BOOK: Summer Knight (2002)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Summer Knight Year: 2002 Author: Jim Butcher Length: 673 minutes / 11.22 hours A piece of advice given to most writers is to make their characters suffer, then document how they grow. In Summer Knight, Jim Butcher puts Harry Dresden through the ringer. Not only is Dresden on the edge of being homeless and dead from starvation, but he finds himself tangled up in the politics of the wizards and faeries. As usual, the world-building in the Dresden Files is fantastic and multi-layered. Sure, there are still the problems that keep popping up in this series, but they seemed less when Dresden was focused on merely staying alive. With each book in the Dresden Files, I find the deepening lore fascinating. In Summer Knight, we finally learn about the council of wizards and see how unique Harry is when compared to others from the organization. In learning about more of his past, it’s easy to see how Dresden has come to this impasse with the...
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BOOK: Grave Peril (2001)

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Grave Peril Year: 2001 Author: Jim Butcher Length: 378 pages The third book in the Dresden Files, Grave Peril continues the adventures of Chicago’s resident wizard as he takes on ghosts, godmothers, and ghoulish vampires. While it’s definitely an improvement from Fool Moon, Grave Peril still has some of the misogynistic flaws of the series’ titular character. On the plus side, we finally get to delve into deeper lore for the series. And we get Michael. He’s the best new character in this series and by far my favorite for many reasons—mainly because how he does things differently than Dresden. I’ll admit that it took me a while to get through this book, which felt odd considering the action was superb, the writing was proficient, and the story was thrilling. For some reason, I didn’t feel the motivation to continue reading and went weeks between picking it up and continuing. I think if I had read it all as quickly as possible, then it might...
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BOOK: Fool Moon (2001)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Fool MoonYear: 2001Author: Jim ButcherLength: 607 minutes / 10.12 hours I haven’t read a lot of the urban fantasy genre, but series like Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files is what I’ve come to expect. There’s a certain amount of logic that goes into combining fantasy elements into modern settings, and—if done well—can bring a story to life. Fool Moon (a delicious play on words, if I do say so myself) continues to take the noir twist from Storm Front and applies Harry Dresden’s magical skills against werewolf foes. Perhaps Storm Front wowed me with the concept of a detective magician so much that I thought Fool Moon was slightly weaker in comparison. For starters, I felt there were too many factions to keep track of in this book. Half the time, I was trying to remember if the werewolves in question were the good guys or the bad guys. Granted, the ambiguity of the factions’ intent helped drive the plot, but they all...
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BOOK: Storm Front (2000)

by benmweilertNo Comments
Storm Front Year: 2000 Author: Jim Butcher Length: 482 minutes / 8.03 hours The first book in the Dresden Files series, Storm Front is the fusion of urban fantasy and detective noir that I didn’t know I needed. As a wizard for hire, Harry Dresden gets a lot of weird cases that only a wizard could deal with, but it’s done in a way that hearkens back to Sam Spade and other detectives just trying to make a buck investigating mysteries that show up on their doorstep. Perhaps I just haven’t read any modern noir (most of it supplanted by the “thriller” genre), but Storm Front is a refreshing return to a classic form of storytelling. Of my two qualms, only one has to do with the book itself. The narrator of this audiobook had a bit too much breathing, sniffling, and other noises that—while being somewhat infrequent—pulled me out of the story far too often. And while I liked how there was always something...
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