Summer Knight

Jim Butcher

It has been around 8 months since Harry Dresden's girlfriend was bitten by a vampire and ran away to protect him. Since then he has used all his wizard's tricks to find a cure for Susan so she can return to full human instead of caught between two worlds. Harry has buried himself in his basement, not eating much, not cleaning (the apartment or himself), not working, not grooming, only concentrating on his books, potions, and magic. Oh, and he has to hide away from the vampires trying to kill him. Because of him, the vampires have threatened war against the Wizard Council.

It's June. Harry is drug out by one of his werewolf friends. There, in a Chicago park by Lake Michigan, it is raining toads - real, live (then dead) toads. He is once again almost killed by vampires. Then he has to meet a client to earn some money before he loses his office and his apartment. He'll be lucky if he is hired - he hasn't bathed, cut his hair, or shaved in many, many days. But his client takes him anyway - actually he owes her. She is Mab, the Winter Queen of the Fairies, and he owes her for something he had done many years earlier.

The Wizard Council is coming to Chicago to judge Harry and decide how to handle the vampires. The werewolves want to help him. The vampires want to kill him. Now he has to visit the land of the fairy and meet all the high Winter Fairies and Summer Fairies to prevent a fairy war that would spill out into our every day world. People are dying, people are attacking, and people are being attacked. Well, Harry is so busy he doens't have too much time to dwell on Susan...

Harry Dresden is fun. I had fun with Summer Knight, but was confused most of the time while in the World of Fairy. Harry is in a depressed state for the first day or two of the book but finally starts to clean himself up. Then he is back in the middle of a battle and dirty again, but at least he's clean underneath for once.

This series is written in the first person so we can follow Harry, the modern, lone, rarely believed wizard. The Harry Dresden files tell us normal humans what we are too blind to notice since we won't believe in the supernatural. Jim Butcher makes these fun books feel believable.

Notice: Suggestive dialogue or situations

Storm Front
Fool Moon
Grave Peril
Summer Knight
Death Masks
Blood Rites
Dead Beat
Proven Guilty
White Night
Small Favor
Turn Coat
"The Warrior" in Mean Streets
Changes
Side Jobs
Ghost Story
Cold Days