Dresden Revisited

 Last week, in the interests of mindless entertainment, I decided to re-read books 7-12 of The Dresden Files, which slowly but surely push Harry, Molly, Karen, Butters and the rest of Harry's friends into becoming the figures I believe Butcher intends them to be for the events of Peace Talks, Battle Ground, and beyond. I added Ghost Story and Cold Days to the binge, as well, but having recently re-read Skin Game in preparation for the release of the latest duology, I stopped at that. Not quite up to the emotional impact of Battle Ground at this point. Changes was tough enough. Don't know why I get so wrapped up in the lives of Butcher's characters; good writing, perhaps?

Anyway, that's been my reading life lately.

Storm Front by Jim Butcher

Every so often I get all weepy and sentimental about my old favorite authors and stories, and have to drag their dusty spines off the shelves to re-read. That, after all, is why I acquired such a huge collection; you never know what the mood will strike you to read at 3 AM on a sleepless night.

So, I cracked the figurative cover on the first book in the Harry Dresden series the other night, and got to spend a bit of time with a very old friend.

One of the first things I noticed was how many things the writers, producers and casting agents of the short-lived TV series The Dresden Files got wrong. This may be why it wasn't supported by fans and renewed for a second season on the Sci Fi Channel, though I thought it was delightful in its own right, and would have been a touch anticlimactic if it had simply followed the story line of the novels slavishly.

Harry's detective friend, Karen Murphy, is described in the book as a blonde, not the brunette played by Valerie Cruz. Harry drives a blue, battered Volkswagen, not a Land Rover. Morgan is not an enigmatic and intelligent black man, he's a dull Scottish thug in the books.

Storm Front introduces us to most of the important characters in Butcher's Chicago, including Gentleman Johnny Marcone, the ruthless yet charming ruler of the mundane underworld, Detective Carmichael, Murphy's skeptical sidekick, ace investigative reporter Susan, the pizza-loving faery, Toot, neutral (like the Swiss) bar proprietor MacAnally, and the beautiful yet deadly vampire, Bianca, who runs the elegant brothel, the Velvet Room.

 Note, in the TV series, Harry and Bianca were once romantically involved, in the books Harry discovers Bianca's true form early in the game, and is never fooled by her semblance of humanity after that.

One point of congruence is that in both the novels and the show Harry is on probation with the White Council, wizardry's governing body, for the murder - or self defense killing - of his uncle, Justin Mornay, a black wizard if ever there was one.

Plot summary - People are being murdered with black magic in Chicago. Murphy asks for Harry's help to investigate, but both she and Morgan, as the White Council's representative are not certain that Harry himself isn't the perpetrator. He's also been hired to find a woman's missing husband, and the two cases rapidly become intertwined and knotty.

Skin Game by Jim Butcher

 Harry is forced to leave Demonreach island when Mab arrives and tells him that the parasite infesting his brain will break free, killing him first, then killing all of the people whom he loves afterwards, in just a few days. But...and it's a big one...if he performs one little task for her, she will be happy to effect its removal without all the nasty side effects. Oh, you just soooo know it's not gonna be a fun chore for poor Harry!

As events unfold, Harry discovers that he must repay a debt Mab owes to Nicodemus, one of the Denarians (those who hold the coins containing fallen angels' spirits), by helping him to rob the treasure house of Hades, greek god of the underworld.

As you might suspect from seeing how things tend to go a bit haywire around Harry, nothing really goes according to plan - even when an evil mastermind is the plotter. When Harry and a warlock named Ascher go to pick up a thief (no, not Bilbo) to help with the robbery of the century, the Fomor show up at the party to disrupt things, and Harry manages to take a bullet through the leg when the thugs attack with machine guns - James Bond he ain't.

Later on, when they are trying to get a tissue or blood sample from a human whom the shifter on the team, Goodman Grey, is going to impersonate, Nicodemus wife, Tessa, another Denarian, and her four ghoul companions try to get to the man first, so Harry has to take them on, too. He ends up with a compound fracture of the radius for his troubles, but manages to accomplish the objective - with a bit of collateral damage, unfortunately.

So Nicodemus gathered his associates slowly, and I kept waiting for them to amass the requisite nine members for the quest. Is it allowed to be a quest if it's evil? or if you intend to steal the powerful magical artifact for yourself instead of destroying it? Can we have a ruling from the committee, please?

Aside from all of the intrigue, double-dealing, and action sequences in the book, there are a few key things that occur in the long view. Harry finally gets the chance to get to know Maggie, his and Susan's daughter, and to bond with her. He and Karen openly acknowledge that there's something more meaningful than just friendship between them. Good old Butters steps up to the plate and joins the fight against evil openly. While it seems that Harry will never really get over being tortured by the possibility that he will turn into a monster, given his position as Winter Knight, his friend and former Knight of the Cross, Michael, does manage to talk a little bit of sense into him. Harry also finds an unexpected ally or two in high places...or maybe low places, and acquires some weapons that may help in the fight against the Outsiders.

