Small Favor by Jim Butcher

I love Harry Dresden, as a character he is funny, powerful, and someone you can kind of relate to. Harry Dresden is a wizard Detective and even though he has all these impressive powers he seems to constantly get shafted and more crap dumped on him than anyone person should have to handle. I think that is why I connect so well with this character. I tend to get dumped on by life and yet I still seem to survive anyway. This aspect of Dresden makes for some really funny smart ass comments. 

In this book Harry is being hunted (like every other book) because he has really pissed someone off. To make matters worse the evil queen of the Winter Court has come back to ask a Small Favor of Dresden since he owes her. On top of all of that one of the most powerful demons Dresden has gone up against is back and either trying to kill him or recruit him. Oh yeah, I almost forgot, Mob boss Marcone had been taken also and Dresden has been asked to find him and get him back.

This book has the return of a lot of my favorite characters. Michael is back to help Harry on his mission to figure out who is trying to kill him. We also get  a little bit from Harry’s Half brother Thomas as well as a visit from the sweet little archive who just blew me away in this book. I will not say any more for fear of spoiling it. There are other knights who work with Michael who come back as well as Harry’s boss in the White Council Luccio, and of course Murphy. I love these characters and that is one of the biggest draws to these books for me. I love reading what is happening in these character’s fictional lives sometimes more than the plot going on around them.

This book was very satisfying and I loved the ending. I had to catch myself because I listen to these at work. When I got to the last quarter of this book I found myself neglecting my work because I was so focused on this book. So many things happened that I had been waiting for and there were things that leave the door open for future books. Finally we get a long heartfelt talk with Michael that I have been waiting for for awhile. Again, I will say no more. This is one of my favorites of the series so it is easy to give this book 5 out of 5 stars. I love this series and after this book I can’t wait to get to the next one. I have to pace myself thought. I’m getting caught up very quickly and it is still months before the next in the series will be published.