Grave Peril

When I was a kid, I loved book series, and one of my favourite book memories is reading Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain over the course of a week in grade school. I’d stumbled upon The Book of Three, the first volume, in the library one Monday and that night read it through, spellbound by the pig-keeper’s adventures. Tuesday I checked out the Black Cauldron and read it to the end. By Friday, I’d read all the series, one book per day, finishing with The High King. The intensity of the experience left me sad but euphoric and I’ve never forgotten it.

The Dresden Files is nothing like Prydain other than being a series. It’s weightless and very much grounded in the myth-in-modern-world genre so popular on contemporary television (cf. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood, Supernatural, etc.), but that’s fine. Grave Peril is the third in the series and I didn’t love it, but things seem to be settling into a rhythm and the spirit-in-a-skull sidekick makes me laugh in his short scenes. This time around Harry is chasing ghosts and realizes nearly too late that they are just a ploy and that someone’s actually trying to kill him.

I’ve just realized that I didn’t log the first two books in the series (Storm Front and Fool Moon). That I didn’t feel like announcing I’d read them speaks volumes.