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.
In case you haven’t been keeping up, Harry Dresden – the same that has been on watch by the White Council for years – is now a Warden. It seems the war with the Red Court (a particularly powerful brand of vampires) has hit the wizard justice league pretty hard and run their numbers thin. So now Harry is charged with protecting the citizenry of Chicago and the surrounding region from supernatural threats … officially (he has been doing so the whole time anyway, now he just has jurisdiction). But wearing that grey cloak is not a simple charge and as usual there are those who would see him fail.