Knight Watch

After a break from reading books in The Dresden Files series (and a side trip to a book that felt quite like a Dresden book to me), I found my way back to Summer Knight, the fourth installment in author Jim Butcher's series. And unfortunately, I'm beginning to think maybe this series just isn't for me.

Summer Knight finds Harry Dresden entangled in fairy power struggles. Coerced by one side, opposed by the other (in the personage of a former lover!), and hung out to dry by his fellow wizards, Dresden must turn to the allies he's made in his adventures thus far: police lieutenant Karrin Murphy, a pack of young werewolves led by Billy Borden, and tiny fairy Toot-Toot.

This book started off quite strong for me. I liked the way the plot made use of returning characters from the three prior Dresden books. Where earlier books seemed more like an ad hoc grab bag of supernatural trappings, this one started to feel more coherent and thought through. Actions of the previous book had consequences in this one, characters had grown and changed, and the pages flew by quickly for me.

But as the central mystery of this story took center stage, my momentum through the book slowed considerably. The raft of new fairy characters all felt alike to me, vague and undefined in contrast to the sharp returning characters. Keeping track of everyone's agendas, and even understanding the plot basics, began to feel like a lot of work to me. And as I lost interest in reading new chapters every night, keeping it all straight only grew harder for the gaps between reading.

Even the action began to seem slow to me, somewhere around the halfway point. An encounter in a Walmart store dragged on three chapters, and the final showdown took place in a nebulous otherworldly environment as hard to visualize as its multiple interchangeable characters. It just wasn't clicking for me.

I did ultimately finish the book, but it had felt more like work to me than any of the previous ones. It felt like a C+ to me. On the one hand, maybe it’s time to make a break and forget about the subsequent more-than-a-dozen volumes. On the other... maybe I'm the one missing something? Lots of people I know really like these books, and maybe this was just one of the not-so good ones -- a bad episode of The X-Files or Supernatural that shouldn't be used to judge the series.

Or maybe it's time for me to go read another Iron Druid book. My post on Hounded got more of a response than my typical book-centric blog posts do.