I’ve been systematically going through The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher and late last night, I finished Ghost Story (2011) the thirteenth in the series.

Oh man.

Spoiler Alert!

Stop here if you haven’t read the novel and want to be surprised (and there are a lot of surprises to be had). You have been warned.

This story begins six months after the end of the preceding novel Changes. In that book, everything Harry ever possessed was taken away from him including a daughter he didn’t know he had.

In order to save her from the Red Court vampires, Harry literally sells his soul and ultimately has to murder the love of his life and his daughter’s mother to save his child and really, the whole world.

Then just as Harry is at the point of putting things back together again, he gets shot and killed.

Six months later, his ghost shows up at some “in-between” place and sent back to Chicago to find his killer. If he doesn’t, he’s been told three of his closest friends will suffer.

As in all other forms of the occult familiar to fantasy and horror fans, Butcher takes the experience of being a spirit and puts just tons and tons of rules around it, which limits Harry’s options in the extreme.

Fortunately, he’s made a lot of friends, enemies, and those in-between in his career, and contacts Mort, an ectomancer who can see, hear, and sometimes manipulate ghosts.

But that’s just the beginning.

Also, as in most Dresden stories, things get convoluted fast.

The destruction of the Red Court worldwide has left a supernatural power vacuum that a bunch of other semi-minor baddies have been filling. Chicago has gone to pot worse than usual, and the city’s supernatural defenders are all in someway scarred or crippled by Harry’s death (true, a body was never found).

Lea, Harry’s Fae godmother, has taken Harry’s apprentice Molly under her wing, but she’s definitely a proponent of “tough love.”

Molly herself has adopted the persona of “The Rag Lady,” the fearsome adversary to anything evil in Chicago, who will do anything including commit murder, to meet her ends.

Karrin Murphy, no longer a police officer, is the bitter and tormented leader of a ragtag group of defenders, including the werewolf Alphas, who are trying to hold the darkness at bay.

Worst of all, the Soultaker is back and leading a group of living and ghostly soldiers attempting to take over the city and more.

Harry is sucked into these conflicts trying to save his friends from their own demons as well as the external threats. In fact, he never gets around to trying to find his own killer until he stumbles on the information almost by accident.

Okay, it was arranged by the archangel Uriel and had something to do with the irregularities surrounding Harry’s assassination.

I said “Spoilers,” but I won’t reveal the identity of the sniper or the person who hired said-shooter since it’s a big “gotcha.”

I will say that in the end, Harry’s body and soul are reunited (the body was preserved but I won’t say by who/what) and Harry’s soul (not just his spirit…there’s a difference in Dresdenland). barely makes it back.

Like Changes, this one ends on something of a cliffhanger. It took a long time for Harry’s friends to accept that it was really him as a ghost coming to them rather than a supernatural baddy in disguise. Now that they’ve all accepted that he’s dead and gone, how will they react when Harry (in the next book) turns up in the flesh?

We do find out what happened to Mouse, Mister, and Maggie, but we find and then lose track of Bob.

This was different/not different for a Dresden novel. The “ghost” angle was definitely a unique approach, but all Dresden novels have a specific structure, and this one followed that same pattern. It just took me a while to recognize it.

It’s still a little hazy to me why Harry had to die, wait six months, and then come back as a disembodied spirit to solve all the problems he encountered including who ordered his hit. Why not just nurse his body back to health and let him come back as a Wizard to do it…

…unless agreeing to become the Winter Knight would have interfered.

My sixteen-year-old grandson, who is a really big Dresden fan, told me about the various short stories occurring between different novels. He said I really want to read the short story “Bombshells” that is set between the end of “Ghost Story” and the start of the next novel Cold Days.

To that end, I’ve put in a hold on the Dresden anthology Brief Cases in my local public library system.

I’ll find something else to read until it becomes available.

Yes, I’m continuing to thoroughly enjoy Butcher’s series. It’s incredibly good fun.