In one word: Busy
I finished reading this over a month ago and am now clawing my way through a backlog of tardy reviews on this snowy Midwestern APRIL day. Snowy. APRIL. DAY. In what we are calling Spring I guess? Ruuuuude. But I digress. When I dig into the recesses of my mind about this book, not much is surfacing, which isn’t a great sign.
This book was reminiscent of an SNL Stefon skit. Bear with me here. For the unfamiliar, Stefon is an amazing character played by Bill Hader. Stefon drops by the Weekend Update desk and, per the Wikipedia article, “recommends unusual clubs and parties with bizarre characters and very specific tastes.” He usually starts his spiel with, “The hottest club in New York is x. It has EVERYTHING” and then he goes on to list very specific, very disparate things that don’t seem to go together. But it works, because the aim is comedy and Hader commits fully to the character.
With that set-up, you see where I’m going with this book. There is a LOT happening. Harry is (major spoiler) back from the dead, training up as Mab’s right-hand knight. There’s a load of torturous rehab and then a big fun time fairy party with grievances and dueling and then Harry’s shipped back to the mortal coil for another round of saving the world. His friends have moved on from what they thought was his real actual death after his ghosting in the previous book, and he spends an absurd amount of time pondering how to tell them he’s back, and if he should “get them involved.” This again? Save your breath, you know you’re gonna do it. I’ll give a quick rundown of other plot points. Molly has been trained up by his Fairy Aunt, Henry might have some sort of magic brain aneurysm (?) Mac the Bartender gets pulled into the fray, and the magic island is going to explode if they can’t stop someone from tampering with it, but it’s already been tampered with because it’s a time attack (?). It’s a lot, and in my opinion, too much.
Aslo, and I’ve said this in previous reviews. I am NOT HERE for the Molly/Dresden will they won’t they. They shouldn’t, because she was his student and he knew her when she was 12 and what in the name of LOLITA ARE WE DOING HERE. Staaaaaaaaahp.
All that to say, I know I’m going to go back to the series eventually but I’m taking a bit of a pause because this one didn’t pull me along so much as I pulled myself through it and I’ve got other books on my TBR list that are more compelling.
