The ninth book of The Dresden Files sees Jim Butcher use his first major flashback scene of the series. It’s a technique that Butcher doesn’t use often, but it’s very effective in this case. Harry has never been the cheeriest of souls, but he’s definitely been affected by the stress of the previous tales, enough that his friends are noticing and are getting worried about … Continue reading White Night (Jim Butcher) book review

The eighth book of The Dresden Files moves back to a smaller scale after the apocalyptic trimmings of Dead Beat. The book focuses on the relationships Harry has with Murphy and with the Carpenter family, whilst Harry investigates the odd murders occurring at a horror convention. I mention in my review of Dead Beat that the Dresden books aren’t horrors; this is especially true of … Continue reading Proven Guilty (Jim Butcher) book review

Returning to my read-through of The Dresden Files before the next book gets published… The Dresden Files aren’t horror stories, despite the trappings of vampires, zombies and the odd occasional evil spirit. They’re very firmly rooted in the Urban Fantasy tradition, drawing a lot from the hard-boiled detective stories, although with a level of world-building that most writers can only envy. However, Dead Beat, the … Continue reading Dead Beat (Jim Butcher) review

Love and family are important themes in the sixth book of The Dresden Files and are brought into sharp juxtaposition with the setting for much of the story: the set of a pornographic movie. Much of the action revolves around Harry tracking down the source of a curse that is killing several of the actresses in the production, while the White Court vampires show an … Continue reading Blood Rites (Jim Butcher) book review

The fifth book of The Dresden Files is a damn good book. Two major plots wind their way through the book: a hunt for the Shroud of Turin, and a duel with one of the major vampires of the Red Court, but it is the character interactions that make me like this one so much. Butcher is primarily dealing with the themes of temptation and … Continue reading Death Masks (Jim Butcher) book review

The fourth book in The Dresden Files does not quite reach the heights that the third and fifth books do, but it is still a worthy book. Harry is not in a good place as the book begins, still reeling from the events of Grave Peril (and this almost a year later), and things get steadily worse for our hero as the book commences. From … Continue reading Summer Knight (Jim Butcher) book review

And this is where it gets good. Grave Peril, the third book in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series, starts about a year after the events of Fool Moon. It’s rather worth emphasising that point: this book takes place a year after the last one. Many series like packing as much events into a short space of time as possible. This is not the case in … Continue reading Grave Peril (Jim Butcher) book review