Blood Rites by Jim Butcher: Book Review

My Review

My Rating: 3/5

Spoiler Free Blood Rites Book Review

If I didn’t know that The Dresden Files only gets better from here, and that this is the last book that’s a bit meh, I would stop reading Jim Butcher‘s series right now.

That isn’t to say that I hated everything about Blood Rites, so I’m going to try and keep to the positives of this fantasy book!

We saw much more of Murphy

(To those who have read the book – not like that!)

She’s an awesome character and I said in my Storm Front review – her character being side-lined is a real shame as she could have a lot to offer. I was so right!

The reveals in this entry were great

Despite giving me answers to questions I didn’t even know I had, Blood Rites continued to add more hints at what is to come, or might be important, in the future books.

Those hints alone kept me from putting the book down.

I love how with every book we learn more about two main things:

One is Harry’s past, and some of the things we learn he never knew himself. This was the only bit of character development he seemed to have in Blood Rites, but it was great all the same.

The second thing is worldbuilding. It’s hard to create a fantasy world in an urban fantasy book that is inspired by pulp detective novels, but Jim Butcher has found a way around that and is doing an amazing job.

Final Thoughts

The humour is still there, and it rarely doesn’t make me at least smile. The opening scene is a bit over the top, but Butcher embraces it and I laughed when the flaming monkey poo was thrown as Harry carried a basket of puppies.

I have a few theories about what might happen, but I’ll keep this all spoiler free and keep them to myself! I think some hints about certain things were supposed to be obvious enough to keep you reading onto the next book, Dead Beat.

Overall, I hope that the fans of this series are right, and that the series never gets as low as this book again. It was a steep cliff for me to get up as I wasn’t massively into the first three books of The Dresden Files, but there were enough elements to keep me reading.

Now I want to see more of what I love about these books and little to none of the slowness of the plot or flatness of the characters that I hate.