Review: Summer Knight by Jim Butcher

Title: Summer Knight
Author: Jim Butcher
Series: The Dresden Files #4
Genre: Urban Fantasy/Noir/Paranormal
Publisher: Roc
Publication Date: September 3, 2002
Edition: 379 pages, Kindle Edition
Source: Library
Purchase: Amazon US | Barnes & Noble | BAM | Bookshop | Powell's | Thriftbooks

 

 

 

 

 

Synopsis:

   Ever since his girlfriend left town to deal with her newly acquired taste for blood, Harry Dresden has been down and out in Chicago. 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 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. Until he finds out that the fate of the entire world rests on his solving this case. No pressure or anything.

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   Is it just me, or is Harry Dresden a really bad detective? He seems to mostly luck his way out of situations. I know at the start of this book he's really distracted with trying to find a way to save Susan. But he doesn't always use his head. Harry spends the majority of the book fumbling around not know who's the culprit, nearly dies a few times, almost gets Murphy killed. And suddenly knows who done-it after being utterly clueless a page ago. I think he'd be a better detective if he wasn't checking out every body with breasts.

 

   I really like the introduction of the White Council, but I don't like how every member is "just out to get Harry". It comes across as them being very short-sighted. Maybe that's the point but this is the first time really meeting the Council, so a more nuanced approach would've been better. I could understand if one member of the council still didn't trust him because of who his mentor was. But Dresden is I think in his mid-30s and that event happened when he was a teenager, so it's been about twenty years. You'd think if he was an evil dark wizard, he would have done something already. He's too rash to play any kind of long game.

   Leaning more about the Nevernever was interesting, the expanding world was nice to see as well. Learning more about the Fae-lands in this world was also nice, taking things out of Downtown Chicago was good for people like me who've never been to Chicago and have no frame of reference for anything. 

  

   I have heard that as the books go on the world expands, so I do plan on reading more. I just also hope that Dresden grows a brain-stem and stops being a moron.