As much as I hate waiting, this one was worth the time Butcher spent getting it right.

Dresden Files Plot Summaries

I was out on Tor Books' web site and found these wonderful "reviews" of the Dresden Files books. They're completely full of spoilers, so if you're reading the series for the first time, I wouldn't recommend them. However, if you're catching up after a long hiatus, they're great for remembering what has happened before in the series, when Butcher is not writing them fast enough to suit serious fans.

#1 Storm Front
#2 Fool Moon
#3 Grave Peril
Summer Knight #4
Death Masks #5
Blood Rites #6
Dead Beat #7
Proven Guilty #8
White Night #9
Small Favor #10
Turn Coat #11
Changes #12
Ghost Story #13
Cold Days #14

Cold Days by Jim Butcher

Harry Dresden is back - in the flesh this time. After his body is preserved by Demonreach and Mab takes care of his physical rehabilitation (wonderful nod to The Princess Bride in how she does it), it's time for a whole new set of challenges. First he must establish his position as the new Winter Knight with the Winter court. He attends a ball in his "honor" accompanied by his lovely nurse, Sarissa, and confronts the lovely yet treacherouse Maeve and her thugs, acquitting himself well - he survives, anyway, which usually counts as a victory for Harry.

Mab gives Harry his first assignment, to kill her daughter, Maeve. He heads back to Chicago to try to figure out the why and how of it. He visits his old friend, Butter's apartment to gain possession of Bob, the spirit in the skull. Parenthetically, here is where I get a little confused, as I was thinking that Bob was a former wizard being punished by being locked in the skull forever, but here, Butcher defines Bob as being merely a spirit of knowledge locked in the skull for centuries.

Harry then has a less-than-tearful reunion with his half-brother, Thomas, down at the boat (where Harry was killed in the first place), and the two of them head to Demonreach so that Harry can consult the spirit of the island, as well. He learns that Demonreach is actually a prison for a vast number of evil beings, constructed by the legendary Merlin long ago, and that he has been chosen as its Warden. The prison is under attack by forces unknown, and if the attack is successful, all of those Chtulhu-spawn or worse will be loosed upon the world, but even if it isn't, the island's defenses may turn Chicago into Krakatoa gone wild.

There is plenty of good action here, as Harry fights with all of the different forces that want to keep him from accomplishing his various missions; kill Maeve, protect Demonreach, save the world. With the help of his minions like Toot and the pixie warriors, his family and friends such as Thomas, Karen, and Molly, and even his dog, Mouse, Harry mostly bulls his way through most obstacles.

But there's also a great exposition in these pages about the greater battles being fought. All of the crazy things that have happened to Harry, the evils he has fought, through the entire series, have been merely symptoms of the larger conflict, which he is finally made aware of when he visits the Mothers of Summer and Winter, and journeys to the outer reaches of Faerie, where the Outsiders have our world under siege. Yeah, Harry's a grownup now, and it's time for him to finally get a real job.

Ghost Story by Jim Butcher

I have been waiting a long time to find out what happened to Harry Dresden after the stunning finale to Changes. I picked it up for my Nook the day it came out, and managed to hold off a couple of days before reading it, but it kept me awake a couple of nights on a recent vacation, and was all I'd hoped it would be - maybe more. At the end of the last book, Dresden has been shot and killed, his body falling into the chill waters of Lake Michigan.

As Ghost Story opens, Dresden is literally in Limbo, his final destination hasn't yet been determined. He meets with some entities - maybe angelic, maybe just supernatural bureaucrats - one of whom is the ghost of Karen Murphy's Dad, and offered the opportunity to investigate his own murder, as a ghost. On the flip side, if he doesn't find his killer, several people whom Harry loves will die, so it's not much of a choice. Hey, it's called Ghost Story, right? Most of the people he knows aren't able to interact with ghosts without a little help, so his first stop is at the home of Mortimer Lundquist, ectomancer, whom he hopes to recruit or shame into helping him. Morty's house is guarded by the shade of a revolutionary war soldier, Captain Sir Stuart Winchester, and Harry has a hard time convincing Stuart of his bona fides so he can talk to Morty in the first place.

After Morty is finally convinced that it's truly Harry's ghost, and not some inimical impostor, they must meet with Karen Murphy, formerly of the Chicago PD's supernatural crimes investigation unit (she was thrown out for her role in Harry's takedown of the Red Court vampires), and with Molly, Harry's former apprentice. Karen and Molly are both pretty torn up about Harry's death, for what appear to be obvious and similar reasons. They take some convincing, as well, but eventually get on board with the investigation.

