As promised, the latest book in the reread, Summer Knight, is the best in the series so far. While we’ve seen faeries in the Dresden Files before (Toot Toot and Lea, for example), Summer Knight delves more deeply into the Faerie denizens of the Dresden Universe, and their efforts to tangle Harry up in their web of schemes.

Summer Knight starts with Harry investigating a rain of toads. Billy the Werewolf (introduced in Fool Moon) sends up the Dresden Signal to Harry at the first sign of weird magic stuff and Harry responds. We learn that since the events of Grave Peril, the White Council is at war with the Red Court of Vampires and Harry’s become the target of several assassination attempts. Harry and Billy come under attack by some gunmen and a particularly vicious ghoul which gives them both a bit of trouble until Harry takes it down.

[Spoilers for all books up to and including Summer Knight beyond the cut...]

The Nevernever, realm of faeries, spirits and ghosts. In Grave Peril, the third Dresden Files novel, Harry Dresden must contend with all of these, as well as three different kinds of vampires and an overly inquisitive girlfriend. Strap in, folks, cause this is when the ride really starts.

If the first two books in the series (Storm Front and Fool Moon for those keeping track) were a little shaky, Grave Peril is where Dresden’s story gets its legs. Right from the beginning we’re off and running with Harry on a case with colleague, Michael Carpenter, one of my personal favorite characters in the series. Michael is a Knight of the Cross, a holy warrior dedicated to fighting evil. Together, he and Harry start the book dealing  with a ghost who appears in a Chicago hospital trying to kill babies in the nursery.

[Keep all hands and feet inside the vehicle and beware of spoilers for the first three Dresden Files books...]

How many different werewolves can you cram into one story? In Fool Moon, the second in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series, he shoots for the, well, moon. Harry Dresden is back again, and this time the fur is flying.

Let’s get this out of the way right from the start—Fool Moon is, by many accounts, the worst of the Dresden books. Its plot is muddy, there are large portions of exposition thrown at the reader, and it tries to cram every kind of werewolf into its pages. But it has its shining moments, and it begins to set up storylines that will later become great.

[Don’t blame me if things start getting hairy, spoilers ahead...]

Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series is one of the most popular urban fantasy series around, currently coming in at 14 books with additional short stories, comic adaptations, and a short-lived television series. And it all began with 2000’s Storm Front.

My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. I’m a wizard. I work out of an office in midtown Chicago. As far as I know, I’m the only openly practicing professional wizard in the country. You can find me in the yellow pages, under “Wizards.” Believe it or not, I’m the only one there.

[Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards if you fear spoilers...]

On November 27th, the fourteenth book of Jim Butcher's long-running urban fantasy series The Dresden Files, Cold Days, will be released. In honor of this, Tor.com is kicking off a reread of the whole series, starting with the first novel, Storm Front.

The series chronicles the adventures of Harry Dresden, a wizard and private investigator based out of Chicago. When the things that go bump in the night threaten the people of the city, Harry steps in. As you can imagine, quite a bit happens over the course of fourteen books, and we aim to cover it all.

[Read more]

Jeffrey Ford is one of our finest short story writers, not just in the genre, but in all of fiction. It’s no surprise then that his latest collection, Crackpot Palace, is a brilliant collection of stories that often dips into the surreal, but always brims with depth and emotion.

One of the most interesting things about Ford’s fiction is that it often takes an autobiographical approach, with the author as the narrator and his family and community taking part as well. Many of the stories in this collection fall into this category, featuring Ford navigating the crazy characters and surreal landscapes of places he’s lived.

[Enter the Palace and watch where you turn. Dont mind that strange shadow that seems to chase you...]

Look, up on the shelf! It’s a western. It’s noir. It’s science fiction. It’s all three, blended together in Zack Parsons’ brilliant novel, Liminal States, and it’s super, man.

There are some novels that come along that just manage to push all one’s buttons. Liminal States was that for me. So I’ll warn you that this might be a little biased to those who like westerns, noir, and dystopian/apocalyptic fiction in their SF.

[Abandon your spire. It is coming...]

On July 11, the world lost a beloved writer of children’s books in Donald Sobol, creator of one of the most beloved sleuths to ever grace fiction. Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown may have been a boy, and the crimes he investigated were more on the level of the theft of a tent or the outcome of a school baseball game, but for many young people, Encyclopedia Brown was their entry into the world of mysteries. 

[Flip to the back to find out why...]

