The Dresden Files: Summer Knight by: Jim Butcher

 

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.