Jim Butcher: Grave Peril

Roc (Paperback), ISBN: 0451458443

Ghosts and vampires and fairy godmothers, oh my! Once again, wizard Harry Dresden faces magical and monstrous mayhem on Chicago’s mean streets. This time around, Harry and his friend Michael — a knight bearing a holy blade — battle violent ghosts, lusty vampires and a fairy-godmother-from-hell for the lives of their friends and family.

The book opens with Harry and Michael confronting a ghost determined to take out a hospital nursery full of newborn babies. As they battle the vicious and violent ghost, Harry discovers a strand of barbed wire wrapped cruelly deep in the ghost’s ethereal skin. Little wonder the shade slipped into insanity.

So Harry, still recovering from his run-in with werewolves (Fool Moon), races to find the fiend responsible for the magical barbed wire Harry finds torturing other rampaging ghosts — and wrapped around the souls of humans as well. And not just any humans — one by one Harry’s friends fall to a vengeful horror from beyond the grave. Toss in partying vampires and a godmother determined to gather her pound of flesh from our favorite wizard, and you have a book you absolutely cannot put down.

Grave Peril, in my not-so-humble opinion, rocks. Butcher’s characters erupt into glorious, vivid life. From Harry, whose moral and ethical code stands titanium steel solid (even if it leans a bit differently from your normal upright hero); to Thomas, a sensual and very well dressed (or is that undressed?) vampire; to Michael, a Knight of the Cross who also leads a somewhat henpecked life. These and other characters remain with you long after you finished the book.

Fans of Tanya Huff and P.N. Elrod will love Harry Dresden. Actually any reader who enjoys wizards, magic, and lots of nasty otherworldly characters will love Harry Dresden. Or else.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to find my old Josie and the Pussycats lunchbox. With a little luck, Harry might ask me to go ghost hunting…

Teri Smith

Raising hell for fifty years from Alaska to the Azores and all points in between, Teri Smith (nee Dohmen) was an Air Force brat who never stopped traveling. She was also a mother, a grandmother (of ten!), a help desk wizard, a financial assistant, acquisitions editor for Samhain Publishing and, most importantly, the Queen Nag of the Known Universe. A multi-published short story writer, her first novel, With Nine You Get Vanyr, written with Jean Marie Ward, was published in 2007. Contrary to common belief, she never stopped living.