right back into their storyline, and it’s a superb one.

The story is relatively simple — Granny Weatherwax is still a grumpy witch, but this time she’s being challenged by the Queen of the Elves, who wants dominion over Lancre.  This is one of the things that makes Lords and Ladies so good — it’s a more serious, high fantasy-like story, while maintaining a good sense of humor.  The plot is solid, without some of the meandering that occurs in earlier Pratchett books.

Mixed up with the story of the elves trying to take over is the story of Magrat Garlick, the meek, youngest witch of the trio living in Lancre.  She is to be wed to the King of Lancre, Verence II, which came as a surprise.  Magrat is, as Granny is fond of saying, a little drippy and soft.  She holds to a more New Age type of witchcraft, which is not where Granny and Nanny Ogg practice, so they think she’s fairly naïve — which she is.

The two stories collide on the days leading up to the wedding.  Magrat’s entire kingdom is put in jeopardy by Granny not telling her about the elves.  Granny’s having difficulty defeating the Queen.  Nanny is distracted by Casanunda, a blast from the past, and only gets into the action just in time.

One of the best aspects of this story is that Magrat grows as a person.  She becomes stronger in her struggles against the elves, and she becomes, in actuality, quite the impressive woman.  It’s easy to imagine her ruling a kingdom at the end of the story, which is really nice — you just knew that she couldn’t remain a dope forever.

As I stated before, one of the best things about Lords and Ladies is that it feels more serious.  To me, the danger Lancre faced seemed very real, indeed, which is not something I necessarily expect from a Pratchett novel.  There were fewer footnotes, which made the story flow better and turned it into something I liked better.  I never thought I would say that I like a Pratchett novel without large numbers of footnotes, but I really did.  It helped with the flow of the story immensely.

I think it also helps that these characters are ones he’s written about many times in the past.  He didn’t have to establish much in the way of character development before getting straight into the story.  I think that forced him to really think about the plot, which made for a better book all around.

Overall, I think a new Pratchett reader would want to read the other books in the Witch subseries first, and just know that it’s well worth it.

Rating: 5/5.

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

After having read Storm Front, the first book in the Dresden Files series, I promptly put the rest of the books on my to-read list.  I’m one of those people who isn’t happy unless she’s reading through at least one series; I think it’s because recurring characters and a familiar world is easier to lose yourself in.  Anyway, Fool Moon is the second book in the series, and it is certainly just as thrilling as the first one.

We meet up with wizard Harry Dresden six months after the end of Storm Front.  He’s healed up, but most of his business has dried up.  Chicago’s Special Investigations unit isn’t using him much anymore, since he caused all kinds of problems for them the last big case they had him work on.  So it’s not surprising when he’s willing to talk to Kim, a woman he’s been mentoring in the wizardly arts, about something she’s stumbled upon in exchange for dinner.

He recognizes the power of what she’s messing with, and warns her away.  Then Karrin Murphy, the head of SI, asks for Dresden’s help, and we’re on our way to another supernatural adventure.

This series has many good things going for it.  Butcher writes well, with a good mix of narrative and dialogue.  There’s a good amount of humor in both, which is probably the biggest draw for me.  Literary fiction, almost by definition, takes itself seriously, sometimes to the point of tedium.  Genre fiction, whether it be science fiction, fantasy, romance, or mystery, gives the author so much more room for exploring that essential part of human experience.  Butcher gives the reader plenty without overdoing it, which I really like.

I also enjoy the first-person point-of-view.  I don’t get to read many that stick with one character and also has him “narrate” his own story, and I like that.

There were some stumbling points for me with the book, however.  It felt, to me, that we missed some things in the six months between Storm Front and Fool Moon, and that’s a bit unsettling.  I like to feel like I’m getting the full story in a series like this, and dislike it when the author leaves a good amount of information out.  This is probably just me, but I would have liked a little bit more about Dresden’s life in-between the end of the evil wizard of Storm Front and the beginning of the bad werewolf of Fool Moon.

Butcher also stretched my ability to suspend disbelief with the amount of abuse Dresden is able to take.  I mean, sure, a main character can withstand more than the average person, but not even a Timex watch made of titanium and Teflon could make it through what our hero is forced to endure.  I hope future books give him a little more healing time between beatings.

Overall, I find Butcher’s writing to be fun.  Everyone needs their fiction to be something they can immerse themselves in with no hesitation, and the Dresden Files is definitely a series that I can sit back and enjoy with relish.

Rating:  4/5.

Storm Front by Jim Butcher

Storm Front isn’t a book that I normally would choose to read on my own.  I’m not a huge mystery reader and I’m not all that enthralled with the urban fantasy genre.  My fiancé got me interested in The Dresden Files when he picked up Storm Front last year from the library, telling me that he thought the books would be good.  He wasn’t able to get into it, due to work-related craziness, which is to his detriment.  Storm Front is a rather good story with a compelling main character.

Harry Dresden is a wizard living in Chicago.  He most likely is the only one who is listed in the phone book and offers his services to the public for a fee.  He is an unusual wizard in many other ways, as well.  Having to defend himself to the death from his apparently evil former mentor, he is being monitored closely by the White Council, the administrative body overseeing wizards.

This causes problems for him when a disturbing double-murder occurs and the Chicago Police Department’s Karrin Murphy, in charge of Special Investigations, calls him in to investigate.  Dresden knows just from the look of the crime that incredibly powerful magic had to have been used to kill the two people.  Murphy asks him to figure out how.

Meanwhile, Dresden is also investigating a missing-person (even though he doesn’t typically do that type of thing).  Monica Sells’ husband is missing.  She basically tosses money at Dresden — who appears to be perpetually broke — then desperately calls the whole thing off, which piques his interest.  So he decides to investigate anyway.

Mixed into these investigations is the Mafia boss Johnny Marcone, who doesn’t want Dresden looking into any of this mess.  One of his henchmen was one of the victims of the double homicide, and it also happens that the murders are related to his struggle to control the drug trade in the city.  Dresden has some challenges.

Author Jim Butcher has mixed into all this a good, healthy dose of dark humor.  Dresden has a skull-inhabiting spirit who can tell him the ingredients for just about any potion he needs.  The characters have good banter, which I think is essential for a mystery novel.  I found it to be a book that I actively looked forward to reading; most I really enjoy, but don’t get the energy to read them outside of exercise and waiting rooms, simply because I’m too tired.  The fact that I had a cold while reading this and still wanted to read it is a true feat.

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that I liked Storm Front.  I have read and enjoyed Stephen King in the past.  To my shame, I even read Christopher Pike when in late elementary and middle school — my only defense is that I had no taste at the time, and that it was better for me to be reading something than nothing at all; my mother would not have appreciated a delinquent teenage daughter.

My only issue with the book is that some of the prose was either awkwardly written or not edited in the best fashion.  Some of the prose fell a little flat for me, so that took a little of the joy out of reading it.  Still, the story was well enough crafted, and Dresden well enough developed, for me to truthfully enjoy the first book in The Dresden Files.  I’m taking a trip to the library later today; maybe Full Moon will be on the list of books to get.

Rating: 4/5.