Grave Peril

Neen, dit is ook nog geen goed boek. Maar vóór ik iets anders zeg, eerst wat statistiek:



In boek één heeft Harry Dresden drie keer “Hell's bells” gezegd. In boek twee heeft hij 3² keer “Hell's bells” gezegd. In boek drie was het 3³ keer “Hell's Bells”.

Ik weet hoeveel woorden er in de boeken zitten. Een kleine berekening leert ons:



Tegen boek 11 zal het boek gewoon één langgerekte “Hell's bells” zijn. Ik weet al waar ik naar uit kan kijken.

Ook in dit boek blijven vrouwen, voor het grootste deel, een werkpuntje voor Jim Butcher. Dit is een meisje dat Dresden om bescherming vraagt.

“All right,” I said. “If you want my protection, I want a few things from you first.”

She pushed back her asphalt-colored hair with one hand and gave me a look of pure calculation. Then she simply crossed her legs, so that the cut of her dress left one pale leg bare to midthigh. A subtle motion of her back thrust out her young, firm breasts, so that their tips pressed visibly against the fabric. “Of course, Mr. Dresden. I'm sure we can do business.” The look she gave me was direct, sensual, and willing.

Nipple erection on command—now that's method acting. Oh, she was pretty enough, I suppose. Any adolescent male would have been drooling and hurling himself at her, but I'd seen acts a lot better. I rolled my eyes. “That's not what I meant.”

Her sex-kitten look faltered. “It . . . it isn't?” She frowned at me, eyes scanning me again, reassessing me. “Is it . . . are you . . . ?”

“No,” I said. “I'm not gay. But I'm not buying what you're selling. You haven't even told me your name, but you're willing to spread your legs for me? No, thanks. Hell's bells, haven't you ever heard of AIDS? Herpes?”

Susan had to bend down far over the fire to thrust a long candlestick's tip down into the small flames. The orange light curved around the lean muscles of her legs in a fashion I found positively fascinating, even as wearied as I was.

Book three, and I'm still enjoying the re-read of the series. I will admit to pausing mid-book to read the latest in another sequence by a different author, but I think that was because I had remembered how dark this one gets, and I wasn't ready for it. I did return and finish, though, and I'm very glad, as I had forgotten some vital details.

On to number four!

WHAT
All the annoyances from the previous books magnified. Harry is a whinny self righteous wannabe hero that blames himself for every trouble in this all too black and white world. The plot starts as passable, progresses into bearable and ends in an insufferable amount of cliches worthy of cheap novels.

TLDR
- nothing stands out: characters are dull, story forgettable
- deux ex machina situations where a “demon” shows up to grant him power when needed
- every magic performed seems to cost a kidney. He seems to have a ton of those somehow.
- hero always weak or without power, yet...
- the power of love will help you through!
- no intelligent plans to overcome challenges
- over confident villain underestimates the hero, sigh!
- self pity hero, blame himself for all the problems of the world
- black/white morality. All the antagonists are clearly evil. Period.

PLOT
Something is stirring the ghosts in the city into attacking the living. Harry and his friend Michael, a Knight of the Cross, must put them to rest and find out who or what is behind this.

ANALYSIS
I wanted to like this book. The main character is likeable enough for me to overlook a few flaws with the story. But the things I saw as a problem in the first books seems to take a primary seat in this novel, and if it is as the author says that “most readers consider this and the next book the best ones”, the series is taking a shape I do not enjoy.

The story started slow and with very few characters, unlike the previous ones. Michael is very plain, a typical do good warrior that didn't stand out in the story. Murphy and Susan just make brief appearances in the beginning.

Harry is constantly drained out of his powers (at one point in the story, literally). He has never time to rest and is always operating at a half or less capacity. Yet, he keeps performing his magic by:

- drawing energy from his emotions. So, with the power of love, he defeated the bad guys.
- making bargains with an evil Faerie. She is made out to be this super villain, but it is very easy to trick her apparently. She keeps granting Harry power by making him do unreasonable promises that she should know he would not fulfill. Also she always shows when Harry needs her.

His constant state of weariness makes for very improbable scenes, where faced with VERY improbable odds, he succeeds. Situations where even with his full power he would not have been able to come out alive, yet here he makes it through and is ready for the next challenge. And again, he throws himself into danger without the faintest trace of a plan. “I'll just show up and if I REALLY, REALLY want it, my magic will destroy my enemies apart”. The same goes for Michael.

