Review: Death Masks, by Jim Butcher

I could not find this cover anywhere for the life of me, so I just screenshotted it from the audiobook I was using. It looks nothing like any of the covers that show up if you Google this book.

Rating:

👘👘👘👘👘

(This is the closest emoji I could find to a shroud. Bite me.)

First Response:

MICHAEL IS BACK AND HE’S A BADASS! Also his kids are adorable and Charity is terrifying😱.

One Sentence Summary:

Harry Dresden has a lot on his hands— a duel with a vampire, the mutilation of a headless, handless corpse, and… the Shroud of Turin?

Tell Me More:

I was NOT prepared for this.

The Dresden books so far have followed a pretty straightforward formula: each book centers on a specific case Harry is asked to solve, and each case reveals a different denizen of the Nevernever the case revolves around. Fool Moon was about werewolves. Grave Peril was about ghosts. Summer Knight was about fairies. Death Masks is about… the… Shroud… of Turin…?

🤔 Huh.

Look, I’m not catholic, but I am Christian, so I’m familiar with the story of the Shroud (supposed by some to be the burial shroud wrapped around Jesus Christ when he was buried for the three days between His crucifixion and His resurrection) … but, like, why is it here? Why did The DaVinci Code hijack this particular volume of the Dresden Files?

// Turns away to Google something //

Google tells me that both Death Masks and The DaVinci Code were both published in 2003. This means they were probably in production at the same time, and it's unlikely that one influenced the other. Makes me kinda sad 😔 I can't blame it on an editor saying, "That Dan Brown is hot stuff, Jim! Make your next book more Catholic!"

Anyway....

In this book, the Shroud of Turin has been stolen and the Vatican is pretty sure it's in Chicago to be sold. So they hire Harry Dresden to find it. Chicago PD turns up a headless, handless corpse that has been mutilated grotesquely, and they think magic might be involved. So they bring in Harry Dresden to figure out who did it. A vampire warlord from the Red Court wants to stop his clan's war with the White Council. So he challenges Harry Dresden to Mortal Kombat-- I mean, Combat-- to the death. Winner gets peace. ✌🏻

Homeboy has a lot on his plate. And that's before his ex shows up.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this book was just so much fun. My heart leapt when Michael came back, even though he doesn't get a whole lot of page time (but when he does show up-- 😱). I'm not too mad about it, though, because we get to meet the other Knights of the Cross: an accidental Baptist who just wanted to meet Elvis, but wound up serving a different King; and an agnostic who might not believe in anything even though HE LITERALLY RECEIVED HIS SWORD FROM THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL HIMSELF.

Other memorable characters include The Archive (the embodiment of all human knowledge; she's 7 and believes strongly in bedtimes) and her babysitter-- I mean, bodyguard-- Jared Kincaid. It's been a while since I saw the "eldritch-being-in-the-body-of-a-little-girl" trope (the last time being in Eragon (or was it Eldest?) back when I was in high school, and I'm pretty sure that wasn't an eldritch being, just a spell gone wrong...); but I thought Butcher pulled it off well by leaning into the "little girl" side of things more than the "eldritch being" side of things. I'm interested to see where The Archive pops up again.

Continuing to read this series has made it really hard to write reviews, because it's hard to keep coming up with new ways to say "yeah, this series is pretty great" over and over again. Every book so far has gotten 5 "whatever-emoji-I-choose-to-rate-it-with" because they're... well... just so fun to read. It's been a while since I read something that was just hit after hit. Even Stormlight Archive had Oathbringer to pull it down. But I see this as a good thing. It's an opportunity to stretch my review writing skills.

Death Masks is getting 5 kimonos (because that's the emoji I thought most evocative of a shroud) out of 5. Go read it!