Proven Guilty

Horror movie monsters come to life at a Horror Convention and start bringing their violence and carnage to our world. It’s a great premise for any story honestly. The fact that it happened with a Dresden book, a character who is already well-versed in all things pop culture and makes quips at the drop of a hat, made the premise have even more potential. Overall, I did enjoy this book, as I have with all the Dresden books, but there was a period in the middle where it did lag and it was work to push through to get to the ending. One thing that did make this one stand out, at least for me, was that the ‘big bad’ was well neither.

There were quite a few revelations in this book, and it served as sort of a turning point for a couple of the relationships in Harry’s life, specifically Michael, Karrin, Thomas, and even Charity. It is also a turning point for Harry as it adds yet another hat for him to don in one of his many roles that he already has. The newer one he receives here will be one of his more challenging ones I think, even more so than that of the Warden mantle he had to take with the ending of Dead Beat, simply because it plays on the adage of the student becoming a teacher. I also enjoyed this one because this book was the turning one for me in beginning to like Karrin Murphy, as she has not been one of my favorite characters up until this point. She is slowly endearing herself to me but we will see how long that lasts. The jury is still out on Thomas though.

As mentioned, the big bad reveal was a little anti-climactic but I felt it had to be with the way the story played out, what with Harry calling out the Wardens on be being too hard on new to magic people. Right away, they deem as warlocks and set them up for execution because they break one of the Laws of Magic, not knowing any better. He says, rightly so, that these kids need training to know between right and wrong and the Laws of Magic. I expected there to be more of a twist once we found out who summoned the ‘fear demons’, but I think this served to set the path for other story arches that will happen in the book, so I can understand why the reveal was what it was.

As a somewhat related side note, reading this was interesting for me since I know the trivia behind or at least the trivia given to me by one of the paternal figures in my life who is a die-hard Dresden fan. Allegedly, this book was supposed to come before Dead Beat, which is decidedly more comedic. But Butcher received heavy indication that the book after Blood Rites was going to be his first in hardback, so that he may want to make it a little lighter all around. He swapped the order of the books, making major edits and adjustments to both manuscripts so that chronologically it mad sense. So, reading it with the knowledge that technically this was supposed to be first was interesting. It really had no bearing on my overall enjoyment of the novel, but I can see how the other way would have made sense as well, if for nothing else from a drastic break in the brevity that this novel had. I will continue this series because again I do enjoy it and Harry always manages to make me laugh.