Jim Butcher - Dresden Files

Jim Butcher writes a couple of series. The Codex Alera which I haven't read, and the Dresden Files which I have read. The Dresden Files are centered around the character of Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, Chicago's first (and only) Wizard P.I. Think "supernatural private investigator in a world where magic is still largely disbelieved" and you have it pretty much right. Just without the tons of often goofy sex that seems to show up quite commonly in similar books.

I picked up the first Dresden Files book ( Storm Front ) ages back mostly on a lark. The book turned out to be remarkably good and I ended up devouring it pretty much overnight and snagged the second ( Fool Moon ) and third ( Grave Peril ) which were both already out at the time and waited impatiently for the fourth ( Summer Knight ) to come out. I had almost forgotten the authors name when the fifth ( Death Masks ) came out but ultimately trudged through a snowstorm in NC to get it, but didn't get the sixth ( Blood Rites ) until after I had moved back to OR as all my books were boxed up and between coasts at the time when it came out and I wanted to re-read the earlier ones before I got it.

Now the seventh ( Dead Beat ) came out in May and it, unlike the rest of them, was originally released in hardcover. Ugh. Hardcover. I hate buying books in hardcover. I like trade paperback size, the larger then mass-market size, because I can still fit it in my backpack when heading around town, it is easy to read while riding the bus or waiting for it, but hardcover... Too big, too heavy, too clunky, too expensive.

Book eight ( Proven Guilty ) should be coming out next year, so hopefully by the holidays the seventh will be in paperback. I can't find a paperback release date for it anywhere so far, and Amazon.com changed their layout again on me and I think went out of their way to make it more clutter and less usable. Anyways, no sample chapters up for number eight yet, so no linkage to it.