Small Favor, by Jim Butcher

I have really enjoyed Butcher's Dresden series (or rather, the "Dresden Files"). Not because it is well-written, but because it is simply entertaining. There is a kind of off-beat Piers Anothonyish flavor thrown in, with a swashbuckling Han Solo-type wizard and a heavy sauce of sci-fi cult movie references. All based in Chicago, a city I know from my own childhood years. And I really like that combination, it works extremely well for Butcher.

The one downside is that he is not a very talented author, IMO. Neither am I. *grin* It is humorous to watch him find some new multi-sylable word in his vocabularly, and then use it twice in two contiguous sentences.

One thing that I also find interesting about Butcher's story line and character development is that he pulls in an interesting array of profiles. We have a young wizard with a ton of potential and a lot of natural abilities who tends to play fast and loose with the rules while somehow pulling off a mostly chivalrous stance towards the women in the book, driving a beat-up old beetle. His half-brother is a "white" vampire who feeds not on blood but romance; a disembodied spirit currently occupying a skull, a Martin "a brain the size of a planet" type entity, but instead of being depressed he is consumed by an appetite for sleazy sex; a God-fearing Christian family, the head of which happens to be a guardian and stalwart warrior of one-of-three holy swords. And the list goes on. Not only that, but the cast seems to grow larger with each book, meeting stranger and stronger entities from possessive demons to mysterious and almost seemingly benign angels, and queens of the Fae who have an unnatural interest in our protagonsit and swap favors like life debts.

With this book, I enjoyed the exciting fireworks as the big boys came out to play. Aside from the fact that Harry Dresden is doomed to always be stuck in impossible situations, yet blessed to always escape them, I enjoy the smaller aspects of his character development. For instance, his growing relationship with The Archive; nobody knows exactly what kind of relationship this is (father-daughter??), but with The Archive being so powerful and all, lots of fun things seem to happen when she is in danger. Butcher also introduced a small host of demons attached to the 30 silver coins in connection with Judas to betrayed Christ, and how these coins encourage power addictions with said demons. The resulting tension is a bit confusing to follow; is Harry really possessed or not, did his friend Michael (the Christian) really purge him of all ties to that dark acquantance? And now that Michael is pretty much out of the near future being almost dead, who will take up stewardship of the holy sword?

I fear that some of those minor plotlines will enjoy an unjust immortality, thus perpetuating the confusion and also detract from what we really like about Harry Dresden. And while I would really love to see him come into his own, I fear that it will happen too fast. It will be interesting to see.

I hear there is a TV series out. Sounds scary. =)