Book Review: Ghost Story by Jim Butcher

[othercat]

In Ghost Story, everyone’s favorite wizard-detective is assigned the task of finding out who killed him. (This is a very familiar story line, but I cannot think of the movie it reminds me of.) If he does not, three of his friends will meet very painful, very tragic ends. Since Harry does not want this to happen, he goes on the case instead of doing whatever it is dead people do when they die. (We do not get any direct information on which direction if any Harry is going in.)

Months have passed since Harry’s death, and thanks to the power vacuum he created at the end of Changes, there are a lot of new players in town,

Comments

[gehayi]

We do get a hint as to where Harry could end up. We're told that he has a hefty amount of guilt on his soul, and he's warned several times that he's in danger from "southbound trains," which exist in the between-state/alternate dimension/Purgatory in which he finds himself. So I think we're supposed to figure that he's in genuine danger of going to Hell.

[othercat]

I wasn't sure if I was looking at a case of reliable or unreliable narrator, given the mindfuckery Harry was experiencing, hence my general uncertainty.

[cat63]

I've read the book, so it's not a problem for me, but the bit of your review outside the cut and the cut text itself contain a massive spoiler for the end of Changes - it might be a kind thing if you could change that for the benefit of folk who haven't read it yet. New readers come to the series all the time and while Changes has been out a while, it is a pretty huge spoiler...

[othercat]

Cut it. Sorry.

[cat63]

Thanks!

I hope I didn't upset you by asking - I know how it is when you finish a book and it was brilliant and you want to discuss with everybody!

[cat63]

I tried to post this comment at your blog, but it didn't seem to want me to - many apologies if it posted there and was lying to me!

She is basically heading into territory that will most likely end with her being beheaded as a warlock

Given that Butcher seems to subscribe to Lois McMaster Bujold's theory of plotting, as in thinking of the worst thing he could possibly do to a character and then doing it, I'm worried that he's going to set things up so that Harry has to kill Molly himself :-(

Harry will make whatever happens to her All His Fault and I will want to hit Harry with a brick.

He does have a tendency to want All The Guilt, doesn't he? :-)

I was a tad annoyed by the "and this is the bit I didn't tell you in the last book" bit towards the end. I can completely see why he did it that way, but that sort of thing always vaguely seems like cheating to me despite that.

I am probably a Bad Person, but the bit that affected me most, emotionally was Harry's reunion with Mouse. Mouse is probably my favourite character in the series, next to Harry.