Summer Knight, by Jim Butcher

[Maple]

GR summary
HARRY DRESDEN -- WIZARD

Lost items found. Paranormal Investigations. Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates.
No Love Potions, Endless Purses, or Other Entertainment

Ever since his girlfriend left town to deal with her newly acquired taste for blood, Harry Dresden has been down and out in Chicago. He can't pay his rent. He's alienating his friends. He can't even recall the last time he took a shower.

The only professional wizard in the phone book has become a desperate man.

And just when it seems things can't get any worse, in saunters the Winter Queen of Faerie. She has an offer Harry can't refuse if he wants to free himself of the supernatural hold his faerie godmother has over him--and hopefully end his run of bad luck. All he has to do is find out who murdered the Summer Queen's right-hand man, the Summer Knight, and clear the Winter Queen's name.

It seems simple enough, but Harry knows better than to get caught in the middle of faerie politics. Until he finds out that the fate of the entire world rests on his solving this case. No pressure or anything...

I am reading this for my 2016 Topic Discard Challenge, a book turned into a TV show.

I have read all of the Dresden Files up until this point. The series is okay. If I stopped reading them I think I would be okay, but they are not bad enough that I purposely stop reading them. I picked several of Butcher's "between the numbers" books for that category for the 2016 challenge. Since some of those novellas are further than I currently am in the series I worked those books into my various challenges for this year. Now I'm trying to work up past the novellas so I know what is going on before I get there.

So far Summer Knight is pretty good - I'm liking it better than the one before. I hope it keeps on with the wave it's riding.

[Maple]

I finished this last night. It was actually pretty decent. I liked it much better than the last one. It seemed like Butcher took his time with this one, where book three felt rushed and incomplete. The only complaint I had about this book is that there were so many different (and new) characters in it, and a lot of them had similar names, that at times it became difficult to remember which was which. Overall, though, great story with a pleasantly, semi-expected, but appreciated twist at the end.

4/5