Summer Knight - Jim Butcher

Problems are mounting for Harry Dresden. The vampires are in a full on war with the wizards, and there are more than a few of the magic-slingers ready to hand Dresden over to the vampires in exchange for peace (as apparently it’s fine if they continue snacking on non-magic users). Harry’s hardly noticed. He’s been shut up in his lab, as he’s working obsessively on finding a cure for vampirism to help Susan, who got bitten in the last book, and is in some half-vamp state, since she’s thus far refrained from feeding. As a result of focusing all his energies on that, he hasn't been taking cases, so he’s about to lose his office and his home. And the debt he owes his Faerie Godmother has been sold to Mab, the Faerie Queen of Winter.

She’s been accused of murdering Summer’s Knight and stealing his power, which could trigger a cataclysmic war between the two, which could possibly wipe out humanity. On the plus side, if he helps Mab, she’ll grant the wizards right of passage through her realm to attack the vamps, which will get the wizards off Harry’s back. So no pressure.

There are times reading these, where I think Butcher keeps adding new characters and threads too far into the book. It seems like he’s losing the main thread of the story by getting off on tangents, or else he’s trying to pad it out. I mean, there’s everything I mentioned above, plus the identity of the person the Summer Queen has chosen to investigate, plus Murphy’s still dealing with the fallout from her experiences with a vengeful ghost in the previous book, plus he gets approached by a small group of half-fae, who ask him to help find their missing friend. But, it must be said, he manages to tie it all together pretty smoothly in the end, even if I had serious doubts two-thirds of the way through.

The mystery itself didn’t seem terribly hard to solve, but maybe I can chalk that up to my state of mind. When one character starts railing about how awful and cruel Winter is, presumably in comparison to Summer, all I could think was how bad off some of my coworkers have been in the heat and humidity lately. How much I’ve hated gnats swarming about my eyes, ears, and nose, ticks crawling all over me, horseflies biting me through my shirt. I may hate driving in Winter, but Summer is a real asshole.

Also, I laughed out loud at Dresden’s clever idea for back-up at the climax. It even built nicely on something previously established. Though I imagine if Thor had shown up and offered to smite all the Faeries, Harry probably wouldn’t have turned down the help.

‘We headed toward the Beetle. I picked up the cloth sack of toads on the way and started shaking them back out onto the ground. I put the toad I’d nearly squished down with them, then wiped my hand off on the grass.

Billy squinted at me. “Why are you letting them go?”

“Because they’re real.”

“How do you know?”

“The one I was holding crapped on my hand.”’