My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, the only practicing wizard in the Chicago telephone book, is back in this fifth installment of the Dresden Files series. Things are going pretty well right now- or as well as they can when you deal on a daily basis with vampires, devils, angels, Fae, and other assorted supernatural beings. Business has been decent for once, and Harry might be able to catch a breath. Oh, wait- there’s the little matter of the vampire noble who challenges Harry to a duel, the assassins trying to kill him, a corpse with missing hands and head, and the also missing Shroud of Turin. To add to the fun, Harry’s ex-girlfriend-almost-vampire Susan is back in town, and she’s also looking for the missing Shroud.
Finally, Harry is almost back to his normal snarky self. When Susan was turned by the Red Court vampires, Harry kind of fell apart. Yeah, yeah, love of his life, becoming a blood-sucking predator who would as likely kill him as make love to him and all that. But he had what seemed to me a complete personality change. No snark, no spark, none of what made Harry Dresden appealing. He moped through what passed for a life, didn’t care if there was work to do or not, and became no fun at all. Okay, he’s due his time of mourning, especially when Susan decided to take off and try to come to terms with her new life, and do it without him. But what made these books so much fun to read was Harry, and that was just gone. It’s back here, and we are treated to the full Dresden attitude. Welcome back!
There’s a lot going on here, as usual. The feud between the Red and White vampire courts is ongoing, there is that pesky body that Murphy and the police want Harry to help identify, and the Shroud of Turin has been stolen and might be destined to be used to unleash holy hell on the world. Mix in assassins, mob boss Johnny Marcone, a sect of religious fanatics bent on retrieving the Shroud for themselves, and Susan’s return, with a possible new love interest in tow, and Harry has his hands full in a plot that twists and turns in multiple directions. There are a few surprises, a few enemies that at least this once might be allies, and allies that seem to be working in contradiction to what would be expected. It was a fun read, as this sort of hard-boiled detective meets urban fantasy should be, at least for me.
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My latest book is a collection of very short stories, half science fiction and half fantasy, called “Crossed Wires and Other Very Short Stories”. I have also written a few other short pieces, another collection, two novels, and an urban fantasy series. You can find most of them at Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and wherever e-books are sold. A few are also available from Amazon in paperback. My novel, “Circle Unbroken” is also on Kindle Unlimited, if that’s your reading preference. You can find out about all of them here.
There are also some stories you can read here on my site, mostly the yearly Halloween short I write, but there are a few others. You can read them from here
And So On... 