Small Favour - Jim Butcher

   2008; 437 pages.  Book 10 (out of 17) in the “Dresden Files” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres: Paranormal Thriller; Urban Fantasy; Action-Intrigue.  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    It’s all rather bizarre.

 

    Someone has kidnapped Chicago crime boss “Gentleman Johnnie Marcone”.  They literally tore the entire front off the building he was in and whisked him away.  Chicago Police want the city’s resident wizard, Harry Dresden, to investigate.  But that’s not the strange part.

 

    Queen Mab, aka "The Winter Queen", aka "The Faerie Queen", drops in on Harry, and calls in a small favor that he owes her.  She too wants him to investigate Marcone's kidnapping.  That’s the strange part.

 

    Why would the paranormal community care one bit about the whereabouts of a Chicago gangster?  I don’t know, but any mortal, even if he’s a wizard, who sticks his nose into this, will probably get it chopped off.

 

    Good luck, Harry!  You're gonna need it.

 

What’s To Like...

    The title does not contain a typo; the paperback I read was published in England, hence “Favour”.  The text was in “American” though, so I guess Orbit Books prints its books both ways.

 

    Small Favour is an Action-Intrigue story, and there is an abundance supply of both in the storyline.  Harry’s investigation seems to trigger all sorts of attempts on his life, which in turn keeps him wondering whether ulterior motives are in play, and if so, what those are.

 

    A slew of new creatures and characters are introduced here, including Hobs (servants of the Winter Faeries) and Gruffs (as in “three Billy Goats Gruff” and servants of the Summer Faeries).  Those creatures have evil intentions, but are puny in power compared to the Denarians, aka “The Fallen”, who are now demonic in nature but still retain their magical powers.

 

   An impressive cast of recurring characters including Thomas (Harry’s half-brother and a vampire), Michael (Harry’s friend-in-arms and Knight of the Cross), Molly (Michael’s daughter and apprentice wizard being trained by Harry), Ivy (also known as The Archive), and Karrin Murphy (a Chicago Policewoman who looks after the city’s interest in these magical shenanigans).  They all have significant parts in the storyline and do their best to keep Harry alive.

 

    Things build to a nail-biting, twisty, and desperate—for both the Good forces and the Evil ones—ending.  The Good Guys prevail (c’mon, you knew they would) but it comes at considerable cost in terms of bloodshed and trauma.  The last of 46 chapters is 30 pages long, and serves as both an Epilogue for this book and a teaser for the next one, Turn Coat.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 8,659 ratings and 691 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.43*/5, based on 112,931 ratings and 3,295 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Anybody with an ounce of sense knows that fighting someone with a significant advantage in size, weight, and reach is difficult.  If your opponent has you by fifty pounds, winning a fight against him is dubious proposition, at best.

    If your opponent has you by eight thousand and fifty pounds, you’ve left the realm of combat and enrolled yourself in Roadkill 101.  Or possibly a Tom and Jerry cartoon.  (pg. 207)

 

    Thomas frowned.  “You aren’t just running your mouth, here, are you?  You’re serious?”

    “It’s a worst-case scenario,” I said.  “But Nicodemus could do it, so we’ve got to proceed under the presumption that his intentions are in that category.  The Denarians want to disrupt civilization, and with the Archive under their control, they could do it.  Maybe they’d use biological or chemicals weapons instead.  Maybe they’d crash the world economy.  Maybe they’d turn every program on television into one of those reality shows.”

    “That’s mostly done already, Harry.”  (pg. 342)

 

“Punctuality is for people with nothing better to do.”  (pg. 345)

    Small Favour doesn’t skimp on the profanity.  I noticed 20 instances in the first 10% of the book, of which three-quarters reference the Underworld.  But only one of those twenty was an f-bomb.  I’d call this par for the course for a Dresden Files book

 

    It’s difficult to find anything else to whine about.  Nevernever, the Faerie world, and Bob the Skull, which are two of my favorite tropes in this series, play almost no part in the storyline.  That’s all I can complain about.  The lofty Goodreads rating of 4.43 is fully justified.

 

    Small Favour is both a standalone novel and part of a (completed) 17-book series.  I’ve now read the first ten books in the series and Jim Butcher hasn’t lost his knack for spinning out captivating tales of Harry Dresden keeping Chicago safe from falling victim to various Dark Forces.  Heck, Chicagoans aren’t even aware that any paranormal creatures exist.

 

    9 Stars.  One last thing.  I was impressed by the way Jim Butcher portrays the mob boss.  Most writers would just cast him as a ruthless, totally-evil thug; but here we discover that Marcone has a noble side as well, even if he rarely gets to show it.  I love it when the characters in a story are “gray”.