Valentino, a daylight hemosapien, is training to become a vampire cop for the Le Counceil Carmin. He has been training for over a century and his boss/trainer, believes that he is worthless. Valentino readily agrees with him.

Valentino is running late for work as usual and is worried that his boss, Pogue, will get angry with him, again. He jumps in a cab with a driving corpse and heads to Pogues home. Ombre who is a liaison for the Counseil tells him that Pogue is missing and Valentino has been chosen to look for him. Ombre believes that the Very Bloody Marys have something to do with it.

During the night Valentino must not only find his boss and the Very Bloody Marys but he needs to figure out how. As the night goes on his To Do list becomes bigger and bigger.

I had a lot of fun reading this book. It was a nice change to have a bumbling vampire and watch him fight Vespa riding vampires. He tries so hard to make it look like he knows what he is doing but in the end it is all for not. The cast of extras were wonderful additions to the story. Saul a wizard who owns a cat that talks and is addicted to cat nip, a chef who is a coroner who works at a morgue/restaurant was hysterical. A worthy under dog story.

• Perfect Paperback: 220 pages
• Publisher: Lethe Press; Reprint edition (June 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590210352
• ISBN-13: 978-1590210352

To purchase a print copy of The Very Bloody Marys click here.
To purchase a Kindle copy of The Very Bloody Marys click here.

To visit the author’s blog go here.

In Small Favor, book 10 of the Dresden Files series, Winter Queen Mab decides to cash in on one of the favors Harry owes her, the Knights of the Cross and their foes the Denarians are back, and the Three Billy Goats Gruff of nursery rhyme fame are trying to assassinate Harry for apparently no good reason (Sidhe court politics is offered up as a weak explanation). As usual, the odds against Harry are so long they have to be measured “in astronomical units” (pg. 250). As usual for Jim Butcher, this book is a hell of a good read.

Over time, Harry Dresden has grown as a character without losing the essential Harryness he had at the beginning. As a reader, I wish other authors could do this with their characters as well as Jim Butcher does. Harry has learned from (some of) his mistakes in previous books and references them, providing a nice feeling of continuity. When Harry has a new toy or skill, there is often an explanation as to how he developed it during the down time between adventures, e.g. “The coil of steel chain in my coat pocket came out smoothly as I drew it, because I’d practiced the draw thousands of times . . .” (pg. 103)

This is a nice nod to realism in an otherwise unreal setting, but hundreds of references like this over 10 books have caused me to create a humorous picture of Harry’s incredibly busy life between books: he runs daily, trains his apprentice, crafts his own weapons and practices using them “thousands of times,” forms alliances with the little folk through weekly pizza donations, creates a meticulous miniature model of the entire city of Chicago and patiently imbues it with magical energy, studies, helps other Wardens, solves minor cases, shovels the walk for his neighbors in the winter, and presumably also sleeps, eats and bathes. He’s the hardest working Wizard in showbiz, and it pays off.

While Mab and the Billy Goats Gruff play a role, most of the action in this book comes from Harry working with the Knights of the Cross to thwart the Denarians and save two recurring minor characters (and through them, The World). The Fallen Angel/Denarian storyline is fascinating and I enjoyed revisiting it. It is a tribute to Butcher’s rich characterization that, on the way to work this morning, I saw a sign saying “Experienced Carpenters Needed” and first thought of Knight of the Cross Michael Carpenter and his family.

In every Harry Dresden book there is a moment of sheer audacity that causes the reader in me to say, “I can’t believe Harry (or rarely, another character) did that!” while simultaneously the writer in me says, “I can’t believe Butcher wrote that!” My favorite, which Butcher may never top, takes place at Chicago’s Field Museum in Dead Beat. Small Favor has its moment too (hint: there’s a helicopter). Like its predecessors, Small Favor is complicated, fun, action-packed, true to its characters, and full of difficult moral choices. This is a book that will cause you to stay up until 2 AM finishing it and will then stay with you for a long time.

Note: Readers who are new to Harry Dresden could read Small Favor and enjoy it, but it is well worth starting with Storm Front and reading the series in order.

Book Stats:

• Hardcover: 432 pages
• Publisher: Roc Hardcover (April 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451461894
• ISBN-13: 978-0451461896

To purchase a print copy of Small Favor click here.

Books in the Dresden Files series in the order they should be read:
Storm Front
Fool Moon
Grave Peril
Summer Knight
Death Masks
Blood Rites
Dead Beat
Proven Guilty
White Night
Small Favor
Turn Coat

To visit the author’s website go here.

To visit the author’s blog go here.

I recently finished Do You Believe in Magic? by Ann Macela. I picked the book up on a whim at the Romantic Times book fair. I had stopped to see the author next to Ms. Macela and decided to pick her book up as well. This is the second book in her Magic Series. Clay Morgan is a wizard and is called in to deal with a hacker at Francie Steven’s company. He proposes that they pose as a couple in order to find out more about the hacker and try to thwart him. They go out on a first date and find out that they have a lot in common. Francie is determined to keep her distance from Clay based on impressions she had heard about him. But to complicate matters, in the practitioner world that Clay belongs to, there is something called the Soul Mate Imperative. The Imperative determines who a wizard or witch’s mate will be for life. Clay doesn’t believe that his could be Francie because she is a non-practioner and doesn’t believe in magic. He finds out he’s wrong.

While I find the concept of soul mates intriguing and believe that they do exist, I found that some of the concepts presented in the book were a little far out. The Soul Mate Imperative causes discomfort in each of the mates until they are forced to come together to relieve that pressure. I did enjoy the overall story and the technical side of it appealed to the geek in me. Clay and Francie are programmers and avid gamers, but with the twist that they are both athletic and good looking. Not your typical gaming type people. I enjoyed the story enough that I am picking up the first book in the series The Oldest Kind of Magic to see if this is a series I could continue. If you’ve read the first two books, you won’t have long to wait for the third book Your Magic or Mine? which comes out in October 2008.

Book Excerpt: “According to lore, an ancient force called the soulmate imperative brings together magic practitioners and their mates. They always nearly fall into each other’s arms at first sight. Always…or so the story goes. But what happens if they don’t? What happens when one mate rejects the other—in fact won’t have anything to do with him? Who doesn’t even believe in magic to begin with?

Computer wizard Clay Morgan is in just such a position. Francie Stevens has been badly hurt by a charming and good looking man and has decided to avoid any further involvements. Although the hacker plaguing her company’s system forces her into an investigation led by the handsome practitioner, she vows to keep her distance from Clay.

The imperative has other ideas, however, and so does Clay. He must convince Francie that magic exists and he can wield it. It’s a prickly problem. Especially when Francie uses the imperative itself against him in ways neither it, nor Clay, ever anticipated.”

Book Stats:

• Mass Market Paperback: 380 pages
• Publisher: Medallion Press (October 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933836164
• ISBN-13: 978-1933836164

To purchase a print copy of Do You Believe In Magic? click here.

Books in the Magic series in the order they should be read:
The Oldest Kind of Magic
Do You Believe in Magic?
Your Magic or Mine?
Wild Magic – Scheduled for release in October 2009

To visit the author’s website go here.