© James Pyles

This morning, I finished Proven Guilty (2007), Book 8 in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novel series.

Warning! Spoiler Alert! Stop here if you don’t want to know more.

As you may recall if you’ve read my other reviews of this series, Harry Dresden is Chicago’s only advertising wizard. This is sort of like crime noir meets urban fantasy. Harry’s not quite the “hard-boiled” type of detective he wants to be, but he’s a good guy. He also gets in trouble a lot.

In the previous book, he was made a Warden by the White Council. The White Council is a group of wizards who enforce the laws of magic and are charged with keeping the “normal” world safe from the supernatural. A Warden is an enforcer of those laws, and they are brutal in their duties, the laws being pretty inflexible.

Harry is treated to just how inflexible, when, at the beginning of the book, he’s present at the execution by beheading of a young Korean guy. He was found guilty of using his magic to take control over other people’s thoughts, up to and including getting them to commit suicide.

Outside of the heinousness of these acts, Harry still feels compassion. The “Warlock” was young, inexperienced, and had no one to guide him.

Too bad.

Then, a mysterious message from a wizard known as the Gatekeeper sends Harry looking for an unspecified outbreak of black magic in Chicago. This plunges him into the world of horror film fandom, conventions, and demons who take the guise of horror movie monsters to commit murder.

He also becomes reacquainted with Molly Carpenter, the wayward teenage daughter of an actual Holy Knight Michael Carpenter and his formidable wife Charity. She’s in way over her head in evil doings and that’s only the beginning.

Harry continues to contend with a Fallen Angel who he literally had contact with through the coin in which she’s imprisoned. It has tainted him but not taken control…yet, but the temptation to use her power and let her take possession of him begins to mount.

Other familiar characters enter the scene, principally Police Detective Karrin Murphy who has gotten so deep into Harry’s world that it has threatened her relationships, her job, and occasionally her life.

With Molly the focus of the Winter Court of fairies due to her emerging abilities in magic and how she has misused them, in order to save her, Harry has to lead a team into the heart of the Winter Fae’s realm in order to rescue her. Even if he’s successful though, she’s still broken the laws of magic and is subject to execution by the White Council.

I was reminded that in other novels, there were hints of a really big baddie behind all of the dark occult doings in the Dresden books. Harry ponders this and half a dozen other mysteries near the novel’s end. I can only imagine that Butcher has some sort of master plan that encompasses all seventeen novels in the series. It’s a lot to keep track of.

As always, Harry wins but he also loses. For every victory he (sometimes miraculously) attains, he’s led further down the path to ever greater challenges with the specter of death waiting at the end of the line.

We aren’t treated directly to an encounter with the various Vampire Courts with which the Council is at war, but that conflict is a major factor in the events in the book and everything Harry does to save the life of his friend’s daughter.

Jim Butcher’s track record in this series (as far as I’ve read so far) is flawless. He’s possibly the King of all urban fantasy authors, certainly much better than anything else I’ve read of that genre in recent memory.

One of the interesting things (and there are many) that Butcher successfully weaves into his Dresden tapestry, is religion, specifically Christianity. The Carpenters are highly devout and Michael is literally a Knight working for God, holy sword and all. While Harry isn’t a believer and even snubs his nose at God’s “goodness,” he has to acknowledge how Michael and Charity’s faith is abundantly evidence and even able to influence the outcomes of magical warfare.

Reading The Dresden Files is like a bag of potato chips; you can’t eat just one. Having finished Proven Guilty, I’ve put a library hold on book nine White Night. I’ve got another book to read and review until it arrives, but I can’t wait to get back into the world of Harry Dresden.