Review: Side Jobs, by Jim Butcher

Rating:

🥹🥹🥹🥹🥹

First Response:

I almost cried at the end of The Warrior.

One Sentence Summary:

This is a short story collection with an assortment of Harry's adventures at various points between the books of the series.

Tell Me More:

This book was a fun little break after the emotional trauma of Changes. I got to see Harry in his nascency, as well as some behind-the-scenes action from both Thomas and Murphy's point of view. I'm choosing to give it 5 stars primarily for The Warrior.

Because all of the stories in this collection were unconnected from the main storyline of The Dresden Files, their stakes were significantly lower than any of the novels. This was what made the book so light and fun, but also had the side effect of rendering all the stories inconsequential. All of these stories (except 1) appeared in anthologies curated around specific themes. Mostly they were pieces designed to give readers a taste of Dresden's world, probably so they'll pick up The Dresden Files after whatever anthology they originally read the story in.

A few of them stand out:

1. "Day Off" features Harry having an unfortunately busy day off from his investigative work; in which he helps his werewolf friends with their fleas.
   

2. "The Warrior" follows Harry's attempts to secure Amoracchius and Fidelaccius.
   

3. and "Love Hurts" shows us what happens when a rogue love spell throws Karrin and Harry at each other while investigating an delightfully trope-y county fair.

The rest of the stories are fine. "Backup," which is from Thomas's perspective and introduces the Oblivion War (a war in which old gods are slowly cut off from their ability to magically influence the world through the eradication of their memory in the collective consciousness of humanity), is interesting because it's melodramatic in the best way and lets us see a side of the world that we wouldn't normally get to see from Harry's perspective. I didn't really care for the rest of them; even "Aftermath," which picks up moments after the end of Changes was just... fine (I WANT HARRY BACK! 😭).

The real standout in this collection was definitely "The Warrior," which is ostensibly about a rogue priest who tries to coerce Harry into returning to the Church the Swords of the Cross entrusted to his care. In actuality, it's about how small kindnesses can have huge impact; and how being present with the hurting is perhaps the most effective means of combatting evil. The conversation with Uriel at the end almost made me cry at work today. I had to pause the book to process.

This was a fun little aside, but I'm ready for Ghost Story now. I need to know what happens next!