The vampire gathering scene was the worst part of the book. It abused the “sexy vampire seductress” cliche, it introduced another character that felt flat and uninteresting, all the improbable feats of magic and unplanned victories happened here and also the villain revealed his masterful plan. This is how I paraphrase the climax of the story, it should be clear why after this was revealed, I had a hard time following through with my reading and also decided to stop reading the other books in the series:

"You prevented me from killing you before. That made me mad, and because of that I'm going to kill you now. Bu I cannot attack you first, because that will be breaking the rules. So, I'm going to butcher a few people at my place, and If you try to stop me, you'll be breaking the rules yourself, and your life is forfeit."

HA! I bet you did not believe that the hero would fall for that! There is also a scene where a vampire keeps gloating as how she is the most powerful vampire of the clan, knows everything about Harry, have developed magic of her own and when she goes on to attack him, surprise! A cross repels her.

On the positive side, I could see the ideas the author was trying to convey, and they were somehow acceptable, even if not delivered very well. I like the underdog hero succeeding against overwhelming odds, finding strength in his convictions and the love of his girlfriend, being willing to sacrifice everything for doing the right thing.

Stakes are higher on this book. Innocent people die, more than I've seen in previous books. Overly powerful ghost demons, sorcerers, and vampires. We learn there are 3 types of vampires in this world and what are their differences. They ended up being way more powerful than I thought. Harry Dresden also shows some wicked powers. It's pure action fun, with supernatural stuff going on.

Oof. Philip Glass would say this book was too repetitive. I've only tried two of the Dresden Files books (it was recommended that I skip the second one) but I think they're not for me. I figured they'd continue to be super corny and dated but imaginative and fun, but then this one stopped being fun about a quarter of the way through, once it became clear the story was just going in frustrating circles. I've listened to the audiobook for both, and James Marsters does a fantastic job, almost enough to redeem them (even if it's annoying how he pronounces “rune” and “drown”), but not quite.

Definitely some overarching progress now

My problem with the first two books was there was little happening that made you want to explore the second book other than “what's Dresden got himself into this time?”. This book finally lays some foundations for relationships and a storyline that can follow up into more books. The fourth is supposed to be where these start getting really good anyway so I look forward to it!

I don't usually mark books that I do not finish as read, however I have given up so many hours to this book and indeed the series, that I'm going to count it. Harry Dresden is one of the most miserable, self-pitying bores I've come across. If it was possible for him to take responsibility for the dinosaur extinction he would, because he thinks he is to blame for everything else. I do not recommend this book

This was a great read by a great reader. I keep hearing Dresden's voice in my head, hours after I finished listening. My three favorite things were [no spoilers] the smoking gentleman, the concept of what Dresden initially thought the big bad was, and the ambiguity of the last line of the book. My only real complaint goes back to the “Hey, wait a minute” way I felt about Micheal just showing up. I think I understand why, given how much more enjoyable I found this book compared to the first two. Dresden, wearily and sneakily, doing the right thing and being contrasted sharply against Micheal, also doing the right thing, albeit in a righteous and upright manner, really made the book for me.

I'm looking forward to reading (okay, listening to) the next one, and I don't think I'm going to wait a year in between.

I'm seeing almost the same story over and over again. Poor Harry Dresden has to save Chicago and he's tired and someone took his power. And in the final battle, he was supposed to poisoned, but he didn't feel any symptoms after eating Kravos, but he was still tired. No mention was made after of the poisoning either.

I dnfed the first books so many times.  But I kept hearing it gets better around book 3/4.  So I decided to at least try to get to book 3 with audiobooks.  But obviously this is more of a male wishlist wet dream.  Maybe it does get better but honestly I don't want to put anymore time in this series.  So many more books that I'm interested in that doesn't do the nice guy that all these women pant over and all women are detailed about what sexy clothes they are wearing and their hair,lips,boobs and butts.

