Jim Butcher's Ghost Story review

     Ghost Story is the thirteenth book in Jim Butcher's seminal Dresden Files books. If you have not read any of the books in the series this is not a good jumping on place. I suggest you start at Storm Front, the first book of the series. For those that have been reading the series, this is a great continuation and good place to catch your breath. I have read a lot of reviews of people complaining that it does not advance the story at all. I have to kind of disagree with this. It does all kinds of advancing the characters to be who they need to be in the stories coming next. After twelve books, the character development aside from Harry seemed to be at a slow crawl compared to Harry’s development. With this book their growth is turbo charged. This is done pretty much by necessity, as at the end of the previous book Changes, Harry apparently dies.

     So the secondary characters have to learn to deal with the world that Harry has left behind. The world is a much darker place and this is reflected in the characters, including the city of Chicago which in the Dresden Files books is a character unto itself. Jim does a great job of turning minor characters or characters that I really did not care about into major players, and made them really interesting. In recent books Jim, has been slowly been taking away Harrys most powerful allies, such as Michael Carpenter the knight of the Cross, and Harrys half vampire brother Thomas. In this book Jim shows that Harry still allies that can and have stepped up to fill the void. I don’t want to go to deep into this to avoid spoilers, but it will surprise readers of the series. I had a couple moments of “wow I did not know they had that in them” moments.

     I liked what he did so much with the secondary characters that I almost forgot about Harry. The book starts out with him having to go back to Chicago to solve his own murder. Even in death Harry cannot catch a break. He gets sent back as a ghost with no body and no magic. The circumstances behind his death were handled well. Being a ghost also lets harry kind of take a step back and finally take a look at the consequences of his actions. He is usually a blow things up and ask questions later kind of guy. But being dead lets Harry be introspective and see what his actions have wrought with the people he left behind. This leads to some really emotional scenes. All in all this was a very satisfying book and it is highly recommended. You can purchase the book here