Teaser Tuesday: “Fool Moon”

So this week I was reading Fool Moon, the second book Jim Butcher’s “Harry Dresden” series, which as far as I know I am the last person in the fantasy-reading-world to read.

As you might guess from the giant moon and the big bloody paw prints on the cover, this book is about—wait for it!—werewolves. But there are lots of different kinds of werewolves, as we find out right at the beginning. Which kind is involved all the mayhem this time around? You’ll have to read it to find out*.

I didn’t want to believe that killing was deep inside of me. I didn’t want to think about the part of me that took a dark joy in gathering all the power it could and using it as I saw fit, everything else be damned. There was power to be had in hatred, too, in anger and in lust, in selfishness and in pride. And I knew that there was some dark corner of me that would enjoy using magic for killing—and then long for more. That was black magic, and it was easy to use. Easy and fun. Like Legos.

I dunno, Harry, I’ve seen some of those modern Lego sets and they look pretty freaking complicated to me. Not to mention pricey.

I enjoyed Fool Moon, especially since I read it after coming off a couple of books I really didn’t like, namely A Natural History of Dragons** (which is written more or less like a memoir, which is one strike against it, and is quite predictable, which is at least two more strikes against it) and The Reality Dysfunction, which was a particular disappointment because it’s by Peter F. Hamilton, who has written some of my favorite SF novels, such as Fallen Dragon, Pandora’s Star, and Judas Unchained. But sadly The Reality Dysfunction seemed like about 500 pages of teenage SF sex fantasy wish fulfilment (a series of Boris Vallejo Heavy Metal magazine covers without the content, if you will) before the real villains finally showed up, and when they did they were so stupid and out of place*** I would have thrown the book across the room if, you know, that wouldn’t have involved breaking my e-reader. Which is one drawback to using a reader that never occurred to me before …

Incidentally, and I tell everyone this, if there are any fans of Harry Dresden out there who have not seen the old Fred Ward film Cast a Deadly Spell from 1991, I highly recommend checking it out; “The Dresden Files” is most definitely a spiritual successor to it.

* Or you could just come down here to the footnotes, where I will tell you—minor spoiler alert!—that the answer is, all of them.
** Which as anyone who has read Dragon Stones knows is … uh, never mind, that’s another spoiler, and a major one this time.
*** Given that The Reality Dysfunction was just the first book in a series of three 1,000+ page books, this is the point where I decided not to invest any more time in it.