You searched for book_author:"Jim Butcher"
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Harry Dresden is back, baby!
Seriously, I’m going to drop major spoilers about halfway through this review. I’m not kidding around here.
After dying (or nearly dying) and solving his own murder as a ghost, Harry has returned to find his body in the care of Mab. Harry has not escaped his obligations as her new Winter Knight, and so Cold Days opens with a montage of his physical therapy—Mab trying to kill him in…
It’s hard to believe I’ve had to wait over a year between Dresden Files books! I’m glad I developed this sideline of being a teacher while I waited.
As with previous reviews, this is full of spoilers. And, to be honest, I don’t really understand why someone who hasn’t been following the series up to this point would be much interested in what happens in book 15. If you’re really curious about whether Dresden…
Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files universe has a very rich mythology, something I greatly admire about the series. From werewolves to vampires to faerie, Butcher doesn’t just take one or two types of supernatural creatures and run with it—he takes all-comers. He continues this trend with these three novelettes that involve Bigfoot. Working For Bigfoot is a short but nice little collection that takes the edge off waiting for the next novel in the series.
I…
This review contains spoilers for the ending of Changes and possibly other books in the Dresden Files series. It does not, however, contain spoilers for the short stories themselves in Side Jobs, so I have not marked the review with a spoiler alert.
This is how much I love the Dresden Files: not only will I buy every book as it is released, a practice I eschew for a great many other authors I…
Faeries are even better than vampires. Firstly, you can actually make a deal with faeries and compel them to honour the deal. Secondly, that makes them even more deadly, because they're usually clever enough to twist the deal so it ends up harming you anyway. Just as Jim Butcher can't claim credit for vampires, he can't claim credit for faeries, but he sure can claim credit for the characters he creates to personify each…
So I don't like werewolves but do like vampires. Some of you will never forgive me, I know. Others will be happy I've taken a side. But if you hold up Fool Moon against Grave Peril, there's no contest. Dresden Files #3 is where it the magic happens. (You may groan.)
With another in media res opening, Jim Butcher plunges us back into the Dresdenverse while simultaneously expanding it even further: Knights of the…
Can we take a moment to bask in how far the Dresden Files, as a series, has come? From its humble beginnings in Storm Front, this urban fantasy series about a Chicago wizard/private detective has become my golden standard for urban fantasy. Over the course of 13 books, the Dresdenverse has expanded from wizards and sorcerers to an epic mythology comprising monsters and magical beings of all kinds—and its characters, plots, and themes…
Proven Guilty is probably my favourite Dresden Files novel my second-favourite Dresden Files novel, after Small Favor. It has almost all of my favourite parts of the Dresdenverse in it: Murphy, the Carpenters, Faerie, and sticking it to the White Council. Jim Butcher manipulates the relationships he's developed over the past seven books to play on motifs of love, family, and temptation. If Dead Beat showed us how much Harry has changed, Proven…
When I began re-reading White Night, I wondered why I had previously given it five stars. The plot didn't sound very interesting from the description on the dust jacket; it certainly didn't compare to Proven Guilty, which is now my gold standard of Dresden. Had I slipped into an alternate universe where I mistakenly gave out five star ratings to four star books?
Turns out, no, I was still in my universe…
When I re-read a book I've already reviewed, I tend to write a new review to reflect how my opinion of the book has changed with a second reading. In this case, my opinion hasn't changed much. If anything, my admiration of Small Favor has increased. I stand by my original review, and I recommend you read that for my full thoughts on this book.
Some addenda though.
…
As with my review of Small Favor, I will refer you to my first review for this book. I'm not even going to add many notes, because I like my original review that much, and I doubt I could improve upon it significantly.
The only thing I have to say is that re-reading the series in quick succession has given me a better context in which to appreciate Turn…
The title of this book, breaking as it does Jim Butcher's pattern of two words of equal length for each previous title in the Dresden Files, says it all. There are definitely changes; as such, the spoiler warning here is not to be taken lightly.
If you haven't read the book and at all plan to read it, turn back now.
So it's just me, the people who have read it, and the people…
Let us take a moment to look back at how far Harry Dresden has come from busting a sorcerer in Storm Front. Since then, he has started a war between the wizards and Red Court vampires; he has killed a faerie queen and prevented a war between the Summer and Winter courts; he has been offered the mantle of Winter Knight and picked up the Blackened Denarius of Fallen Angel Lasciel. Last time we…
Vampires on the set of a porno! Vampires who feed through sex rather than blood, no less! And one of them is Harry's half-brother.
Yeah, that's right. I dropped a major S-bomb in the third sentence of the review. You see that spoiler alert? I don't fool around with those things. Deal with it.
Speaking of dropping bombs, Jim Butcher does that a lot in Blood Rites. As with Death Masks, the story…
I'm discovering that it's almost impossible to review a Dresden Files book without resorting to spoilers. So many awesome things happen that trying to discuss the book without mentioning them would be a severe handicap to any review. Death Masks is no different in that respect. After Summer Knight put the fate of the world on Harry's shoulders, Death Masks returns to the personal conflicts that embodied the first three books of the series. Once…
Time for another confession: I am unfairly prejudiced against werewolves. Maybe it's because I have an irrational fear of dogs, or maybe it's just the whole icky shapeshifting aspect, but I've never liked werewolf-oriented fantasy. When my favourite supernatural series has a book or episode featuring werewolves, I just don't enjoy it as much. For that reason alone, while my re-reading of Storm Front persuaded me to give it a fourth star, I was…
Returning to the first book in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series is like returning to a favourite vacation spot—one of those cozy ones that are well-known and well-regarded but never very busy for reasons you can't quite figure out. The temperature is just right, the weather is just like you remembered, and you have all the time in the world … to watch Harry get his ass kicked.
Harry Dresden. Those are the only two…
The arc of Codex Alera is certainly proceeding in the proper direction. I liked Furies of Calderon, but I really liked Academ's Fury. Although the plot itself wasn't as inspired and thoughtful as it could have been, it had hints of originality. Where the second book of the Codex Alera truly shines is in its characterization and the difficult themes therein revealed. This isn't just 400 pages of macho "we've got to save…
It took me several years after discovering Jim Butcher to actually read his epic fantasy series, the Codex Alera. It was worth the wait. Furies of Calderon is everything I like in a fantasy series. I'm going to try to avoid comparing the Codex Alera to Butcher's urban fantasy, the Dresden Files. If you're really interested in how they stack up, skip to to the end.
The story takes place in Alera, ruled by First…
A podcast I listen to, Read It and Weep, has developed a metaphor for the films it’s watching during its current season. Movies that are mostly pleasant diversions are soda (or pop as I would call it); movies that require a lot more effort to understand and enjoy are coffee (some are in fact very strong coffee). Like all metaphors this one has its limits, yet my mind kept coming back to it…
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