Jim Butcher
What's up with the other wizard named Harry?I looked like a train wreck.
More so than usual, I mean.
My features are usually kind of long, lean, all sharp angles. I've got almost-black hair to go with the dark eyes. Now I had grey and purplish circles under them. Deep ones. The lines of my face, where they weren't covered by several months of untrimmed beard, looked as sharp as the edges of a business card.
My hair had grown out long and shaggy—not in that sexy-young-rock-star kind of way but in that time-to-take-Rover-to-the-groomer kind of way. It didn't even have the advantage of being symmetrical, since a big chunk had been burned short in one spot when a small incendiary had been smuggled to me in a pizza delivery box, back when I could still afford to order pizza. My skin was pale. Pasty, even. I looked like Death warmed over, provided someone had made Death run the Boston Marathon. I looked tired. Burned out. Used up.
Harry Dresden, card-carrying wizard of the White Council is in a mess, more than the mess that has become his unkempt appearance since Susan left after the events of Grave Peril. Mess is an understatement. Vampires are out to kill him. Some elders of the White Council - more like the magical tribunal that governs all wizards in the world - want to turn him over to the Red Court for initiating a war with Bianca's clan (eh, read Grave Peril for that, hahaha), he doesn't have a paying client and is thisclose to being evicted both from his office downtown as well as in his basement apartment, plus he has been shunning the company of men (or werewolf friends, as in the case of Billy and the Alphas who previously appeared in Fool Moon). But something has to happen, right?
That something comes in the form of Mab, Queen of the Winter Faeries, who comes to him with a bargain. Prove that she didn't have a hand in the murder of the Summer Knight and maybe the Faerie Queen will allow the White Council to travel her realm in the Nevernever.
This time around Harry has to navigate his way around the cold and calculating world of the fey folk, use his wits to stay alive because hey, just because he has a bargain with Mab doesn't mean the vampires aren't out to get him at all or that other members of the two faerie courts won't attempt to hurt or even kill him. Then there's the case and what it all means.
Again, pure escapist fun delivered in less than 400 pages.
Fear can literally feel like ice water. It can be a cold feeling that you swallow, that rolls down your throat and spreads into your chest. It steals your breath and makes your heart labor when it shouldn't, before expanding into your belly and hips, leaving quivers behind. Then it heads for the thighs, the knees (occasionally with an embarrassing stop on the way), stealing the strength from the long muscles that think you should be using them to run the hell away.
I still like Harry. I still like the stories that Butcher churns out from the Nevernever. Those familiar with the fey folk will hopefully find this an engaging read. And there's even a surprise for Harry at the start, something he wasn't expecting at all (eh, define surprise, duh).
Of course Harry gets beaten close to pulp despite his magical abilities. I think that's a constant in the four books. But it's part of the formula, the Dresden book formula. Still, we get to know more about Harry and his past. Karrin Murphy as well. And now Billy and the Alphas.
What will happen next? There's a fifth book. And a sixth. Ooh, up to a tenth book even. I only have up to the ninth book though. Oh well. Like I said, pure escapist fun.
Do tell me if you have a review of this or the other three Dresden books so I could put up a link to your site on this (and the other three posts).
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This is my alternate choice for the "B" Author in the A-Z Reading Challenge hosted by Joy.
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