Have you ever seen the famous Leeroy Jenkins youtube video? There is a group of gamers getting ready to do a quest in World of Warcraft and they are standing outside the gates and talking on their headsets, coming up with a complex gameplan on how to get in there and beat all of these monsters. But, suddenly, in the middle of the discussion, Leeroy decides that he's had enough talk and just takes off, charging into the city gates, screaming his name, "Leeroy Jenkins!!!!". The rest of the group is stunned for a minute, but have no choice but to follow him. They are massacred and all proceed to tell Leeroy how stupid he is for messing up their game. Leeroy was definitely not on the same page as his team.Why the extremely long story, that you probably have heard of anyway? Because there is a scene in this book that cracked me up so much that I was walking around the house chuckling over it for about 30 minutes afterward. And, it kind of reminded me of the Leeroy Jenkins story, but better.There are some vampires from the black court and they are nasty killers who will take Harry out and kill a lot of innocent people. So, Harry decides to get Murphy and that scary mercenary guy, Kincaid, from the last book, and the three of them will go into the vampire nest during the day and kill them all. But, they know there will be human bodyguards, hellhounds, booby traps, along with human hostages. It's going to be tricky. They have a huge arsenal of weapons, and Murphy and Kincaid are total badasses with weapons, along with Harry's magic skills, so they come up with a well-planned out game plan on how they will sweep through the building. Tensions are high, the situation is dangerous, but they are ready, and Kincaid is setting them up with their weapons and giving them last minute instructions when this exchange comes up: "Okay, Kincaid said. "Anyone have any questions?""Why do they sell hot dogs in packages of ten but hot dog buns in packages of eight?" I said.Everyone glared at me.THAT!! That is why I love Harry! He will make jokes at any time - appropriate or not. If you knew my husband, you would see that this is a very important quality to me. I spend all of our time out together in public translating his British accent into English, and then apologizing for his insane jokes once they understand what he is saying. I literally forbid him from flying after 9/11 because beforehand, he always, I mean always told the ticket person that someone had handed us a package and asked us to take it on the plane for them. There is no way he wouldn't have had his ass thrown in Guantanamo and been making wiseass jokes to the guys who were waterboarding him if he had tried to travel at that time.I really appreciate a man who can make me laugh.So, about the book! In this story, Harry is asked to take a job doing bodyguard work on the set of a porn movie. My ick factor meter was high and I almost decided to skip it because, well, ick. But, luckily, there is no porn-stuff. These books are clean for the most part. The job comes through Thomas, who we met in the last book or two, and who is absolutely awesome. Who could resist a vampire who wears jeans, combat boots, and a Buffy, the Vampire Slayer t-shirt? And, there is a Thomas side-story here too.The good news is that Murphy is pretty prominent in this story. She is very involved with Harry's life, and is helping him with his vampire-killing mission. We also get to see a glimpse of her personal life and feelings when she freaks out over having to attend a family reunion and wants Harry to schedule the vampire murders for that day so she can get out of it. I think we can all relate to that. I would sometimes be willing to schedule my own murder to get out of a family function.All in all, another fun and exciting story.
Stick a fork in me, folks…I’m done. My relationship with the Dresden Files has officially hit rock bottom. This is one review I've been dreading to write, both because A LOT of my friends passionately love these books, and because there are so many aspects of the series that are praise-worthy and enjoyable. The world-building is terrific, the magic system is well constructed, and there are host of likeable supporting characters, such as Thomas, Kincaid, Bob, Michael, Ebenezer...just to name a few. All of these are people I like hanging out with.It's just...well, let me finish first with the positives.In each of the previous 5 books, Butcher concocted a quality supernatural mysteries that, for lack of a better word, worked. This one is no exception. It’s clever, fast-paced, and generally makes sense enough to keep the reader engaged. Plus, Butcher has a knack for great opening scenes and this may be the best one yet, with Harry going toe to furry toe with a pack of demon monkeys flinging steaming hell poo, while Dresden fights back with magic and witty one-liners. That kind of shit (no pun) is what makes this series fun.Okay...*Big sigh*...here's the PROBLEM. I…just…HATE…Harry.The guy drives me seven different kinds of crazy. In this one, he finally found my last nerve, at which point he proceeded to twist it, strip it, soak it in lighter fluid, and set it ablaze. This blossoming Harry issue stems from two main sources.First, I don’t find Harry’s pathological protectiveness of women to be ingratiating or chivalrous. Quite the oppostive, I find it irritating, self-aggrandizing and chauvinistic...in the EXTREME. “Call me a Neanderthal if you like, but I get real irrational about bad things happening to women.” If he were to have said something like that once or twice in the earlier novels, and then let it go, I think I would have been okay with it. But it's a message repeated ad nauseam in each book and delivered with a shout IN YOUR FACE. No matter what the rational part of my head thinks, when I see someone hurt a woman my inner gigantopithicus wants to reach for the nearest bone and go Kubrickian on someone’s head. Beyond his attitude towards women, the other burr in my tuckus is Harry’s holier-than-thouness and his condescending moral superiority. Over time, this has bothered me more and more and has finally reached the point of “too much.” On at least two occasions in this novel (once with Thomas and once with Ebenezer), Harry gets a major judgmental on when someone reveals themselves to be less than stainless in the virtue department. His over-the-top reactions, especially with Ebenezer, made me irk all over. Now, there’s nothing wrong with white hat heroes fighting the good fight, but I guess I like my good guys with a little more edge and a few more warts. That’s just a personal preference, but I like a little more “anti” with my hero. Give me Batman over Superman, Clint Eastwood over Roy Rogers, and Snake Plissken over Robin Hood.In the end, I just started experiencing diminishing returns when comparing the things I liked about the series with my growing disenchantment/irritation with Harry. Thus, as much as I regret all of the clever, interesting world-building and magical marvels I’ll be missing in the subsequent Dresden books, I just think the hurdles to my enjoyment have become too high….and too mighty.2.5 stars.