Pixar movies are generally an easy sell for me. They push all the right buttons. Monsters? They’ve got them. Superheroes? That, too. Science fictional robots? Yup. But it wasn’t until they got to zeppelins that I truly fell in love. It turns out, though, that it’s not because of the zeppelins. It turns out that there’s a lot more to Up than that.

[Board the Spirit of Adventure, but beware of spoilers and...Squirrel!]

Saladin’s post on Fantastically Filmable Indie Comic Books from the 1980s, about overlooked indie comic series, was a wonderful post (and if you haven’t read it, go do so now), but he himself overlooked one of the seminal indie comic series of the late 80s, and my favorite comic series of all time: Grimjack.

Grimjack was the creation of writer John Ostrander and artist Tim Truman first appearing as a backup in First Comic’s Starslayer. It soon proved popular enough to spin off into its own series, lasting 81 issues, though First’s bankruptcy prevented any new material from being published until 2005.

[Read on to see what made this series so great...]

I was never a big reader of military science fiction when I was younger, but I certainly watched plenty of movies and television shows in the genre as I grew up. One of my earliest joys was the television show Star Blazers which aired on American television in the early 80s.

[We’re off to outer space, We’re leaving Mother Earth, To save the human race...]

There’s a lot to love about The Prestige. Stage magicians. The Batman team of Bale and Cain. But perhaps the best thing about the movie, in my mind, was David Bowie assuming the role of Nikola Tesla. It seems that kind of perfect Hollywood casting, not only for Bowie’s wonderful performance, but for the similarities between the two men. 

[Read on for how they compare...]

Most people are familiar with David Bowie’s roles in movies like Labyrinth, The Man Who Fell to Earth, and The Prestige. Less well known is the film, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, a movie about British soldiers in a Japanese POW camp during World War II.

[Read on for a look at one of Bowie’s best performances, with spoilers...]

Sherlock Holmes’s popularity has spawned a number of other characters who serve as homages to the famous literary detective. I’ve previously looked at some of these “shadows” in modern television. Now let’s look at other such characters in genre fiction.

[Read more]

The crimes of Jack the Ripper were committed over 120 years ago and yet they still remain as mysterious and compelling as perhaps they ever did. Whether it’s the fact that the cases were unsolved, or the mix of sex and violence, the Ripper’s exploits have made their way into hundreds of works of fiction, including several works by Robert Bloch, now assembled in a collection from Subterranean — Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper.

[A cut above the rest? Read on to find out...]

Jim Henson’s work has been an important part of my life, from Sesame Street to the Fraggles and beyond. It’s no surprise, then, that he also created my favorite holiday movie of all time — Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas.

[Head full of good thoughts / Belly full of grub / Money in your pocket / When there ain’t no hole in the washtub...]

True there are only rumors about the second rebooted Star Trek film right now, and there’s been no confirmation that Khan will be its villain, but if he is, I have something to say to J. J. Abrams, assuming he’s going ahead with Khan:

Make him a real Indian.

[Read on for the letter and some pictures of shirtless men...]

The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral is one of the most enduring tales of the American West, having been the subject of countless depictions across various media. The story has even been given the genre treatment, adding magic or science fiction elements in works such as the excellent Territory by Emma Bull. In Mike Resnick’s novel The Buntline Special, the story gets the full on steampunk treatment in what is a light, fun, rollicking read.

Resnick sets his tale in 1881, in an alternate reality in which the U.S. expansion never went west past the Mississippi and in which a young Thomas Edison teamed up with Ned Buntline in Tombstone, Arizona to revolutionize modern science. Together, the two create a number of new inventions, including electricity and artificial limbs.

[Read on, pard, to find out why...]

If power corrupts, what happens when you become powerless? This week, fans of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files were treated to the release of the 13th book in the series, the eagerly awaited and aptly named Ghost Story. Suddenly we’re dealing with a Harry that we’ve never seen before, who has to come up with whole new strategies to handle the kind of Dresden adventure that longtime fans crave.

Warning: This post contains minor spoilers for Ghost Story and major spoilers for all the books prior.

[What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil...]

In a better world, Firefly, Joss Whedon’s best television show, would have continued past the first season. Hell, it would have at least had a full first season. But in the world we were given, it was canceled before it really had a chance to begin. We got (eventually) 14 episodes, and fans of the show were left helplessly longing for more.

So when Serenity was released in 2005, almost three years after the show finished airing, it was both the fulfillment of that longing and the vessel of hope that we would be given more of the story.

[I am a leaf on the wind, I am a leaf on the wind...]