Along the way, Harry does a lot of guilt-tripping about his role in Susan's death, and the ramifications of his having done whatever it took to rescue his daughter from the Red Court, which has caused a power imbalance in Chicago, with all the nasty players competing for unprotected territory. One of the somewhat small-time bad guys is a wizard who controls a small gang of teenagers (like Fagan's boys) whom he sends to attack Karen's house, spraying the neighborhood with automatic weapons fire. Not totally unexpectedly, Harry develops a soft spot for one of the kids, who is actually able to hear Harry's disembodied voice, and decides he must rescue the group from their "master."

There's also an extremely powerful necromancer-type who is gathering multitudes of ghosts and sending them to attack Morty, for some odd reason. After several failed attempts, where Harry and Stuart join forces, the evil minions finally succeed in breaking through the defenses, and abduct the ectomancer. So, to further delay solving his murder, Harry has to undertake a rescue mission as well.

Molly seems to have gone a touch crazy after Harry's death, adopting the persona of the Rag Lady, a shadowy figure known for killing minor villains, and leaving them with a strip of cloth (from the shredded clothing Harry wore in the battle against the Red Court) in their mouths. Karen, as a former LEO, has a big problem with this, but she isn't certain that Molly is to blame. Harry believes that he failed to prepare Molly adequately for the event of his demise, and tracks her down for some lengthy conversations.

Ghost Story moves right along, with plenty of action, and a ton of surprises. When I came to the point of the big reveal - Who Killed Harry? - I was absolutely floored. I'd suspected pieces of the puzzle, but had no idea what really happened that day. Great stuff, and it looks like we'll see more Dresden Files stories in the future.

Side Jobs by Jim Butcher

One thing that irritates me is when an author repackages previous works and the publisher markets them very slickly as new. I've only been bitten a couple of times, because I've read so much SF that I nearly always have to read a bit of a "new" book out at the store to make sure that I haven't read it before. I managed to avoid buying the repackaged Vorkosigan adventures like Young Miles; Miles, Microbes and Mayhem, etc. With Side Jobs, I only got burned a little bit. I very seldom buy theme anthologies, as it seems to me they often package one or two good stories by recognized authors with a bunch of drivel by newbies or second-raters. I recently picked up a copy of Mean Streets, which contained The Warrior - a story that appears again in this collection by Butcher. So, all but one of a dozen or so were new to me.

If you're a big Dresden fan, you'll probably do the same thing I did (and at least one other fan I know), which is to read the last story in the book first. It's called Aftermath, and it's told from Karrin Murphy's point of view, taking place in the hours after Harry's disappearance/death? at the conclusion of Changes. While it reveals nothing new about Harry's fate (oops, spoiler, sorta), it does teach us some new things about Karrin and Harry's other friends.

The stories are varied, in length and theme. Some are whimsical, light numbers, and others are darker and more revealing. Even Butcher's very first Dresden story, never before published, and which he decries as being unpolished and amateurish, is worth reading. In these "out-takes" we learn a lot more about Billy and his werewolves, Karrin Murphy, Harry's brother Thomas, and his apprentice, Molly.

McAnnally and his beer are featured in a couple of the stories. In one, a grendelkin makes off with a keg of beer from a brewers' competition, as well as a sacrificial virgin. We get to know Gard, Marcone's Valkyrie, quite a bit better in this tale. In the other, worshipers of forgotten gods add a little extra magical kick to a few cases of Mac's, and try to get a little Bacchanalian revel going at a Bulls game. Harry manages to save the fair maiden and kick some dragon-ish tail - just another day's work.

If you've been following these stories about Harry from other editors' releases, you might not want to spend the money on this one. But if you haven't paid for the anthologies, then this is a good bit of Dresden apocrypha for your collection.

Mean Streets, by Jim Butcher et. al.

Actually, my wife picked up this collection of four novellas at Hastings when she was between books. She's a Harry Dresden fan, but I don't think she enjoyed the rest of the book all that much.

In The Warrior, Butcher gives us an out-take on Harry and his friend, Michael. Michael was injured to the point of not being able to continue as the holder of Amoracchius, the blessed sword, any more, in an earlier Dresden novel. Harry becomes aware that someone is threatening Michael and his family in order to take possession of the sword, of which Harry is the custodian.

When Harry confronts the culprit, the action goes about as one would expect, but there are some interesting revelations about the story arc, and about Harry's true place in the scheme of things - read God's Plan. A good vignette to fill in some details.

