Jim Butcher: Grave Peril

• Mass Market Paperback: 378 pages
• Publisher: Roc (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451458443

Harry Dresden's faced some pretty terrifying foes during his career. Giant scorpions. Oversexed vampires. Psychotic werewolves. It comes with the territory when you're the only professional wizard in the Chicago area phone book.
But in all Harry's years of supernatural sleuthing, he's never faced anything like this: The spirit world has gone postal. All over Chicago, ghosts are causing trouble - and not just of the door-slamming, boo-shouting variety. These ghosts are tormented, violent, and deadly. Someone - or something - is purposely stirring them up to wreak unearthly havoc. But why? And why do so many of the victims have ties to Harry? If Harry doesn't figure it out soon, he could wind up a ghost himself...

 In the third installment of Butcher's Dresden series, we have rather a lot of "Oh shit" moments. The start was, I think, meant to be a "bang" but it ended up being more of a "pop" unfortunately. I suffered through quite a bit of confusion in the first chapters as we were introduced to characters and circumstances that had developed in the time between the last book and this one. That's normally pretty well done, but in this case, there were just too many new things going on at once, and I was having real trouble trying to figure out if I should know these things and was forgetting, or if they were brand new. I'm going with brand new. For example - a faery godmother? Really? When did that happen? Oh, when he was a baby. Why have we not heard of this before now if she's been hounding him most of his life? (Pun intended - you'll understand later).
 So right off the bat, I was a little flabbergasted at the events. That is not to say, however, that they were not fun and immensely entertaining. The first thing we learn, in the midst of an all-out battle against what I think is one of the creepiest ghosts ever, is that someone has been messing with the ghosts of the Nevernever and all hell is about to break loose because of it - well, all the Nevernever anyway. Of course, we have to deal with that. Also, the vampires are acting up, probably because Dresden previously pissed off their head honcho in town, big time. His godmother is after him as well, making getting anything done in regards to the case extremely difficult. Lastly, there's a Nightmare thing running around that may have something to do with some dark sorcerer/demon summoner that he helped arrest (again in that interval between books - which means the reader has no idea what he's talking about). Oh yes, and there's some clairvoyant girl who somehow ties into one or all of these things. Confused yet? So am I.
 While there's a lot going on, Butcher has miraculously developed a talent for keeping all the plot points firing apace and preventing them from getting too convoluted. Thank God for that. His first book was a little iffy on that score, but he has significantly improved, and as the book moved along and there were more developments helping to tie things together, the confusion was dispersed. It was well written for the most part, although occasionally the inner (and outer) dialogue got a little cheesy. The only other thing that detracted from my enjoyment of this novel was the editor's outrageously poor editing. Please, I don't want to have to fill in the blank and guess at what you're trying to spell while I'm reading for enjoyment. Not Mr. Butcher's fault, but jeez, get some better proofreaders people.
 There wasn't a ton of character development going on as we were pretty centered on Dresden and Michael and their problems. That's okay though, not every book has to be about everybody. Murphy was strangely absent for the majority of the time, and Susan made just enough appearances to be annoying and then awesome and then sad. Annoying because she's a reporter who doesn't seem to comprehend that no, Harry cannot tell you all the things and when he's busy it's probably for a good reason so you should shut up, sit down and wait patiently. Awesome because she's pretty ballsy. And sad because...well, I'll let you get to that.
 Overall: A-
 I enjoyed the book, and I like that Butcher is taking Dresden down a darker and more emotionally fraught path. We're not just doing it for kicks now. And the writing improves with every book, even though this one got off to a rocky start.