{"id":1075,"date":"2011-08-16T13:04:03","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T18:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/?p=1075"},"modified":"2011-08-16T13:04:03","modified_gmt":"2011-08-16T18:04:03","slug":"ghost-story-the-dresden-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/?p=1075","title":{"rendered":"Ghost Story (The Dresden Files)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

This may be the most difficult review I’ve had to write, because I love the Dresden Files, and have been consistently rating them 5 enthusiastic stars for a long time now. I am totally a fan of Jim Butcher and will continue to look forward to the next book in the series, BUT…<\/p>\n

I have to be honest. I didn’t like this one.<\/p>\n

Warning: If you have not read the previous books in the series, this review will contain some spoilers up through book 12, Changes. It does NOT contain spoilers for Ghost Story. <\/p>\n

Harry comes back as a ghost to solve his own murder. Apparently, there was an irregularity with his death. Someone took him out of the game unfairly. So Ghost Harry goes back to Chicago six months later, finds the local necromancer (Morty) to help him out, and catches up with all his friends.<\/p>\n

After that, Harry starts running around after everyone and everything except his own killer. He finds hostile ghosts attacking Morty. A gang of young criminals attacking Murphy and company. The corpse taker is back again, because, you know, it wasn’t enough for him to kill her once. (I am rarely a fan of villainous repeat performances.)<\/p>\n

But the thing that really got me was the sheer amount of time Harry spent stewing inside his own mind, remembering things, berating himself for everything bad that has ever happened in the world, etc. I did get that a ghost is made up entirely of memories, and so I understood what he was trying to do by having us walk through so many of his, but I still found it tedious to read. I was particularly thrown off by the long recounting of his first fight with He Who Walks Behind, about halfway through. It felt like an intermission.<\/p>\n

There was a lot of what I have to call moralizing going on throughout. Where he sits there and puts judgment values on everything he’s done, especially everything he did in the last book, like killing all the red court vampires. I get that there are consequences for that, but it still needed to happen.<\/p>\n

This book didn’t make me laugh the way many of the others do. I’m not sure why. Dresden continued cracking jokes, but they just weren’t funny.<\/p>\n

The ending didn’t work for me at all. I won’t do spoilers, but I will say it fell flat, and seemed to undermine the need for the entire journey leading up to it.<\/p>\n

So, to sum up: A tedious read lacking the flair and humor of its predecessors. If you’re a Dresden fan, you pretty much have to read it anyway, but there’s my take on it. I still maintain my optimism that the next book will be good. This isn’t a case of a flagging series, IMO, just a single volume that didn’t quite live up to my expectations. <\/p>\n

Rating: 2\/5<\/p>\n

Title: Ghost Story
\nAuthor: Jim Butcher
\nGenre: Fantasy
\nISBN: 9780451463791
\nPublished: July 26, 2011<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This may be the most difficult review I’ve had to write, because I love the Dresden Files, and have been consistently rating them 5 enthusiastic stars for a long time now. I am totally a fan of Jim Butcher and will continue to look forward to the next book in the series, BUT… I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-im-reading","category-fantasy-what-im-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1076,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075\/revisions\/1076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}