2011 Book Review #74: Ghost Story

[jethrien]

Title: Ghost Story
Author: Jim Butcher
Genre: Urban fantasy (part of ongoing series do not read first)
Thingummies: 4

Synopsis: There's no way to do this without spoiling Changes. Being dead sucks. Especially when they send you back to solve your own murder. And every character ever is trying to emotionally cope with your death, only now you're totally haunting them.

Thoughts: There's a note in the author's forward protesting that the end of Changes wasn't a cliffhanger, really. Uh huh. Clearly everyone's been harassing you for a year, but that doesn't change things much. That was totally a cliffhanger. Oh, and while this one isn't nearly as bad, it's a cliffhanger, too.

This book suffers a bit from too-many-characters-itis. Butcher is clearly wrapping up threads to move on to a new phase for Dresden, and this is kind of the interstitial book. So nearly every character shows up here. (Well, ok, none of the White Council, the Summer Court, the Black Court, or Toot toot. But most of the rest.) Some of them feel terribly shoehorned in at the end, when Butcher tries to show how Dresden's death has affected random people. (He checks on Thomas, which is good, but not McCoy? When he's only just found out that the guy is in fact his grandfather?)

What am I complaining about? These books are crack, and I'd take my sweet sweet fix even if Butcher deciding to waltz Harry through Chicago butt naked while declaring he was the Easter Bunny. Which might be awesome. Or have him meet the other wizard named Harry. Which has almost certainly been done before.

So this doesn't remotely stand on its own, but it's still got that laugh-out-loud humor mixed with the pathos-whammy that is what I always loved about Joss Whedon and Gail Simone stuff, too. Similarly addictive. If you aren't a Dresden files fan, this book will make no sense. If you are, it will scratch the itch and you'll love it, even if it is flawed and the logic is stretched a bit too far.

Comments

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

I liked Fitz as the mini-Dresden. I liked that with all the emphasis on memories you get a little more backstory. And as always I like the use of continuity, especially Mort and Evil-Bob. I thought the writing was a little bewildering, on the other hand, and considering the scenario, why wasn't there any mention of soulfire? Or polka?

For the heck of it, I went and looked up my prediction from your review of changes:
My bet was with the island having to do with Harry reincorporating. Perhaps haunting the shit out of people for a bit, Mab demanding he come back to life so he can get back to work, and maybe some great big magical ritual where he's on the receiving end for once. Second and third place guesses are probably "Is only sort of a ghost because he's not actually dead but is in a coma that is resolved in some fashion, quite possibly involving Uriel and/or Lasciel"

Not bad! The fallen who whispered to him might have been Lash. Or Nico.

Big cliff-hanger from this one, in my mind, isn't so much Harry as the winter knight, but what happened to Bob.

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

I think to some extent, there was too much happening here without enough actually happening. This was book 6 of Harry Potter. This was a transition where he tried to shove as many recurring characters in as possible so he can move on in the next book. While I enjoyed getting the bits of backstory, they weren't there for any reason except to set up the next book. And the actual plot was pretty incidental.

But I had a great time anyway, so it still gets its four stars.

Your predictions were pretty good!