Grave Peril is the third book in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series. For those not familiar with it, Harry Dresden is a Chicago-based wizard, one who specializes in investigations involving the paranormal. Sort of a modern-day, supernatural Sam Spade.
I generally don’t enjoy urban fantasy all that much. Something about the mixing of the real world with the magical just doesn’t gel for me. But Butcher does it better than most. His books are quick, entertaining reads, and if there isn’t much real depth to them (although the series is getting better in that regard), well, it’s not the end of the world. No one’s going to pick one up thinking that they’re getting Paradise Lost.
Butcher’s main strengths are his pacing, an off-beat and unexpected sense of humor, and an ability to write almost cinematic action sequences. It’s no surprise that Hollywood is making a TV series out of his books; every time Harry does battle with a ghost or demon , Butcher has you right there, seated in the first row of the theater, watching the CGI. He has a particular gift for describing force and motion, which is likely due to his background in the martial arts.
Possibly for the same reason, Harry also gets beaten up a lot, something that I could do without. I know it contributes to story tension if the hero isn’t at full strength (“I didn’t know if I could have whipped this demon even with a full night’s rest; how was I going to do it on half an hour of sleep, faint from hunger and with my leg in a cast?!”), but I just get tired of spending so much of the story reading about Harry being in pain and how racked out he becomes. This time the fatigue was more psychic than physical, but the problem remains. On and on about how tired he is, how much he hurts, how hard it is to go on – all so he can rise above it and win. A personal request to Jim Butcher: just make the demons a little stronger and scrap all the abuse. Please.
The ROC imprint did a fairly crappy job of copy editing the book, and at times the errors really take you out of the narrative. With a book like this, you honestly don’t know if “hellbounds” is a mistake or something supernatural – at least until they magically turn into “hellhounds” further down the page. Also, apparently no one on the ROC staff knows how to spell “Encyclopaedia” Brittanica. There’s an “a” in the middle there, folks. It’s British.
Sigh.
Still, the mistakes are mostly at the beginning, and they did an okay job with the rest of it. There’s a nice cover, and the font is easy to read. This is the third book in the series; I’ve read all three (loved the werewolves in book two) and will be back for the fourth.
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