White Night (The Dresden Files, Book 9) by Jim Butcher
|
List Price: Our Price: $5.56 You Save: $4.43 (44%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $4.09 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of White Night (The Dresden Files, Book 9)
Book Review: White Knight
Summary: 5 Stars
Another fabulous edition to the Dresden Files. This one seemed to be very fast paced but still exciting as a whole. I'm not going to bother recapping the rest of the series as there are simply too many books for that. There's only one important thing really; Harry Dresden is a wizard.
As a Warden for the White Council of wizards and longtime PI in Chicago, Harry makes it his business to protect people. This time, someone is hitting close to home. A rash of suicides isn't all it appears to be. Someone is out killing the weaker magical community in Chicago, and its especially targeting women. When Harry is called in to look at one of these suicides he discovers a message, meant for him. Someone is trying to draw him in and its working, he can't leave innocents to die. The worse thing about these suicides is that they appear genuine; he won't be able to get any help from local law enforcement.
As he explores the case further, he discovers that his brother Thomas is involved. Not only him, but others of the White Vampire Court which makes things a little more difficult. Between dealing with his brother and his hard-headed apprentice, Harry's having a hard time looking out for everyone. Like in most of the books in this series, someone is trying to kill him and has a personal vendetta that is making him watch his back. He just can't figure out who it would be. One thing is for certain though, he has to find the killer of the women before its too late and expose them for who they are before more women die.
Harry was simply awesome in this book. He was tougher, had a wide range of emotions that were more believable, and wasn't as goody-goody as he can get sometimes. Not to mention, I barely remember him saying "Hell's bells" at all. Lasciel, his ever present companion was a good addition as well. Butcher gives her a little bit better of a role in this book and her interactions with Harry are interesting to read. Murphy, Thomas, and the rest of the gang are as good as ever too. Thomas got a great part in this book and it really expanded his character a lot further. Not to give too much away but I especially loved the scene with him at the end of the book, it was hilarious yet touching.
Butcher's writing is descriptive. It is written in the first person with Harry as its narrator. This offers a unique perspective because we get to "experience" being a wizard without it being strange or hard to handle. Since Harry is experienced in magic, we the reader are as well through him. Its written very naturally. The plot in this book was great. There was a lot of action, some mystery and intrigue, and the pacing was perfect. I truly enjoyed reading this one.
I'll be continuing on with the next in the series although I'm starting to run out. Its just hard to stop reading these at a voracious pace because they do get better and better each time. On to the next!
White Night
Copyright 2007
404 pages
Review by M. Reynard 2010
Book Review: Jim Butcher just busted my budget!
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought White Knight because I had a vague memory of reading one or two other Dresden books from the library. See, I have this rule - if I read more than 3 of an author's books from the free library, I feel I owe the author some royalties and buy a couple of his/her books (paperback, of course, given my budget). Now that I've just finished White Knight, I'm going to have to buy all of the preceding books, and Small Favor, so that I can read them seriatim.
It's odd, really, because while I've loved SF and S&S for more than 55 years, I've never cared much for "blood and gore". And the Dresden Files are very graphically overflowing with both in some intensely horrifying modes. I am much more the Mercedes Lackey kind of S&S reader usually, with side steps into Charlaine Harris and similar writers, but I usually prefer my mayhem off-stage.
I like Dresden. I like the development of the character, that he keeps learning about himself. I like that he cares about people who need help, whether (or perhaps especially not) because they can do anything for him. I like that he keeps fighting a system (the Council) which is, in my opinion, entirely too full of itself and entirely to dedicated to maintaining its members at the top of the hierarchy without respect to justice or fairness. I like that Dresden hurts when he loses because losing means some innocent is hurt or killed. I like his ability to accept the political realities he has to live with and work with, can compromise sometimes, when necessary, but not at his deepest belief levels, and that he finds intriguing work-arounds frequently, both magical and political.
I've appreciated the adding of characters, Murphy, brother Thomas, Molly, Mouse (and yes, I'd like to know a lot more about Mouse), Marcone, and the rest.
I think what intrigues me is that Dresden has a set of values that I can appreciate, that I think are good values; that he is willing to risk his life and sometimes his sanity or his soul because of his values. I like that he can lose, sometimes dreadfully, and get up and try again.
And now I have to go order some books.