Executive Summary: I enjoyed this book, though not as much as [b:Fool Moon 91477 Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, #2) Jim Butcher http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1345556849s/91477.jpg 855288] or as I remember liking it for that matter. Probably because I'm much better read at this point.Audio book: Mr. Marsters continues to improve as a reader. Gone are most the odd saliva sounds and he seems to have found his voice for the characters. He still reads things too quietly in parts, though maybe it's simply that the overall volume of my copy is too low for my liking (too much loud music?).Full ReviewI debated about if I should keep my original 4 star rating, or bump it down to three. This story didn't grab me as much as [b:Fool Moon 91477 Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, #2) Jim Butcher http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1345556849s/91477.jpg 855288]. It's certainly better than [b:Storm Front 47212 Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1) Jim Butcher http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1345556917s/47212.jpg 1137060]. I'd probably give this a 3.5.This book continues the mostly formulaic structure the early books in this series suffer from. Dresden is approached by a mysterious client and mayhem ensues.This book deals with not only ghosts, but vampires. Some of them do sparkle, but that's only to lure you in and feed on your emotions. If they feed to long you won't be running off and living happily ever after.We learn there are not 1, but 3 kinds of vampires (Mr. Butcher seems to like variation as he did with werewolves), Black (think Bram Stoker), White (feed on emotions), and Red.We've actually met the Red Vampire Bianca in previous novels, but in this novel we learn a bit more about the other kinds and the vampire courts.The book opens up with Harry and one of my favorite characters, Micheal, the Fist of God on the trail of some ghost that is wreaking havoc on a hospital nursery. Ghosts are out of control and Harry has been relying more and more on Michael's help to sort them out.We are also introduced to Thomas of the White Court, who becomes another of my favorite characters.The main plot of this book doesn't do a lot for me, but as a re-reader, there is an awful lot I appreciate that has both short term (new baddies introduced) and long term (no spoilers) implications the series as a whole.The book has some truly awesome parts, and I found myself enjoying Harry's sense of humor a lot more. Like Mr. Butcher's writing skills, Harry's sense of humor apparently taken some time to develop.All and all is a quick and easy read.

Reread-

This book is fine. It's fine! I don't really get why some people swear by this book. I'm glad for them but most of it was just barely interesting. I'm glad I reread because it did confirm to me that Butcher did not somehow inflict me with Stockholm Syndrome over the course of many books. They really do just get much, much better in every way.

I did enjoy this book more this time, if only because I didn't realize how many important characters, organizations, or concepts are introduced in it the first time. Michael, Thomas, Justine, the red court, Leah...the list goes on. But it's still Butcher-in-Training writing these characters. Michael might be one of my favorite characters in fiction, but in this book he's just a beta version of the real deal.

Also yes this book's male gaze is just insufferable.

What I really like about The Dresden Files novels is that after reading one i feel like I do after having a small nutritious meal - I don't feel too full and I don't feel hungry. I feel satisfied and looking forward to the next one. There's always a lot going on in these books, but the author somehow manages to keep it short and sweet.
Another thing I enjoy are the characters, especially Harry Dresden himself. I find him charming and endearing, while still being able to acknowledge his shortcomings. Of which there are plenty, but the author is not pretending like they aren't there which makes them seem intentional (which they are. Plus they make the character more understandable and believable.
Why I took away a star is because I didn't like how the backstory was thrown in seemingly haphazardly. We left book 2 at a certain spot and then all of a sudden we pick up like a year later and we're told about things Harry did and villains he fought, but we never get to see those (and they are important). It was referred to at multiple key spots and in such a manner as to imply we have already seen this. So much so, that I started considering that I might've missed a book or something. I went to the internet multiple times to see if there was another book I was supposed to read before this one, but there wasn't.

Regardless, I still enjoyed myself quite a bit and can't wait to read the next in the series!

Precise rating: 4.5 ⭐️

I am so happy!

Reading the first book was fun! But after the second book I was a bit disappointed, since I wasn't really invested in the story at any point and it felt kinda all over the place. Suddenly, the knowledge that there are so many more books in this series felt like too big of a commitment. So I decided I'd give the series one more chance and read the third book—also since basically everyone on the internet says that book 3 is where the series really takes off.

Then, during the first 40% of the book, I was permanently on the brink of giving up on Dresden. Not because it was bad—I actually liked it a lot more than book 2—but it was not good enough to see the amount of books ahead of me as something to look forward to. Well, until I reached 40% and basically rushed through the rest of the book in the course of a bit more than a day! Hell's bells, as Harry would say!

It was absolutely brilliant! There wasn't a single moment where the book lost steam. I suddenly really cared for the characters. The supernatural creatures are so exciting, I am aching for more lore. But what I love the most about not just this book, but the whole series so far is Jim Butcher's seemingly most important writing rule: Murphy's Law!