Fool Moon (Dresden Case Files) - Jim Butcher

the only wizard in the phone book

i was cautious when i bought this first book in the dresden files as i am not a fan of the harry potter mould of wizardry.

i like my villains evil, my heeros a bit off balance and plenty of gore.

well seems like i got my wish as this book has an unuasul main character, evil villains and plenty of gore.

bring on the fool moon!

Entertaining popcorn fiction

If you take this as the popcorn fiction that it's intended to be, it's fast-paced, fairly well written and entertaining. If however you like your fantasy to have a little more depth, then you'll find the female characters frustratingly two-dimensional and find yourself wishing that Butcher took a little more time to write them to get rid of the clunky dialogue, exposition and plot signposting. It's cheeseburger fiction - you'll enjoy it but sometimes you wish you'd gone for something more substantial.

Decent read but more action that depth

This is the 2nd book in the Harry Dresden Chicago Wizard Series. And to be honest it was slightly dissapointing to the first book. The first book showed a great sense of possibility in the development of the main characters and unfortunately this book adds no further depth at all.

The pace to the book is good, the action good, but you cant help but feel its the same story in terms of character intervention. Harry is still full of his one liners, he still longs after Murphy the detective who asks him to help with investigations. She still asks him for help and then immediatelly distrusts him.

The villan in the book again is Marcone. If I was a detective, I would simply arrest him for every crime that happens.

I still believe that the idea of a wizard in modern day Chicago is a good one, but im hoping for more depth to the characters as the series moves on.

A good book of it's type

Jim Butcher writes pulp urban fantasy. Lets get that out of the way. There's nothing wrong with that, it's a sub-genre I enjoy. His books that I've read so far aren't great literature but if they were I probably wouldn't be bothering too much. Fool Moon, like Storm Front, is an interesting story, well told and expands the world Harry Dresden inhabits.

It's nice to see that lingering plot lines from the first book carry over into this one and have definite consequences. It's also nice to see that our hero can and is vulnerable and that he makes mistakes. he makes lots of mistakes actually.

The reason I gave this 3 instead of 4 stars is due to one single chapter. In this chapter Butcher uses a quite ridiculous method of getting exposition out there. It feels contrived and obvious because it is. It's not spoiling the story at all to state that a chapter - with no prior set up - where the main character (in a dream) talks to his subconcious which tells him lots of things about the plot 'he' missed is just bad writing. It feels to me like Butcher either lost control of the plot and had to do this to correct it and meet a deadline, or he had a page limit to make and needed to clean lots of threads up without them all being investigated. That's how it feels anyway. How it doesn't feel is like any part of the story that surrounds it. I just hope that's not something we see again in an otherwise excellent series.

My one other slight gripe is a lack of character development. I don't feel I know any of the characters better than I did in the first book, they don't seem to have grown or changed in any way. On the other hand the world it's set in is just that much more interesting.

Jim Butcher - Not A Fool

Fool Moon is the second in the series of The Dresden Files written by Jim Butcher.

Welcome to the world of Harry Dresden - Wizard.
Actually the only wizard known to mankind and listed in the Chicargo yellow pages.

In his second adventure Harry finds himself drawn into another murder investigation by his friend Karrin Murphy but soon finds himself under suspicion of being involved.

With rampaging warewolves killing the obvious suspects competitors and also out to kill Harry himself - add to that cops hunting him down on suspicion of collaberation and you have Harry desperately trying to stop the murders and prove his innocence.

This is an excellent sequal to the original Storm Front and in many respects it even betters the original.

I highly recommend this book, although I also recommend starting with book 1 - Storm Front.

High praise for Jim Butcher on a great sequal.