What do You think about Blood Rites (2004)?
So far I've found the Dresden books very unbalanced. The huge space reserved for a usually sprawling finale often messed with the clever, heartfelt, carefully dosed, and, sometimes, funny and smart precedents. What has changed is yours truly. I have learned why Dresden, the book series, has garnered so many fans. Its irreverent take on the little problems of life, which laces and binds the opening chapters, has been something I didn't detect with the previous 5 books. But here, I know and acknowledge its value. Jim Butcher will never kill his main characters, will never stop writing overlong climaxes, will keep on making brilliant jokes, but as long as he is not jaded and not too drunk on his success, I'll be a distant follower, though not a genuine fan. Not yet. Along with a new insight into the workings of the book, I think many of the problems, namely those of pacing and gravitas, were absent in book six. This is a book that a few people have expressed disappointment with, but personally I warmed up to the film noir vibe and the dated crime drama deja vu feeling it exuded. The author combined many ideas from Hong Kong movies to Agatha Christie to comic books to Buffy to craft Blood Rites. I found the treatment of the story's casualties decent enough. There were revelations galore which dog the vacuum that is the past of the hero, Harry Dresden. I prefer revelations to action fueled twists. Twists sometimes feel forced. Their lack certainly improved the feel of the plot, which moved incessantly forward, and there was not any filler. What I wanted to say was that Jim Butcher was inspired for this book. But would someone tell me who was the first author to come up with the concept of Hunger, with a big letter H, in the vampire subgenre? It's irritating as hell and while at first the effect was theatrical and pretentious, now it's ridiculous, pejorative, and annoying. Hunger is just the appetite of the bloodthirsty. End of. Now I'm going to mention my favorite character of the series; step forward Karrin Murphy. She is both charismatic and elusive. By that I mean that here, I was okay with her playing a small role, and keep away from the climax. That has happened before and it was proof that Murphy was a versatile character. In this book, I would have been fine with seeing her last at her family reunion, exceptionally wearing a dress to please her mom, being herself. Yet I had no problem with her taking part in the action. I do, however, get tired of her shedding blood, and small things like the use of her limbs, in the line of what is not even duty. There has been enough debate about inflicting pain on fictional women in various media and I don't have any new thing to mention but I hope the next books in the series make Murphy take a back seat towards the climactic hijinks. By the way, I loved the Kinkaid character almost as much. All of these elements make me think that Jim Butcher is not making stuff as he goes along. He has a plan. He knows how everything hangs together. He knows how it will end. I want to know too. So yeah, I do.
—Luffy Monkey D.
I first heard of the Dresden Files when the Sci Fi Channel made a show about it. I watched all the episodes, and no, it wasn't the greatest show, but I was intrigued and hoped that it would come back a little cleaned up (I believe it's been canceled.) It turns out my parents are big fans of the books, so I thought I'd give them a try.I should say that I read a couple of the books already, I think #1 and #3, both of which I thought were decent. Not great, but not bad either. This is not a series that you truly have to read in order, so I had no qualms about reading #6 next.Sadly I found Blood Rites to be quite disappointing. One of the main problems I had was with the main character, Harry Dresden. At this point I'm already familiar with Dresden's back story and his general demeanor, so I was quite surprised to find him doing and saying a lot of things that just didn't make sense. Ultimately I found him unbelievable as a real person -- he had a lot of dialogue that was overly simplistic and clichéd, and often behaved contrary to someone with his upbringing.But the worst part was all the gratuitous reference to sex and sexy women. Now this particular book is about vampires, and porn star vampires at that. Naturally that means very sexy and beautiful people, often barely dressed. But every single time one of the women vampires came in to the room, the author felt obliged to give a 1-2 paragraph description of her body, what she was wearing, and the fact that she exuded sex. Dresden's cohort, a petit barely 5 foot tall cop (I know, I know) wasn't spared. It got to the point where it was just plain icky and I had to skip over a number of scenes, particularly the one where the cop, due to completely silly circumstances, is forced to take off her pants during a fight and phrases such as 'standing in her panties holding a shotgun' are used over and over and over.Frankly, most of this book read like the author's unusually detailed wet dream. It saddened me because I thought the overall concept of the books, a modern day wizard who solves crimes and fights the super natural in Chicago, has a lot of potential. But if you're a fan of the Dresden Files, I highly recommend skipping this particular entry.
—Martha
It was a pretty good romp in many ways, but I was highly ticked off my numerous logical flaws, especially around the middle of the book. Harry's staff is very important, but through sheer sloppiness, Butcher manages to have it in two places. He also puts a manual car - one that has been a stick throughout the series & we just read was hard for Harry to drive due to a wounded leg - into 'drive' instead of first. A sentence or two later, he shifts into second. Power is out in the city - a big deal is made out of this & the plot is hinging on it - but Harry & Billy take the elevator. A few paragraphs later, a big deal is made out of Harry having to walk up steps due to no power. Please!!! These are major logical flaws that just slam an otherwise decent book & they're nothing but sloppy. There's no excuse for them. A bit of free proofreading or a decent editor would easily have caught them.As interesting as the series is in other ways, I just can't stand the sloppiness & have to take a break.
—Jim
