Customer Reviews

Wizard By Trade (Summer Knight & Death Masks, The Dresden Files 4 & 5)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This volume contains two very good but oh-so-different stories that represent Butcher at his finest up to that point. His books get better with every one he publishes.

Summer Knight is the almost light-hearted story about how Dresden gets caught up in a power-struggle between the two faerie courts. The plot is original and off-beat and gives Murphy a much more active role than she's had before in the battle between good and evil. The final battle, surreal as it is, makes you feel like you're there. And, in true Butcher style, you have to break off from reading some very tense passages in order to laugh, either at something Harry has to say or at some insanely clever and amusing new twist.

Death Masks is an altogether darker work, focusing on demons rather than faeries. The end of the world is once more a very real possibility (when is it NOT if Harry Dresden has to get involved) and to make matters worse for Harry, Susan Rodrigez is back on the scene. Let the angst begin! Harry makes some new friends, fights alongside some old ones, and has his life changed forever by when he makes a split-second decision to protect a child.

Butcher keeps getting better, as he proves with every successive novel. Summer Knight and Death Masks show a decided improvement over earlier works (although Death Masks contains what I consider a needless and overly-graphic sex scene that I can't even call a "love scene"). Reading these made me impatient to see what Butcher would have for us next.

This is a special edition omnibus of the fourth and fifth books of the Dresden files--available only from the Science Fiction Book Club or second hand.

Bad things are happening in the world of wizards, vampires and faeries -- and Harry Dresden is right in the thick of it.

And "Wizard By Trade (Summer Knight & Death Masks)" brings together two more gritty urban fantasies, from the point in the series when Butcher's series really took off. There are vampires, werewolves, faeries, demons, holy knights and a wisecracking wizard stuck in the middle of it all, as well as some strong plot arcs in the wizard world.

In "Summer Knight," the wizard council is considering handing Harry over to the vampires as a peace offering, and his only chance is to solve a mystery for Queen Mab. Someone killed the Summer Knight and stole his power. Soon Harry is neck-deep in nasty faerie creatures from the Nevernever, and a conspiracy that lies at the very heart of the faerie realm.

"Death Masks" sees Harry enmeshed in three different problems -- a vampire nobleman has challenged him to a duel, a Vatican priest is asking him to find the stolen Shroud of Turin, and his demi-vampire ex-girlfriend Susan has returned to Chicago. As Harry tries to stay alive and solve the case, he finds that a gang of ancient demons called the Denarians are after the Shroud -- and possibly his soul.

Jim Butcher's got the hard-boiled noir thing down, even in modern Chicago -- dark rainy streets, femme fatales (some literally!), and some literally fiery climaxes to Harry's adventures. This is where the series really took off after a round of fun but not brilliant urban fantasies, introducing new layers to the character and a massive Wizards Vs. Vampires war.

His writing strikes a nice balance between stripped-down, snappy prose ("I don't believe in fairies!"), and moments of haunting horror (the death of one of the holy knights). But Butcher also knows how to inject some dark humor and action, such as Thomas Raith showing up drunk to a duel, wearing a Buffy the Vampire Slayer T-shirt. Just find THAT in most other vampire books.

And Harry goes through some massive growing pains in these books -- he has a guilt-inspired meltdown, encounters two ex-girlfriends, and finds himself being blamed for an entire WAR. We also learn more about the wizard society, Michael Carpenter and his fellow Holy Knights (especially sweet Shiro), and the cast is rounded out nicely by pervy skull-spirit Bob, feisty cop Murphy, and the ethereally amoral fairies.

"Wizard By Trade (Summer Knight & Death Masks)" collects the books where the Dresden Files really starts getting brilliant -- a solid, complex double dose of noir-fantasy. Hell's bells!

Great stories about a modern day private-eye wizard. Sort of a common "every-man" who happens to have magical powers, and really interesting friends AND enemies.

A fun read on every level.

This is an omnibus collection of the novels 'Summer Knight' and 'Death Masks,' and I believe that I can sum them up together. Unfortunately.

I'll begin by saying that I really love the premise and writing style that Butcher has presented, where magic exists in modern times and then provides a huge collection of creatures and beings that use/manipulate these forces. Harry Dresden's observations in particular usually elicit a chuckle or two as the absurdity of some of the situations he finds himself in, where his sarcasm butts up against the noir-ish aspects of the story.

The "unfortunate" part comes in in that Harry rarely has anything to do with the story in question - meaning that he doesn't REALLY do anything himself to further the story. Sure, lots of crazy things happen to him, but it is becoming tiresome after 5 novels of the same plotting: 1) Harry gets hired to do something he really shouldn't be doing, 2) Harry comes in contact with some female from his past that is going to be Bad Business and then 3) lots of bad things happen to Harry but somehow it all ends up working out for him.

Add into this the fact that he spends the better part of the story beat up, tired and generally "off his game" and I almost think that the stories would be better served being described by another character - one that would be involved in furthering the plot vice just being affected by it.

I will say that 'Summer Knight' seemed to suffer from what I described above significantly more than 'Death Masks,' but in both stories I started to wonder if the rest of the series was going to suffer from the same sort of plotting. As I own the other two current omnibus editions, I will certainly find out.