Ooh fun. A big bad necromancer (in this world, the driving force behind World War I) got taken out by the White Council decades ago. Unfortunately, he left behind a small pile of minions, who of course came calling on Dresden’s home turf.
This is right in the running with Death Masks for my favorite thus far. There’s a reason it has the highest Goodreads ranking among the first ten Dresden books…
I still like Death Masks better, but Blood Rites is still quite good. We’re back to big magical rituals (a five book cycle?) but also a bit of goodly hint of vampiric mayhem (the Black and White Courts this time around).
Of course, since it’s the White Court, the entire plot this time has to revolve around a ritual curse targetting an adult film director. All righty then.
It looks like I started reviewing individual books after I read the first seven Iron Druid books, so this is my first individual review. I reviewed the first seven all together on my blog: [https://blog.jverkamp.com/2015/02/20/…](https://blog.jverkamp.com/2015/02/20/the- iron-druid-chronicles/)
On the downside, Staked has pretty much the same issues I’ve had with each of the previous novels. I don’t really care for the shifting points of view, either the style or the additional viewpoint characters themselves. I think the talking dogs are vastly overdone. The worldbuilding (although neat in a lot of places) is badly kitchen sinky, with literally everything thrown into the same world. And Atticus is just too strong. He’s always been too strong from the first book and never felt like he had/has to work at anything.
And here I thought The Name of the Wind was a long book.
For the most part, everything that I wrote in still holds true here. The worldbuilding is really cool (sygaldry in particular) and the writing itself just keeps pulling you along. I always wanted to know more.
Dang. New favorite Dresden File. More of Michael and the introduction of my favorite baddies in the Dresdenverse.
What really makes Death Masks shine is the the characters:
Sorcerers, werewolves, vampires… And now the Fae. We already had hints of it from the previous books, particularly in the guise of Lea–Harry’s literal Fairy Godmother.
Overall, it’s a very cool bit of worldbuilding. The Fae aren’t particularly uncommon in Urban Fantasy and I really like the Dresden Files version thereof. They’ve even gotten to the point where they act as background knowledge when reading other series. If something isn’t mentioned, I’ll fall back to the Dresden Files as ground truth. It’s just that solid.
First there was a sorcerer. Then werewolves. Next up, ghosts and vampires. The Dresden Files certainly get around.
I already said it last time, but it applies again: Grave Peril is a much better book (in my opinion) than Fool Moon, which in turn is much better than Storm Front. I’m sure this won’t be the same pattern forever, but it’s impressive enough to carry through three books.
Two down.
This time around, we’re dealing with werewolves. And not just stereotypical werewolves, but a small pile of different forms. People that turn into wolves, people turned into wolves against their will, magic item based wolves… It’s a lot. It’s getting close (if not outright blowing past) the ‘kitchen sink’ world building that’s rather common in urban fantasy. On the other hand, it’s neat to see a few different takes on werewolves.
And so it begins.
I’ve probably read this series roughly half a dozen times. This time I’m listening to them on audiobook. It certainly goes by quick.