Book Review: Grave Peril

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Grave Peril     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Jim Butcher
Class/Genre:   Fantasy   Mystery   Magic
Series: Dresden Files # 3
Roc, Sep 2001, $6.99, 384 pp.

It has been a tough two weeks on Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only known wizard (check the phone book if you are a nonbeliever). It seems he and his good soul partner Michael Carpenter, a knight with a holy blade, have spent the previous fourteen evenings fighting terrifying ghosts that crossed the barrier between here and Nevernever land.

When Harry finds the same barbed wire on a human being’s soul that he found inside a ghost, he knows he is fighting a dangerous enemy who breaks all the known rules of supernatural physics. This foe can enter homes without permission, wreck havoc on holy land, and tie mortal and spirit together with otherworldly barbed wire. While Harry gets ready for battle with this unknown superior creature, he also struggles to uncover who is destroying the barrier between earth and Nevernever and must deal with the Vampire Court whose leader has summoned him.

Book three of the Dresden Files, GRAVE PERIL, is a great supernatural who-done-it. The key to this tale and its predecessors (see STORM FRONT and FOOL MOON) is that every character and situation feels genuine. For instance, readers will feel what technology-machinery impaired Harry feels when he removes the barbed wire from the soul of a friend. Anyone who enjoys an offbeat but cleverly written urban fantasy will want to visit the Windy City’s only advertising wizard because few horror, fantasy, or mystery tales get any better than this wonderful plot that smoothly combines all three genres into one novel.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner