Review: Turn Coat by Jim Butcher

This is the lastest novel in the Dresden Files series featuring the wizard private eye Harry Dresden. More so than some of the other books in this series, this one is aimed at people who have been keeping up with the series, thought you could still enjoy it if you aren't as familiar with all the characters here and their relationships.

It starts out with a bang and keeps the momentum going. As I've said before, Butcher does a good job of keeping the tension building in these books. The Warden Morgan, who has been a long-time thorn in Dresden's side, shows up on Dresden's doorstep asking for shelter and help in clearing his name. Morgan has been accused of murdering a senior member of the White Council, the big collective of wizards that set and enforce the rules about magical behavior that mortals must follow.

In keeping with his character but struggling against his personal feelings toward Morgan, Dresden agrees to help out. And because lately Butcher feels compelled to throw everything and the kitchen sink from his setting into each story, the novel brings in the White Court of the vampires in addition to involving the White Council. And Butcher shows that his monster-building chops are still sharp by bringing a really scary skinwalker into the story. This isn't a Navajo witch-style skinwalker so much as it is one of the ancestral, supernatural beings that inspired such creatures.

The novel brings about some significant changes for Dresden's relationship with Warden Morgan and Warden Anastasia Luccio, as well as a potentially big transformation for Dresden's vampire half-brother Thomas. Dresden also establishes a sort of psychic bond with an unexpected entity, perhaps filling the void left behind by the fragment of a fallen angel with whom he shared his consciousness for a couple books.

Dresden's police detective buddy Karin Murphy isn't in the book much. We get some more insight into the different senior members of the White Council and more hints, though pretty vague ones, about the supposed Black Council conspiracy that Dresden has been trying to convince people about for the past few books. At least he gets some people to agree with him this time around.

I admit that at times Butcher's tendency to bring all the various factions together in a single place for major battle royales gets a little familiar. It's as though he's a action-film director whose movie budgets keep increasing, letting him stage bigger and bigger blockbuster finales. There is a good shapechanging duel in this clash, however.

Another book that I felt compelled to finish in a few days. Not a good place for those new to the series to jump in, but a good mix of action and character development. If it is formulaic in places, it is a reliable formula.

Review: Small Favor

My latest Dresden Files read is the recent novel Small Favor. This one finds Harry unwillingly called upon to pay off one of his debts to the Winter Queen Mab, acting as her Emissary to retrieve the kidnapped gangster Marcone--one of the longest running characters in the series and someone for whom Harry has grudging respect but no real love.

But, in what has become increasingly common in the later novels of the series, the supposed premise isn't really what the novel ends up being about. It's much more about the Knights of the Cross, the demonic Denarians, and the Archive, as well as Harry's relationships with all three. Sure, an unnatural winter hangs over Chicago during the course of the story, and Marcone's henchmen and his special Valkyrie-like bodyguard play a role. But we're mainly dealing with recurring themes of faith, temptation, and the personal challenges of trying to maintain friendships and especially trust when all around you are powers that can warp human minds to their will.

In particular, there are some interesting twists with relationships. There's a hint of a sort of pseudo-family composed of certain characters being a possibility for the future, and it's surprising. There's also a new love interest for Harry--not a new character, actually, but a new (and to me unexpected) perspective on an old one.

As usual, there are a few elements to the plot that are a bit convenient. Not unbelievable, per se, but the bad guys could not have realistically anticipated that certain actions of theirs would lead to the outcomes that they do when they set their plans in motion, yet some of their plans seem predicated on these unpredictable outcomes taking place. But as usual the pacing of the action is fast enough, the humor reliable enough, and the sense of concern for interesting and likable characters palpable enough to keep you reading until late in the night without worrying too much over occasional dramatic conveniences.

Now I think I'm going to take a break before reading the latest book in the series, as this is the third or fourth Dresden novel I've devoured in the last month.

