© James Pyles

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After getting a nasty flu bug last Thursday, I had plenty of time to power through Jim Butcher’s fourth installment of “The Dresden Files” series Summer Knight (2002). It’s just as exciting, compelling, and funny as the previous three books which I have also read and reviewed.

Some authors tend to cut back on the quality (probably not on purpose) as a series progresses, but not Butcher. He also seems very keen on adhering to a master plan, in which the elements of this story fitting neatly into what has happened previously. There’s also plenty of new mythos and adventure to be had.

As I tell my fifteen-year-old grandson who is also a fan of “Dresden,” it’s amazing our protagonist manages to stay alive. His life just gets worse and worse with the passage of time.

With his girlfriend Susan among the missing after being turned into a pseudo-vampire, Harry Dresden is brought before the White Council of Wizards and accused of starting a war between them and the vampiric Red Court. At the same time, his debt to his faerie godmother (not the nice kind) has been sold to another fae, a Queen who forces him to solve an unusual murder (or die trying).

He also has to solve the crime in order to prove his worth to the Council and keep himself from being handed over to the vampires as his sentence.

Everybody got that?

I won’t go into too much more detail. We see the return of the “Alphas,” a group of teenage werewolves who serve as Harry’s allies, along with an old love, and the pizza-loving fairy Toot-Toot and his companions.

Butcher doesn’t depend on previously established lore when it comes to his supernatural creatures or environments. He builds on their bare bones and then constructs brand new worlds I never thought possible, with variations on vampires, werewolves, and the fae you’ll never see coming.

The exciting part for me is he finally learns to trust his friend, police detective Karrin Murphy and it really pays off. I was, however, disappointed that she wasn’t part of the climactic battle (I guess her injuries would account for that) or the celebration afterward (yes, Harry wins, but you’ll never guess how).

I’ve got another thirteen books to barrel through and I can’t wait. I’ve already reserved book five Death Masks through my public library system.

I usually don’t go so “head over heels” for a book series, but “The Dresden Files” is just that good. It’s probably because of what he explains in the Acknowledgements section of this and the other volumes:

When I was seven years old, I got a bad case of strep throat and was out of school for a whole week. During that time, my sisters bought me my first fantasy and sci-fi novels: the boxed set of Lord of the Rings and the boxed set of the Han Solo adventure novels by Brian Daley. I devoured them all during that week.

My first love as a fan is swords-and-horses fantasy. After Tolkien, I went after C.S. Lewis. After Lewis, it was Lloyd Alexander. After them came Fritz Leiber, Roger Zelazny, Robert Howard, John Norman, Poul Anderson, David Eddings, Weis and Hickman, Terry Brooks, Elizabeth Moon, Glen Cook, and before I knew it I was a dual citizen of the United States and Lankhmar, Narnia, Gor, Cimmeria, Krynn, Amber — you get the picture.

There’s no school like the old school.