Skin Game (Dresden Files #15) by Jim Butcher
Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard, is about to have a very bad day. As Winter Knight to the Queen of Air and Darkness, Harry never knows what the scheming Mab might want him to do. Usually, it’s something awful.
This time, it’s worse than that. Mab’s involved Harry in a smash-and-grab heist run by one of his most despised enemies, to recover the literal Holy Grail from the vaults of the greatest treasure horde in the world – which belongs to the one and only Hades, Lord of the Underworld.
Dresden’s always been tricky, but he’s going to have to up his backstabbing game to survive this mess – assuming his own allies don’t end up killing him before his enemies get the chance . . .
Let me tell you a little story. Going back a few years, 2009 to be precise, I read what I believe to be my first Urban Fantasy novel: Black Magic Woman by Justin Gustainis. I enjoyed it and it got me interested in the genre, and while looking around I discovered that the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher were highly rated by many. Based on recommendations by those I trust I picked up Storm Front, and I rather enjoyed it. I planned on reading the series at the time, but it just wasn’t meant to be and the series became another one that hovered at the back of mind, never quite making it onto my reading list.
Fast forward to August 2013. While digging around for something a little different to read I stumbled across the Dresden Files again, and decided that the time was about right to give the series a proper go. It had been a few years so I re-read Storm Front, and then planned to alternate the Dresden Files novels with some sci-fi. That quickly got brushed aside and I ended up making my way through the series novel by novel, finishing with Cold Days before the end of that year. Four months, fifteen books, and what a ride!
This year Skin Game was released, the fifteenth book in the series, and one that had so much promise and many unanswered questions to deal with. I read the book the moment it dropped through my letterbox back in May. I loved it, completely and totally. My favourite of the series to date? Quite likely, but then I was eagerly awaiting my next Dresden Files fix. I had planned on writing a nicely detailed and in-depth review back then, but I came away with such a high that I just didn’t think I could write a constructive one. Still, I told anyone who would listen how good it was.
Time moved on, and as we got to the end of September this year I started to look at 2014 releases that I had read, and what I was considering my favourites so far. I started to look at other releases that I had overlooked, planning on reading as many as I could before year end. But the more I thought about it all, the more I kept on coming back to Skin Game, and the Dresden Files as a whole. Sometimes, as a reader you just need to have fun. To let go. To satisfy your needs. And that’s what I did. I re-read the series again, Storm Front to Skin Game – fifteen novels and a short story collection – in five weeks. I was dreaming of Dresden by the time I put down Skin Game again. And do you know what? I enjoyed them more the second time around, and came away with such a great feeling. You know, that feeling when you know you’ve been reading something special. It was bliss.
And then I realised that despite wanting to review Skin Game and all its glorious content – from an arch nemesis and his vault-breaking plans, to an archangel giving up his powers – there was no way I could do so objectively. Skin Game reads like a love letter to his fans, giving them pretty much everything they could want in a Dresden Files novel. And that brings me to here and now.
If you’re already familiar with the Dresden Files then I have little doubt that Skin Game is on your radar or to-be-read pile. If you haven’t read Skin Game, then don’t. Seriously, just don’t. Go out, pick up Storm Front, and enjoy the series from the start, I doubt you’ll be disappointed.
Publisher: http://www.orbitbooks.net
Author: http://www.jim-butcher.com
May 2014, 464 Pages
Hardcover ISBN: 9780356500904
Review copy received from the publisher
© 2014 Mark Chitty
