Summer Knight is,
I truly hope, the turning point for The Dresden Files. I say this because there is often a curse in
media where installments in a series will alternate from top tier quality to
terrible within a minute. The Dresden
Files seems to be avoiding that trend by putting out two good installments
in a row. Summer Knight helps me
believe that Fool Moon’s lapse in quality was a fluke as it is at it’s
heart a fun piece of pulp fiction that does some things amazingly well and some
other things not nearly as well. Jim
Butcher has not yet surpassed the quality of Storm Front, and Summer
Knight is a step down from Grave Peril (which came very close to doing
just that), but there is enough here to enjoy in the actual story. The biggest problems in this plot involve how
Butcher gets the plot started and moves things along until about the halfway
point of the book. The biggest offender
of this is the introduction of the character of Elaine. Elaine is a character who was mentioned once
in Fool Moon while Harry was speaking with his subconscious as being
still alive, but given a full backstory in Summer Knight just before she
appears as a major player in the book.
This is handled very clumsily as the immediate cut in the same chapter
to Elaine turning up in Harry’s office is really poorly done. There is no actual time to reflect on Harry’s
past and current mindset where Elaine is dead which means that once she does
appear the reader isn’t on Harry’s level. Harry has the emotional investment, but the
reader doesn’t which makes him incredibly difficult.
There is also a return of the character of Billy from Fool
Moon, one of the Alphas, who eventually becomes an interesting character as
the book goes on, his introduction feels like he’s a completely different character
than the one in Fool Moon. He was
a real nerd in Fool Moon and that’s still kind of there but Butcher
makes him kind of more athletic and more of a cool dude which I kind of get
what Butcher was going for, but it falls a bit flat when you don’t really
remember who he was. His involvement in
the final battle and some of the middle of the book is great, and the way he
gets Harry out of his depression about Susan is great. Susan’s absence is felt, it’s a matter of
telling instead of showing the pain a character is going through, though I do
hope she will appear in future books as the Red Court vs White Council plot
does provide a background conflict and source of tension which works well. The actual plot is a murder mystery between
the two main courts of Faerie (Winter and Summer), with Harry’s debt to his
fairie godmother being given to the Winter Queen who will cancel it after three
favors, this being the first. Butcher
draws on Celtic mythology and the idea of maiden, mother, and crone for each
court with the knight’s being essentially their emissary out of the Nevernever
and into the regular world. The conflict
is really well setup and Queen Mab (the Winter Queen) is the most interesting
in particular with the two Mothers coming in second, but the eventual resolution
and reveal to the murder mystery feels a bit like an anticlimax until the battle
actually starts. There is also another tension
built upon with the White Council holding Harry on trial for the events of Grave
Peril which is great, giving the reader a real look into what the Council
are. Morgan, the Warden assigned to Harry,
actually gets better development here as a representation of those who find
Harry a danger and are willing to give him over to Bianca. He has a foil in the Gatekeeper who is perhaps
a bit too mysterious, but is also an interesting character.
Overall, Summer Knight is a decent enough time,
however, this is a book which is just a bit too messy in places to become an
amazing one. Things are looking up, but
it is something which the next books need to overcome. 6/10.
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