I'm not a big fan of the Nightside series by Simon Green, though I own and have read the first novel. Green, via Taylor, is trying to be just a little too smarmy and cute with his tales of the evil that lurks in the hearts of men and in the Nightside, but if you like this series, you'll probably enjoy the additional glimpses it offers into this world.

I do, however, love the Greywalker novels by Kat Richardson, and the short story included here about Harper Blaine's quest to place an odd dog statue on a man's grave in Mexico was definitely interesting. I don't know how much of the detail provided about the Mexican Day of the Dead was accurate, but if it was, it's another bit of trivia to tuck away in my brain. Harper's ability to talk with the dead comes in handy, and she ends up putting some old injustices right.

I'd never heard of Thomas E. Sniegosky before, but I may just have to pick up his Remy Chandler books and give them a try. Remy is a fallen angel who masquerades as a human private eye. He's dragged into investigating the murder of Noah (yes, that Noah) by a group of fallen angels called the Grigori, whom he is not all that fond of.

There's an interesting (highly heretical) retelling of the story of the biblical Flood here, and I found the entire premise amusing.

A good collection, all in all.

Small Favor, by Jim Butcher

(great plot synopsis here) Small Favor picks up Harry's story a few months after White Knight. An early winter has settled on Chicago, and all of the action seems to take place in snowdrifts, adding some fun logistics and mishaps to the plot. Things begin with a bit of a triple threat; Harry is attacked by gruffs, minions of Summer, visited by Mab, Queen of Winter, and called to a bizarre crime scene by Karrin Murphy, which turns out to be the site of John Marcone, crime lord's, kidnapping by forces unknown, or perhaps merely unidentified at present.

Of course, nothing is really coincidence when it comes to Harry's life, and we begin to learn how things tie together pretty rapidly. From previous events in the series, Harry owes Mab two favors, and she's calling one in now (hence the title), requiring him to find and recover Marcone, and the attack by Summer is just a necessary response to Winter's appointing Harry its Emissary.

It becomes apparent fairly quickly that the Denarians are the ones behind Marcone's kidnapping, despite a significant number of folks within the organized crime community who would more obviously benefit from his removal. Any time the Denarians are involved, you can bet things are going to get twisty - layers upon layers of twisty. If I told you all of the plot twists, it would remove too much fun of discovering things for yourself.

I will say, however, that not all of the truly twisty plots are fully resolved in this book, so Butcher's setting Harry up for way more fun in future novels.There's a fun reference in the book to the story of the Billy Goats Gruff - remember them battling the trolls under the bridge? The gruffs attacking Harry somewhat resemble
bipedal billy goats on steroids. When he defeats the first set, then the "big brothers" of those gruffs show up for the next attack, and when he survives that attack, the "bigger brothers," and so forth, with a fun little twist when the biggest baddest brother of all shows up.

This book reunites just about all of Harry's friends from previous books, with a few notable exceptions, and it's interesting to see how Butcher manages the interactions between them. The book has some great wizardly battles as well as physical ones, and Harry gets to know himself and his friends a bit better than before, as well as gaining some unexpected talents of his own. As always, Butcher left me wanting more.

Changes, by Jim Butcher

I've been looking forward to the latest in the Dresden Files series for quite a while, and it doesn't disappoint. Butcher doesn't mess around setting the scene; on the first page his ex-girlfriend Susan shows up to tell him that the Red Court vampires have kidnapped their daughter. Since Harry had no idea that he and Susan had a child, you can imagine what a shock this is. Before it's quite worn off, Susan and her sidekick, Martin, of the anti-vampire Fellowship, and Harry are off to burglarize the offices of the local branch of the Red Court, seeking information. The bad guys blow up the entire building to keep them from succeeding, and we're off and running with the action.
Harry attempts to enlist the help of the White Council, but they're unwilling to get involved in confronting the vampires, as the vamps have recently sent an envoy to propose a peace treaty. Supporting Harry in his quest might disrupt that fragile process. Of course, Harry has other allies, such as his apprentice, Molly, policewoman Karen Murphy, Soldier of the Cross Sanya, Father Forthill, and a few connections in the land of Faerie, so he begins to gather them to help rescue his child.
He's pursued by assassins from the Red Court, and faces nightmarish creatures summoned out of Mayan legend as he tries to find out where the vampires have taken his daughter. What starts out appearing to be simple revenge against Harry for killing one of their nobles rapidly begins to take on more global application. Harry is forced to make some choices he's long avoided, and bargain with beings far too powerful to cheat, in order to succeed.
Well-plotted, lots of action, a good ride throughout. My only gripe is that Butcher leaves us with a cliff-hanger ending, and I'm not sure what he intends to do with Harry next.