Tag Archives: book series

Review of “Dead Beat” (2006), Book Seven in the Dresden Files Series

dead beat

© James Pyles

Yesterday, I finished book seven in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series Dead Beat. Like the rest of the books in this collection, the title is a play on words. This time, Harry Dresden faces the threat of necromancers, users of magic of the dead.

Harry’s life gets increasingly worse with each book and sometimes I marvel that he’s still alive.

Oh, before I go on, since this book was published in 2006, there are spoilers aplenty.

Harry’s detective friend Karrin Murphy goes off to Hawaii on vacation with a man (or being) of great power who Harry doesn’t trust. By now, the readers of this series know that at some point, Harry and Murphy are going to become lovers, but currently, he’s too noble and self-righteous to object to her plans.

He’s contacted by Mavra, his deadly vampire foe, who threatens to reveal certain illegal acts Murphy committed (all performed while helping Harry) and destroy her life if Harry doesn’t find and bring her something called the “Book of Kemmler.”

As it turns out, this book holds the secret to summoning a vast number of the spirits of the dead and focusing the energy in order to turn one necromancer into basically a god.

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Review of “Tiamat’s Wrath,” Book Eight in The Expanse Series

tia
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Tiamat’s Wrath is the eighth novel in the Hugo Award winning “The Expanse” book series by James S.A. Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck). This book ramps things up quite a bit from its predecessors. While we’ve seen Earth all but destroyed by asteroids, now an artificial neutron star found through one of the rings, throws out an intense gamma radiation burst, destroying everything in the “slow zone” including Medina Station, plus “disappearing” two of the rings.

Holden is being held prisoner on Laconia, Amos has plain disappeared, Bobbie Draper is leading the rebellion in the Sol system with Alex and other dissidents on the stolen Laconian warship Storm, and Naomi is hiding out on various space craft coordinating the over all fight as the underground’s de facto leader.

This novel is just as enjoyable as the others, and sees the return of Elvi and her husband Fayez (last seen in Cibola Burn). The Laconian dictator Duarte and his various henchmen come back, and Duarte’s fourteen-year-old daughter and heir apparent to the empire Teresa is introduced.

The sweep of the novel is no less than epic and the writing remains consistently strong (I admit to a bit of envy). I won’t try to encapsulate the entire drama, but there were a few points.

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Review of “Babylon’s Ashes,” Book Six in the Expanse Series

ashes

Cover art for the novel Babylon’s Ashes

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Just finished James S.A. Corey’s (really Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) book Babylon’s Ashes, the sixth in the Expanse series, and I’m still enjoying it. I can tell though, that it’s influenced by the television counterpart since the tales are becoming increasingly episodic.

For instance, this one picks up pretty much where Nemesis Games left off, though mercifully, Jim Holden and the gang, which now includes both Bobbie Draper and Clarissa “Peaches” Mao, are back on board the Rocinante. Earth is an all but unlivable mess after Marco Inaros (although his kid Filip takes credit for it) threw a few “rocks” on it, Mars has been dropped from the terraforming project like a proverbial hot potato, and the so-called “Free Navy” itself are acting more like a bunch of pirates, hijacking ships and cargo headed for the ring and the colony worlds on the other side.

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