Review: Small Favor, by Jim Butcher

Rating:

✝️✝️✝️✝️✝️

First Response:

THANK GOD MICHAEL'S ALRIGHT! WHY DIDN'T ANYONE WARN ME?!?!?!?!

One Sentence Summary:

Someone has kidnapped Johnny Marcone and Queen Mab is calling in one of her 3 favors to get Dresden to find him.

Tell Me More:

The wicked web keeps getting webbier. But first, some background.

I was clipping along through The Dresden Files at a pretty good pace, and my library seemed to have all the audiobooks somewhere between Libby and Hoopla together-- all of them except this one. This one was only available as an ebook, and switching from audiobook to ebook for this one book has shown me just how different the experience between the two media is for me. I listen to audiobooks at 2x speed, not because I want to get through them quickly, but because I've found that my comprehension (and my enjoyment of the experience) goes down when I listen at anything less (with some exceptions, but if the exceptions are in effect, I'm probably gonna dislike the experience for other reasons, like disliking a narrator's voice). With Dresden Files books, that start out at 8-9 hours per book and start topping out around 15-20, listening at 2x speed means I can usually finish them in a day or two at the most.

This ebook took me...<checks storygraph>... 5 days.

<forehead furrows, checks phone screen again>

Yeah... 5 days. Felt a lot longer.

Damn. That wasn't nearly as dramatic as I thought it would be.

Anyway, this book did NOT slouch in the plot department, but after consuming a book a day every weekday for weeks, actually READING THE WORDS felt like sloughing through calf-high mud (okay, it was probably more like ankle high snow slush, but the point still stands!). And I cannot reiterate enough how little this had to do with the actual content of the book. This book was fantastic! I almost cried! But READING it was kinda rough. I'm starting to understand why some people don't count audiobooks as reading. Listening is just so much easier.

To actually talk about the book, though...

Small Favor is up there in terms of "best books in the series so far." I think Dead Beat still beats it by a hair (I mean, it's hard to be the necromantic T-Rex, c'mon); but this book still stands out. Primarily because of The Archive. We've heard about The Archive's magical prowess in earlier books, and even glimpsed it in Death Masks, but this is the first time we actually get to see Ivy in action-- and she's AWESOME. <spoiler> She takes on 7 Denarians at once and MAKES IT LOOK EASY!  <spoiler>

Also, I just knew Karrin Murphy was gonna get her hands on a Sword of the Cross! I WAS RIGHT! Did she take it up and become a knight? Maybe. Read the book to find out. BUT IT WAS COOL!

This book made me feel the whole gamut of emotions, from anger and horror at some of the Denarians' deeds (I wanted them to get killed in this book, but alas, the story must go on...) to fear and anguish at the potential fate of Michael Carpenter (again, WHY DIDN'T ANYONE WARN ME?!), to joy and good humor at Harry's perennial wisecracking. That's why it's getting 5 "stars." Like every Dresden Files book so far, this one is an adventure with a touch of heart; a mystery with a touch of melancholy.

I chose to make the "stars" crosses because the Knights of the Cross play such a central role to the story, but it's getting harder and harder to categorize these books by a single theme. All of the worldbuilding is overlapping much more fluidly now. Like yes, the majority of this book was focused on Harry's conflict with the Denarians, but there was also a side plot about the Summer Court sending assassins after him (which, I guess, now that I think about it, did tie into the whole "fight the Denarians" plot because it was Queen Mab of the Winter Court who wanted the Denarians fought in the first place, and Summer always opposes Winter. So scratch that!