Summer Knight: The Dresden Files, Book 4 (Unabridged) [Audio Download]

I loved this book. I love the series. Harry Dresden is such a wonderful character, with a wry, slightly skewed outlook on life and the ability to look at his own usually critical situation and quietly laugh, even if the laughter might be touched by desperation. The device of seeming to talk to the reader works well for this aspect of Harry's personality. Butcher's short, choppy style suits Harry well, and highlights the best and worst in his characters. I always enjoy the very visual descriptions - I think Butcher creates a series of moving images of Harry in my mind, especially when he dons his long duster coat and strides into battle!

The Summer Knight of the title has been killed, and Harry's faerie godmother has given over Harry's debt (from Grave Peril) to the Winter Queen, who has been accused of killing the Knight. Winter has much to gain by the death of someone who holds a portion of Summer's power, the power which has not travelled to the next vessel once the Knight died, but is no missing, lost. The balance of power between Summer and Winter has shifted, and they are no longer equals. A battle of potentially apocalyptic proportions is about to begin. You'd think things couldn't get much worse for Harry, but you should know better!

I find with each book in the Dresden Files that Harry continues to grow and develop. His girlfriend left some months earlier after being infected by the Red Court, and Harry is obsessed with finding a cure for her. His friends the werewolf pack are worried about him, as is Murphy. Murphy herself retains some damage from the battle with the Red Court - another whip of guilt for Harry to flog himself with. By the end of the book while much is still unresolved, in just a few days Harry's actually at a healthier place, and I'm glad for him.

Harry always seems to perform well under stress, and here we meet more of the White Council. While Harry doesn't consider himself at the top of his profession, it is interesting to see how he is perceived by other wizards and supernatural creatures. I'm glad he's not 'super wizard', but it's kinda sweet to know he's more feared / respected by others than Harry perceives himself. Butcher does not 'talk down' to his readers, but allows them to draw their own conclusions that even Harry seems unaware of.

I highly recommend the book, and the series, to anyone who enjoys good writing, mystery, and the supernatural.

Harry Dresden is in trouble. He's inadvertently started a war between the vampires and the wizards' White Council, his girlfriend has suffered an unplanned magical transformation and he's in danger of being booted out of his house and office. When a new paying job comes along it seems like a great opportunity for Harry to get on top of his troubles...until he finds himself in the middle of another magical war.

Summer Knight, the fourth novel in The Dresden Files, picks up some months after the events of Grave Peril and is the first book in the series to feature extensive continuity call-backs to previous volumes without a huge amount of exposition about what's been going on. Four books and twelve hundred pages into the series, I guess Butcher decided it was time to stop catering for newcomers and get on with business.

Having covered evil warlocks, werewolves, vampires and ghosts in the first three books, Butcher explores the faeries of his setting in this volume (though they showed up in the previous book, there's more revealed about them this time around). Making faeries work as threatening forces is tricky in supernatural fiction due to the cliches that come to mind when they show up, but Butcher does a good job here, defining the Sidhe of Dresden's world in some detail as threatening and sometimes malevolent beings who are dangerous and tricky to deal with. Their addition to the story, along with more information about Dresden's wizardly colleagues, expands the scope of the worldbuilding nicely.

Butcher's prose is as enjoyable as ever, with Butcher continuing a nice line in black humour. This book is notably lighter in tone than the dark Grave Peril, but things are still grimmer than in the first two, slighter novels in the series. The continuation of an over-arcing story arc from the third book (which still isn't resolved at the end of this volume) gives a more epic feel to events, with Harry's mission in the book having larger and more important ramifications in the wider conflict and world. It's good to see returning characters like Billy and his werewolf pack, the Alphas, whilst Karrin Murphy returns to the forefront of the action and, as she puts it, successfully kicks some major supernatural arse in one well-realised action sequence.

At this point The Dresden Files is becoming an enjoyable television series in novel form (which makes the failure of the TV version of the series more of a shame, though that may be down to how much they deviated from the source material). Each novel so far has had a satisfying self-contained narrative, but also added to the mythology and, in the third and fourth books, has brought in larger storylines spanning multiple volumes that bring a more epic feel to the series.

Summer Knight (****) is another well-written entry in a highly enjoyable fantasy series. It is available now in the UK and USA.

Of all of Butcher's Harry Dresden novels I have read to date Summer Knight is by far the most enjoyable. Reducing the horror quotient of the previous book in the series, Grave Peril, and upping the insights into the workings of the worlds of magic and the 'faeries', the universe that Harry Dresden inhabits is becoming increasingly more rounded and interesting. Even the character himself is becoming more agreeable company. By the end of Grave Peril his world weary cynicism had been replaced by depression and sadness, and we find him is a similar state at the beginning of this story. During the course of Summer Knight however, he undergoes something of a change and by the end is back to his former, sarcastic, non-conformist wisecracking best.

I just hope that Jim Butcher maintains this standard with the next book. Having become a little disenchanted with the series post Grave Peril after Summer Knight I will once again be keen to find out.

Oh, and as always, word to the wise; if you're new to Harry Dresden buy Storm Front first and work through the series in order. The central stories of each book might work in isolation, but understanding what has gone before is important to the enjoyment of the books.