#184 Jim Butcher : Summer Knight (Dresden Files #4)

[bellinghman]

Jim Butcher : Summer Knight (Dresden Files #4)

Paperback: 416 pages
Publisher: Orbit (6 Oct 2005)
ISBN-10: 1841494011
ISBN-13: 978-1841494012
Category(ies): Fantasy

The fourth in the series, the main secondary character of the previous volume, Michael Carpenter, has disappeared again. But trouble hasn't. The fallout of the previous book was a war between the Vampires and the Wizards, and Dresden is held responsible for it by the Wizard White Council. However, a bigger war, one between the Summer and Winter courts of Faerie is about to erupt, and if that happens, it could lead to a new ice age. And one side has engaged Dresden to uncover the causes.

So, no shortage of jeopardy there.

What I do like about Butcher's world is that he's got a well researched, consistent and (for fantasy) plausible setup. It's a little annoying on occasion because he sometimes can't help needling the rationalists of the world (after all, within his scenario, they are wrong), but apart from that, his world is internally consistent. What, or rather who, I do find annoying though is Morgan, the Council's agent in Dresden's probation, a man who basically loathes Dresden and wants him dead.

Butcher writes smooth and far-from-copycat fantasy. This is another in a good series.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I think Morgan's perspective is pretty justified, filtering for Harry's narrative voice and being more than a little of a jerk, except for a couple of specific scenes in this book, and considering how much this particular one is Harry recovering from being pretty much shattered by the end of the last one, giving Morgan a little space for being upset by his loss seems reasonable to me.

From Morgan's POV after all, Harry's a black magician who got off a deserved death sentence, has been flouting White Council policy on anonymity ever since, and has admitted to consciously choosing to start a war.

I didn't find the lack of Michael an issue, as he's clearly set up as someone who gets involved or not at the orders of a higher power that moves in mysterious ways; I rather like the narrative being so sympathetic to Harry's not seeing eye-to-eye with said higher power even given absolute proof of its existence. Fwiw, the thing that minorly fails for me in this one is the shift between the Senior Council stuff and the bit with the Faerie Queens. It's also the point in the series where the solutions to the mysteries stop being IMO overly obvious.