Summer Knight by Jim Butcher
May. 26th, 2007 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Lost items found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable rates. No Love Potions, Endless Purses, or Other Entertainment.
Ever since his girlfriend left town to deal with her newly acquired taste for blood, Harry Dresden has been down and out. He can't pay his rent. He's alienating his friends. He can't even recall the last time he took a shower. The only professional wizard in the Chicago phone book has become a desperate man.
And just when it seems things can't get any worse, in saunters the Winter Queen of Faerie. She has an offer Harry can't refuse - if he wants to free himself of the supernatural hold his faerie godmother has over him, and hopefully end his run of bad luck. All he has to do is find out who murdered the Summer Queen's right-hand man, the Summer Knight, and clear the Winter Queen's name.
It seems simple enough, but Harry knows better than to get caught in the middle of Faerie politics. Then he finds out that the fate of the entire world rests on his solving this case. No pressure or anything ...
Much of what I have said in my reviews for Stormfront and Fool Moon can be repeated for this review and frankly, after the disasterously convoluted and contrived plot for Grave Peril, it was a relief to see Butcher return to a tried and tested means of writing. Even though there are the same problems of secondary characters being two-dimensional and Dresden being given all the good lines, the story has a pace to it and whilst you can see where the points are going to be joined, Butcher does it with a lot of energy and pace so that you don't mind so much.
In particular I think that Butcher did a much better job of world building in this book than he's done previously. For the first time we're shown how the White Council operates and whilst I was excited by the return of Morgan, it was a tad disappointing to see that a character with a lot of promise in Stormfront has been reduced to a cartoon adversary. However, this is offset by the introduction of a new wizard character - Harry's former mentor, Ebenezar McCoy, who I think is easily one of the best realised of the secondary characters, mainly because Butcher takes care to make him stand up to Harry without coming across as being thick or wilfully blind. The White Council scenes are used to build on the war with the vampires, which has been raging since Grave Peril and Butcher is careful to show the politics at play on the board whilst also tying it into Dresden's own backstory and experience with the Council following his killing of his former mentor Justin. Whilst there's nothing new with the political factions in play, Butcher handles it competently and makes it part of the story.
Also well handled is his realisation of the Faerie world. Butcher returns to this theme of three here (previously seen with his use of three vampire courts, repetition of the number three to bind demons and faeries etc) and we're shown how the Faerie monarchs are split into the Mother the Queen and the Lady who share power between them. I liked the Faerie scenes because whilst the characters themselves were pretty much stock-in-trade, you could see how much thought Butcher had put into thinking about how they operate and then linking in the concept of a mortal Knight as a way of holding the balance of power and governing the way they deal with mortals. Also well realised is the way the balance of power between the Summer and Winter Courts operates - the concept of power shifting on the summer and winter solstices is a simple one but I have never seen it used in fantasy fiction before.
As always, Butcher is at his best when he handles the action scenes and there's a lot of fighting in this book. The end battle is well paced and exciting and my only complaint was with the sacrifice of Meryl, a Changeling who had a lot of potential and who I wish had been given the chance to develop in future books.
The Verdict:
If you're reading the Dresden books, then skip Grave Peril and go straight to this - you'll get a recap of the important events in that book anyway, so you'll be saving yourselves a lot of pain. Otherwise, this is a return to Butcher's popcorn fiction style and if you put aside the character problems, it's an enjoyable enough read with a lot of thought having gone into the world building.
Ever since his girlfriend left town to deal with her newly acquired taste for blood, Harry Dresden has been down and out. He can't pay his rent. He's alienating his friends. He can't even recall the last time he took a shower. The only professional wizard in the Chicago phone book has become a desperate man.
And just when it seems things can't get any worse, in saunters the Winter Queen of Faerie. She has an offer Harry can't refuse - if he wants to free himself of the supernatural hold his faerie godmother has over him, and hopefully end his run of bad luck. All he has to do is find out who murdered the Summer Queen's right-hand man, the Summer Knight, and clear the Winter Queen's name.
It seems simple enough, but Harry knows better than to get caught in the middle of Faerie politics. Then he finds out that the fate of the entire world rests on his solving this case. No pressure or anything ...
Much of what I have said in my reviews for Stormfront and Fool Moon can be repeated for this review and frankly, after the disasterously convoluted and contrived plot for Grave Peril, it was a relief to see Butcher return to a tried and tested means of writing. Even though there are the same problems of secondary characters being two-dimensional and Dresden being given all the good lines, the story has a pace to it and whilst you can see where the points are going to be joined, Butcher does it with a lot of energy and pace so that you don't mind so much.
In particular I think that Butcher did a much better job of world building in this book than he's done previously. For the first time we're shown how the White Council operates and whilst I was excited by the return of Morgan, it was a tad disappointing to see that a character with a lot of promise in Stormfront has been reduced to a cartoon adversary. However, this is offset by the introduction of a new wizard character - Harry's former mentor, Ebenezar McCoy, who I think is easily one of the best realised of the secondary characters, mainly because Butcher takes care to make him stand up to Harry without coming across as being thick or wilfully blind. The White Council scenes are used to build on the war with the vampires, which has been raging since Grave Peril and Butcher is careful to show the politics at play on the board whilst also tying it into Dresden's own backstory and experience with the Council following his killing of his former mentor Justin. Whilst there's nothing new with the political factions in play, Butcher handles it competently and makes it part of the story.
Also well handled is his realisation of the Faerie world. Butcher returns to this theme of three here (previously seen with his use of three vampire courts, repetition of the number three to bind demons and faeries etc) and we're shown how the Faerie monarchs are split into the Mother the Queen and the Lady who share power between them. I liked the Faerie scenes because whilst the characters themselves were pretty much stock-in-trade, you could see how much thought Butcher had put into thinking about how they operate and then linking in the concept of a mortal Knight as a way of holding the balance of power and governing the way they deal with mortals. Also well realised is the way the balance of power between the Summer and Winter Courts operates - the concept of power shifting on the summer and winter solstices is a simple one but I have never seen it used in fantasy fiction before.
As always, Butcher is at his best when he handles the action scenes and there's a lot of fighting in this book. The end battle is well paced and exciting and my only complaint was with the sacrifice of Meryl, a Changeling who had a lot of potential and who I wish had been given the chance to develop in future books.
The Verdict:
If you're reading the Dresden books, then skip Grave Peril and go straight to this - you'll get a recap of the important events in that book anyway, so you'll be saving yourselves a lot of pain. Otherwise, this is a return to Butcher's popcorn fiction style and if you put aside the character problems, it's an enjoyable enough read with a lot of thought having gone into the world building.
