Turn Coat

In a world where magic is secretly all around us and an entire kingdom of dark, supernatural elements live in realms both parallel and beneath Chicago, one man is fool enough to stand against his allies to defend his foes … wait, what?  It seems that that turns out to be the plotline of the latest volume in The Dresden Files series.  In Turn Coat, Harry finds a battered version of his long-time antagonist, the Warden Morgan, at his door looking for help and asylum.  It turns out that the White Council is hunting him down for the murder of one of their senior members.  Hmm, turn the man in who spent years trying to have him killed and be a hero, or hide him away and undertake the task of proving Morgan innocent without getting his own head lain on the chopping block (literally).  Tough decision.

It turns out that despite Morgan having been found standing over the victim holding the murder weapon and having recently gotten a bank deposit of several million dollars into his account, Dresden opts to give him the benefit of the doubt.  And in the process of trying to gather evidence in Morgan’s favor, Harry finds himself facing off with White Court vampires, White Council wizards, an army of men in gray suits, a skinwalker (one hell of a powerful and scary immortal creature, believe you me), and an island (you’ll have to read it to understand it).  In the scuffles that ensue, there are no shortage of casualties on the home team – both physical and otherwise.  But the prize at the end of the day is the posibility of revealing the identity of one of the members of the “Black Council”.

As usual, Harry manages to pull a lot of aces from the deck from which he is dealt (which is generally stacked against him) and manages to shake up the status quo with his own personal flare.  But I have to say the Jim Butcher went above bar with this one.  Turn Coat is one of the most exciting volumes of this series I’ve read to date – I got it for Father’s Day and finished it last night (that may not seem like much, but for me it is – I don’t read fast).  I don’t know what I’m going to read now that I’m up to date on the series.  I may have to see how Butcher fairs with his pure fantasy series.

Small Favor

In this book, the tenth in The Dresden Files series, Harry finds himself facing down some surprisingly powerful new foes as well as some incredibly powerful but familiar ones.  And as usual he has to get through the day using a blend of cunning planning, quick thinking, and deadly improvisation.  But this time around, not everyone comes out the other side unscathed (well … I guess it’s not like everyone does any of the other times either).

In Small Favor, it is about a year after the events of White Night and things are going well – Molly has been progressing well with her training, The Para-net has been very successful, and Harry has even learned some new tricks by virtue of his own tutelage.  But it seems neither court of the Sidhe are content to let him rest for long and it seems that Murphy brings him a case that has fallen angels written all over it.  Through the course of dealing with these issues, he manages to take down a handful of gruffs (large, strong fairy creatures that look like, well, bipedal goats), an obscene number of hobs (violent monkey-ish creatures that are adverse to light), and a half a dozen Denarians – all without using a lick of fire.  And while Harry rarely goes through these things alone, this time around he calls in almost the entire Scooby gang – Molly, Michael, Murphy, Thomas, Kincaid, the Archive, Luccio and the wardens, as well as several of Marcone’s associates (since it seems that it is Marcone playing the part of damsel in distress this time around … again) – he also ends up getting some unlikely and unique forms of help along the way.

In the end, Harry hands the bad guys their collective asses and gets the girl (for real – on multiple levels).  And while a certain Knight of the cross finds himself compromised, an unexpected candidate becomes apparent.  If you’ve read the series up to this book, this volume is a must-read.  If you’ve stopped some number of bookx back, catch up.  If you’ve read this already, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

I’d like to note that (in case you hadn’t noticed) I’d gotten into a pattern of doing book reviews on Wednesdays.  Unfortunately this one will likely be the last one for a while.  I have yet to even pick up book 11 (I’m cheap) nonetheless read any of it (btw, if you want to get it for me as a birthday present – it is called Turn Coat by Jim Butcher and my birthday is in mid July).  I also haven’t picked up anything else to read, so this column will be shelved for a while.  I’ll try to fill in the gap somehow, but likely by starting some other regular pattern (say on Tuesdays) so this slot can remain open.