Skin Game

Skin Game by Jim Butcher is the 15th book in The Dresden Files series.

For a quick recap, Harry Dresden is a wizard for hire. Look him up in the Chicago Yellow Pages. Magic is real. Ghosts are real. Fairies are tall, so beautiful it’s almost painful to look at them, and are so divorced from mortals that they seem evil. All the gods you’ve ever heard of are real. All the things that go bump in the night are real too…

In this book Harry is forced to work with some of his enemies to pull a bank job with a difference!

I love Harry Dresden and I love The Dresden Files. The books are always fast and furious, sometimes a little predictable, but in a good way, and ultimately really fun. I think every book has also had moments that have been genuinely emotional and inspirational.

If you liked the previous books you will love this. If Harry Dresden is not your kind of guy, there is something wrong with you… 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Cold Days…

Cold Days is the latest book in The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher.

So Harry is alive again and now he’s the Winter Knight. The enforcer for Mab, the crazy queen of the Winter Fairies. Maybe staying dead was the better option. So what’s the first thing Mab orders Harry to do? Kill an immortal, whilst fighting an army of other-worldly beings, all the time trying to keep his friends safe and prevent Chicago from being leveled. Another day in the office for Harry Dresden.

I must admit this was a little struggle for me at first. The characters of Repairman Jack, Felix Castor and Harry Dresden have all merged in my head. Coming back to Harry confused me at times because I expected a different pattern of behavior from him, only to realize I was thinking about how one of the characters from one of the other authors would react. Once I got locked into Harry-mode, it was all guns blazing.

The pattern is very similar to the other books in the series. There are predictable story lines you can see from a mile off, with a number of curve balls thrown in along the way. There were definitely a few OMG moments in this book. Especially towards the end. I’m looking forward to the next book to see how some of this pans out. I can tell you now, Harry is going to have some serious ear-ache from some of his best friends!

Cheers

Tim…

The Dresden Files: Ghost Story…

Ghost Story is the latest book in The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher.

Spoiler Alert. Don’t read on if you are currently reading the series and haven’t got to this book yet. It’s hard to talk about the book without doing a bit of a spoiler.

 

At the end of the last book Harry Dresden died. At the start of this book he comes back as a ghost and is sent back to Chicago to help his friends. The fact that there is another book planned makes you think one of two things are going to happen.

  1. He will be so successful as a ghost version of himself he will be able to carry on in that capacity.
  2. He will somehow be ressurected.

This book is more predictable than any of the other books in the series, but that’s not a bad point. The outcomes of certain situations are predictable, but the journeys to those outcomes are far from predictable, which is half the fun. You are sitting there thinking, I know how this is meant to pan out, but how the hell is he going to get there? 🙂

It was a great story, and well deserving of its place in the series. I’ve now got a really long wait for the next book (Cold Days) to be released. 🙁

Cheers

Tim…

The Dresden Files: Side Jobs

Side Jobs is a collection of short stories about characters from The Dresden Files series. Many of the stories have been published previously on the internet or in anthologies, so it’s not really new.

It’s kinda hard to describe the book because it contains a mix of stories of varying length and quality. Some are very weak and could be removed from the book at no loss. A couple are very good and show the characters they reference in a new light. One of the things with The Dresden Files series is it is all from the perspective of Harry, so you only know as much about other characters as Harry does. Some of these stories are told from other characters perspectives, so that quite literally changes your view point considerably.

If you are a Dresden fan I’m sure you’ll love it. If not, you will probably do well to avoid it.

BTW. The last story in the book takes place between the end of the Changes and the soon to be released Ghost Story. It kind of revved me up and got me exited about the new release again.

Cheers

Tim…

The Dresden Files: Changes…

Oh my word. What an intense book. Jim Butcher threw just about everything at you with this one. I think Changes is probably my favorite of The Dresden Files series because it kinda brings everything together from all the other books. It feels very much like it should be the last book in the series, but there is definitely another on the way, so I guess we will see how that works out later in the year…

Cheers

Tim…