Jim Butcher, Dead Beat (ROC, 2005)
"Listen to me," I snarled, "We are not going to die. . . . Because Thomas is too pretty to die. Because I'm too stubborn to die. . . .
And most of all because tomorrow is Oktoberfest, Butters, and polka will never die." -- Harry Dresden
Take Sam Spade and give him a deadly Faerie Godmother, then add Harry Potter and put him in the wrong side of town while you're at it. All you'll get is a pale shadow of Harry Dresden, the main character in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series. These novels feature our hero, a wizard that makes his living (meager as it is) investigating the paranormal. He's also a member of the White Council of Wizards, although he's not exactly on their Christmas card list. In Dead Beat, the seventh novel in this series, a powerful vampire uses emotional blackmail on Harry, telling him to locate the Word of Kemmler, which could give immeasurable power to the one that has it. Unfortunately, Harry has no idea just what the Word of Kemmler is exactly, and he's got precious little time to find out before that vampire makes his friend Karrin Murphy suffer a true fate worse than death.
Jim Butcher does an amazing job creating a world where magic is real but kept tightly under wraps from the average, everyday folk. There are points of familiarity in this novel: a hint of the super-secret agents Mulder and Scully working on The X-Files, a tease of the hidden wizarding world of Harry Potter. But brief flashes are all they are, since Butcher's world is entirely his own. Money is hard to come by for regular folks, characters get hurt and suffer through the healing process, fear is something that takes a while to get over, and things are never black-and-white. Those touches give this story a feeling that the world Harry Dresden inhabits is a world that could possibly exist, and one day a turn down the wrong street could have you walking right into it.
This book drew me in from the first page, starting off with a brief introduction to a few of the main characters, then taking off into a story that keeps the pages turning without becoming just another hurry-up-and-finish-it fest. I was torn between needing to know how it all turned out and wanting to just sit back and enjoy the ride for as long as possible. Butcher takes legends like the Leanansidhe, the Erlking and Queen Mab, and fleshes them out as full-fledged characters in their own right. I've always thought it odd when beings from the realm of faerie are painted as do-gooders just waiting to help out hapless mortals. There's too much power in these creatures for that. It's interesting to see them as beings so powerful that the trials and tribulations of the human race are so far out of their realm that they don't even bear consideration.
Butcher also adds vampires, zombies and ghouls and makes it seem like they really could be out there somewhere. And I like the fact that magic is hard won in this world; too often fantasy tales show magic as some never-ending goodie bag of power, so I like it when an author shows that it's just as difficult to master and use as any other skill. Being able to use magic in this world has its positives and negatives. Sure, you can be a talented wizard, but just try to surf the Internet (or even use a microwave). It's a system of checks and balances that rings true.
Folks who have read the previous books will be glad to see that characters from earlier stories make appearances in this one too. One of my favorites is Bob the skull (okay, it's Bob the knowledge spirit to be a bit more precise, but Bob the skull sounds so much cooler), who I thought was one of the most well-defined entities I had discovered in quite a while. Harry's half-brother Thomas is here too, along with Mouse, the puppy as big as a pony.
Dialogue between characters flows well and sounds believable, and each character has his or her own unique voice. Character development happens in its own good time, rather than thrown together out of nowhere in order to move the story along. Of course, in a series of this magnitude, character development can happen at a slow, believable pace -- there's plenty of time. And thank goodness for that.
I only wish I had started this series at book one. There were several instances where there was something I couldn't quite get, a sort of "you had to be there" that always comes with starting in the middle of a series. Previous adventures are mentioned often enough that I would have enjoyed knowing the backstory of these tidbits. I felt a little like I had stepped into the middle of a conversation, and while I could keep up just fine, I would have much rather heard it from the beginning. That's not the author's fault, though, it's mine. But readers who decide to start with this novel won't be disappointed, since Harry's life takes a different turn due to the circumstances outlined in this book, setting him up in not an altogether different circumstance, but a decidedly new one. I look forward to seeing how Harry handles these changes. But I wouldn't mind taking a step back and visiting his earlier trials and tribulations. This book has such an enjoyable style that I feel sure the earlier novels are just as entertaining.
