Review - Fool Moon

Title: Fool Moon
Author: Jim Butcher

The main character in this series of books is a tall, lonely man named Harry Dresden.  In many respects, Harry is very similar to private detectives who live life on the edge of the legal system, helping the police at times, and at times being at odds with them.  Like those detectives, Harry has certain skills, and a freedom to operate outside the constraints of the law.

Unlike those detective, though, Harry Dresden is a wizard.

The world created by author Jim Butcher is very much like ours, except that magic exists, and so do many of the dangerous creatures and situations which accompany magic in our collective culture.  I reviewed the first of the Dresden Files novels a while back.  This second follows a very similar pattern, but fortunately that does not make it predictable -- it makes it a fast-moving detective story in which a well-conceived magical reality exists intermixed with our own.

As one expects from the title, Fool Moon is going to have something to do with the moon, and that leads us to believe that werewolves will be involved.  Butcher doesn't disappoint.  But while it becomes clear in the very early pages of the novel that the gruesome murder which brings Harry into the story must have been committed by magical beings -- magical beings with big teeth and sharp claws -- the investigation has many twists, turns and a new mythology on the several ways in which humans and wolves can be connected by magic.

Most of Harry Dresden's life is pretty slow, and pretty isolated.  But based on the first two novels, it's clear that when something bad starts happening, it happens fast, and lives are on the line.  Harry's magic, and his knowledge of the Nevernever -- from which magical beings originate, apparently -- are tested, as are his stamina and his determination to keep the Laws of Magic, despite temptations to save lives by breaking those laws.

As with the first novel, this story is self contained.  However, there were a few ties to the prior story, and it's clear Butcher is setting Dresden up for even more.  Dresden does not tell us his whole story, leaving plenty of mystery about his past, his dealings with the mysterious White Council, and his enemies.

This is a book which does not take long to read -- it's hard to believe it takes 400 pages in paperback because as each short chapter ended, I wanted to keep going and going and going.

This is not Harry Potter.  It's darker, more adult, and  more American.  And I like it.  Give me book three, please.