Summer Knight

In Summer Knight, Harry Dresden's past starts to catch up with him. There have been hints in the previous three books that Harry's past is not so pretty. He was orphaned at six and taken in by a wizard who trained him in magic. He fell in love with his foster sister* and, when the wizard turned out to be a practitioner of black magic, killed them both in a fire. Then he struck a bargain with a rather powerful faerie and has been trying to get out of it ever since. This was all peering in at the edges of the previous books, but now it becomes far more important.

The faerie Harry had initially struck a bargain with ends up selling her end of the deal to the Winter Queen, Mab. Mab uses this influence to convince Harry to investigate a murder in Faerie and prove her own innocence. If he fails, the two sides of Faerie (Summer and Winter) are likely to go to war with each other. The wizards are also on his back to succeed so that they can procure Winter's help with their own war against the vampires, which Harry instigated in the last book.

That's a lot, but the way Butcher has set this all up feels fairly natural. And for everything that's going on in this book, it never feels overstuffed. Things play off each other in interesting ways, and everything ends up being more connected than it initially seems. It takes a lot of skill to pull something like that off, and it has me even more excited to plow through the rest of this series. Butcher does a good job of tying up most loose ends at the end of each book, but leaving a few dangling to come up again in later books. Now that I'm far enough into the series for that serialization to start paying off, I'm really enjoying it.

It's also fun to see familiar faces pop up from previous books. Toot, the pizza-obsessed fairy, and Billy, the young leader of a local werewolf pack, help round out the edges and soften Harry a bit. It's a lot of fun to catch up with them, and to see Harry start learning that he can rely on other people for help sometimes.

With one war averted and the other just getting started, I'm excited to see where this series goes next. It's getting more confident about playing with a lot of different magical creatures and having them all interact in various ways. I can't wait to see what Butcher decides to play with next.

*There's been too much incest in the media I've consumed of late. This didn't even phase me.

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