Review: Deluge of Dresden

Recently I've been reading books in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. Our library is missing a couple of the books in the series and the others are often on hold, but I saw the 8th book in the series, Proven Guilty, sitting on the shelves when I took the kids to my local branch a couple weeks ago. I grabbed it, went and bought the 7th book in the series, Dead Beat, at my local bookstore, the Rediscovered Bookshop (a great store that I highly recommend to anyone living in or passing through the Boise area). I even got a discount on the purchase because we'd bought enough books over the past year for our buyer's credit to kick in.

I devoured the 7th book and was halfway through the 8th when I saw the 9th book, White Night, sitting on the library shelf. I checked that out and finished the 8th book and read the 9th while at a cabin by the Payette River in Garden Valley, Idaho. I came home for a day to take care of my lawn and dropped off some books--only to spot the 10th book in the series, Small Favor, on the library shelves. I grabbed that and started it this morning.

I have to think that there's some good karma involved in the timing of all of this, or at least some hints that I should be reading the series.

As for the books themselves, it's a pleasant series in that (a) Butcher has become a better writer as the series has gone on, and he was an enjoyable writer to begin with, and (b) each novel manages to be fairly self-contained while rewarding the readers who have kept up with the continuity. There are recurring characters and threats, questions seeded in one book to be paid off in the next, and an overarching, shadowy menace that began to appear in the series around book 7 (I think).

By this point Butcher is better able to pull off contemplative moments of introspection or observation than he was at the beginning of the series. He's also invested more words and energy into adding depth to his wide cast of characters. He's become particularly adept at making his recurring villains interesting and even sympathetic at times while not losing sight of the awfulness of the crimes that many of them have committed. (I think Butcher has been much more successful at keeping a balanced perspective on this issue of making evil characters fascinating without suddenly deciding that they are really okay at heart than the writers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer did in its final two seasons, where they simply looked the other way with characters like Spike and pretended they had suddenly redeemed themselves because the audience was enamored with them.) Butcher has also really pushed his characters into gray areas between purely good and purely evil, though there are still some characters who represent each moral extreme. It creates a nice continuum.

For me Butcher's calling card is his penchant for constantly increasing the crisis factor throughout the course of a novel, a tactic that would wear thin if it weren't for the frequent injections of humor into the dialogue and Dresden's self-reflections. He also makes his heroes pay a price for their heroism, which makes their sacrifices more meaningful and satisyfing than the typical action hero fare.

As for the magic and such that Butcher describes, sometimes I'm engrossed by it, but often it falls a little flat or repetitive in the actual execution, to be honest. Except for the one or two occasions in a given novel where the wizard Harry Dresden actually casts a ritual spell, which are typically well done and flavorful, the effect of most of the magic wielded by Dresden and his cohorts doesn't seem very, well . . . magical. It just feels like special effects, big blasts of energy and defensive shields, sort of like comic book superheroes dropped into an urban fantasy setting.

On the other hand, the monsters and faeries and spirits and evil magicians and assorted supernatural factions that Butcher introduces into the stories are typically a real treat, building over the course of the series into a very interesting setting full of many varied and often unpredictable characters who provide many sources of conflict and entertainment. It's good stuff that doesn't get dumped on the reader at first glance but develops over time as Dresden comes into contact with different groups and beasties.

I actually suspect that this approach makes the books more accessible to a broad audience, because even if you don't follow the rationale for the magic at first, you can still follow most of what is going on in the action sequences. And Butcher usually has at least one excellent action set piece in each novel, though the best ones are not always in the climactic scenes.

Throw in his increasing facility for sketching memorable character traits for the supporting cast and fleshing out the psychology, motivations, and personal sacrifices of the major characters, and it's no wonder Butcher has such a successful series on his hands. Not being a big mystery reader or a fan of the various multi-volume fantasy series that, while well-written, can't seem to satisfactorily end a story in 800 pages, it's rare for me to pursue a series this long without losing interest as the author begins to repeat him or herself or just runs out of steam. So color me impressed with the frequency and consistency of Butcher's Dresden novels.

After book 10 I'll be a little overdosed and happy to get a break before book 11 comes off the library's new books list, but I'm also gradually accumulating my own copies of Dresden Files books that I've already read. That's something I do only when I think an author's work is worth coming back to for enjoyment multiple times.