Book Review: And you thought you had problems
Summary: 5 Stars
Harry Dresden had always had more than his fair share of problems in life, orphaned at an early age, left in the hands of an abusive mentor as a teenager, plagued by Wizards, demons, ghouls and vampires - even his Fairy Godmother was out to get him! As this 9th entry into the the Dresden Files series begins Harry's problems seem to be even more numerous than ever. Due to a severe shortage of powerful trained Wizards caused by the ongoing war between the White Council of Wizards and both the Red and White Courts of Vampires Harry has been pressed into service as a Warden and placed in charge of a large section of the US - an 'honor' Harry never expected nor wanted, and one he can see no way of escaping. His Warden duties have kept him quite busy particularly since he was assigned his friend Michael's daughter Molly as an apprentice. He has plenty of time though for the additional work since he has fallen out of favor with the Chicago Police Department and is not getting much consulting work through them, at least not officially anyway. His friend on the force, Murphy has contacted him on a strictly unofficial basis about a number of minor practitioners of magic who have died recently under what seems to her at least, as unusual circumstances. Harry is horrified to discover that the chief suspect seems to be his brother Thomas. Before Harry is able to sort out the various new problems in his life he will have to do battle on many fronts, even within himself.
This is the ninth in a series of urban fantasy novels centering on Harry Dresden a Wizard/Private Detective working in Chicago. The overall story arc if this series is quite pronounced with a complex mythology and a large cast of recurring characters. Many secondary plots are carried over from novel to novel so, even for those who many be familiar with the overall premise from either early books or the short lived TV series begin at the beginning (STORM FRONT) and proceed in order. This series would appeal to those who are fans of TRUE BLOOD/Southern Vampire series.
Book Review: Fantastic continuation to the series
Summary: 5 Stars
While the war between the White Council of Wizards and the Red Court of the vampires is really only touched on as a background plot point, with a flashback and ostensibly part of the climax tying in as well, this story is more of an interlude completely self-contained as a mystery for Harry Dresden to solve.
Happening upon a series of murdered women, weak in the working of magic, made to appear as suicides, Harry takes on the task of locating and dealing with the killers. When the path seems to implicate him and his half-brother White Court vampire brother, the standard Dresden setbacks begin to appear. While one of the culprits is obvious from the start, the others are less so, one being a reappearing enemy, and yet another being a minion of a different old enemy, Harry is faced with one of his most difficult fights. From dealing with his own instabilities due to the presence of the demon's aspect in his brain and the legacy of a recent failure that saw some young Warden trainees killed (told in a flashback, something of a new feature for the Dresden Files books), to overcoming his own pride to enlist the aid of a deadly criminal, to trying to safeguard his young apprentice and lend support to a possible peace negotiation to end the war, Harry's plate is typically full.
While the tale tells a complete story in itself, it also advances the greater storyline of the war and the nature of the group who precipitated it, dubbed the Black Council by Harry a few books past. While their hand is played by the reappearance of an enemy Harry is completely outmatched against, it is the magnitude of the webs of deception that are revealed in the denouement that shows how the various factions deal with each other and their own internecine elements.
It's a great story, missing any of the copyediting errors to continuity that were frustrating in Proven Guilty, and despite being 500+ pages it reads terrifically fast. This is one of the better books in the series.
Book Review: Epic Noir
Summary: 5 Stars
Harry Dresden's greatest virtue is that he's a man of principle, rather than a man of honor. He can do the right thing without worrying about his name or stooping to vengeance. Unfortunately, when he's surrounded by vindictive monsters, doing the right thing risks becoming lethal. But that only makes the work he does more important.
On one hand, this book occasionally reads like a clearing house. The Dresden world has become cluttered with characters, and several of them come back in this book to be removed so the series can remain clear and concise. But this isn't a novel of obligation: the excessive characters are removed in a way that moves the story arc forward, opens new possibilities for the future, and draws readers even deeper into the context.
Therefore, this is probably the busiest, most complex Dresden novel yet. On absolutely no account should you start this book without reading the ones which come before. But this Rogue's Gallery and Hall of Fame does what Jim Butcher does so well, and too few other writers nowadays do at all, when it ramps the already intense story up to new and more arresting levels.
And it does all this without moving away from its hard-boiled roots. Too many fantasy mystery series have lost sight of one or the other in recent years, but the Dresden Files keeps a firm hand on both. Lacking any other name for what these novels have become as they have become ever greater and more powerful, I now baptize this genre "epic noir."
Jim Butcher is a relentless writer, Harry Dresden is an unstoppable character, and this series never quits. In a fantasy market that has been overwhelmed with paperback pelf, the Dresden Files remain awesome. This is a bandwagon that's definitely worth joining.