Since reviews of the books I’ve read will take a while, I decided to get the ball rolling with some recommendation blog posts.

First up is Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series.  I LOVE this series!  I used to hate books that were written in first person, but I’ve come to enjoy them thanks to this awesome series.  Butcher starts out with book one, Storm Front and just gets better from there.  I highly, highly recommend this series.  Harry Dresden is talented, irreverent and has a chip on his shoulder the size of Chicago.  On the whole I give the series an A+. It hooks you and reels you in so that you just can’t wait for the next book (trust me, right now I am lamenting the fact that the next Dresden novel doesn’t come out until March 2011).

The nice thing about the series is, you don’t necessarily to have to read the books in order to understand what happens in them.  It’s easier if you do, true, but Butcher does a good job of briefly recapping the previous bits of story line in each successive novel.

• Storm Front: This is the first novel of the series and it’s pretty solid, even with introducing the main characters.  It isn’t quite as excellent as the later books, but I think that’s to be expected for a first novel. Magic, fairies and warlocks oh my! Overall, it’s a solid B novel.
• Fool Moon: This novel focuses on werewolves and the many varieties thereof.  The series is stretching it’s wings, so to speak, and is introducing more recurring characters.  B/B+
• Grave Peril: Introductions to Butcher’s view of vampires. Being a vampire story enthusiast, I was pleasantly surprised and intrigued by Butcher’s ideas of vampires.  Also introduces recurring character Michael Carpenter. The series really starts getting better from here. B+
• Summer Knight: Good fairies, evil fairies and possibly evil exes (aren’t they all). A-
• Death Masks: The Red Court returns just at the worst possible time, as the Blackened Denarians are in town.  A-
• Blood Rites: This is one of my personal favorites in the series.  I love, love, love the character of Thomas the incubus half-brother of Harry Dresden.  A+
• Dead Beat: Necromancy! Yay! But seriously, who doesn’t think that riding a resurrected T-Rex through Chicago is awesome? Polka will never die! A+
• Proven Guilty: Introduction of Molly Carpenter as Harry’s plucky side kick.  Very good story, a little darker than the previous Dresden books maybe. A
• White Night: Who’s killing off Chicago’s minor magic users? That’s what Harry wants to know! But no one wants to talk with him.  What else is new?  A-
• Small Favor: Return of Ivy the Archive and one of my favorite characters, Kincaid. A
• Turn Coat: Ah! A little bit of “I told you so” for Donald Morgan! Very good story. A+
• Changes: Oh. My. God. Amazing, amazing book. But SOOOOOOOO frustrated with the end! A little spoiler: It is definitely going to leave you hanging…and not on a good note! I cannot wait for the next novel. A++
• Short stories: Jim Butcher has an anthology of his Dresden short stories due out around October 2010. I’m definitely going to get it, but I have read some of them already from other anthologies.  As I am waiting, patiently, for this book Side Jobs: Stories from the Dresden Files.

I recently recommended Storm Front to my father-in-law and he has gotten just as hooked as I have.  Butcher is a good, witty writer who can do a comedic scene just as well as an angsty scene or an action scene.  If anyone out there has read and enjoyed this series, I would love to hear from you on any authors/series that you would recommend along the lines of the Dresden Files.