Death Masks: The Dresden Files, Book Five (The Dresden Files series 5)

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My favorite of these are the Denarians, who I thought were definitely applause-worthy. I also crushed on the Archive a powerful, neutral character and the Fellowship of St Giles. Despite the plethora of different races, Butcher handles their power and socio-political backgrounds very well, and he provides enough "rules" and "limitations" to keep the whole thing from getting silly. Related to the worldbuilding, but separate enough to warrant special mention is the magic system created for the series. The plot of the book is fast-paced, well written and engaging.

This may just be a matter of personal taste. Now, I have no problems with sarcastic and wise-cracking main characters, especially in books that are meant to be "light" reads. Thus, for much of the time, I think Dresden's wise ass not-quite-wise-but-not-dumb-ass remarks are fine and I even sometimes enjoy them I would LOVE, just once, to see Harry become truly enraged and threaten to shove his staff up some magi-being's poop shoot.

But no, my desire for a raging MAD-ON goes unfulfilled leaving my anger sack full and very, very "blue. These all to frequent moments make me just want to shake Harry until the douchy falls out of him. It isn't manly, it isn't chivalrous Butcher, for the sake of your fans Overall, I think the series has some real strengths. I still like it, but it is precarious. View all 43 comments. Dec 13, Will M. What I noticed right away after reading the first few chapters would be that the series has a routine. It starts of with Harry complaining about his broke life, then a lover appears or a new villain.

It's not a bad routine, on the contrary I actually enjoy it. Harry Dresden's life is really fascinating and adventure filled. The plot tried to be more action packed but ended up on the mild side. The new enemies presented were quite interesting but honestly were all over the place. They weren't intr What I noticed right away after reading the first few chapters would be that the series has a routine. They weren't introduced well enough to make a lasting statement. I liked them but they were all forgettable.

I like characters that are awesome enough to be remembered. Harry Dresden himself is obviously unforgettable, but I'll need more than one to really enjoy the novel. Murphy and Michael are also old favorites, but I need new ones. I'm not fond of the Harry-Susan love team. I just don't see any love between them. I didn't like that this novel focused more on their relationship too, aside from the duels Harry had. Susan has this pretentious vibe that I never really liked right from the start.

I'm hoping not to see her that much in the next novels.

9780451462947 - Death Masks: A Novel of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

Not my favorite of the series, but at least it's still not the worst. This novel was enjoyable for some parts, but quite tiresome for the most. It was still good though, so I'm still recommending this. I can't wait to continue on with the series. View all 7 comments. This is my favourite Dresden File to date because for the very first time reading this series, I actually felt emotional resonance.

In the past few instalments, I was entertained, intrigued, and mostly treated these books as my guilty pleasure when I needed something I can breeze through for some fun and action with more than a touch of snarky humour. In Death Masks, there were less unrealistically badass moments where I'll go "Oh, come on! As I have alluded to in quite a few of my other reviews, emotional investment a significant factor in determining whether the book is merely good or great, for me.

Hence, with me coming out of this feeling the way I did, I have to say that Harry's story is moving to greater heights as I am starting to care. I was also fascinated by the introduction of a new kind of adversary in this book. Without giving away too much, let's just say that eternal battle between Heaven and Hell or between the angels and the fallen ones has been a perennial favourite supernatural theme of mine.

The Constantine movie with Keanu Reeves is another one of my guilty pleasures, and I have watched it at least half a dozen times. While I'm not sure of how I feel about the romantic angle in these books yet, I am loving the themes of friendship, loyalty and sacrifice. Even Michael whom I found too self-righteous and stuffy in the previous novel, is great here. I'll end this short review by saying that this was also the first time I felt like starting on the next volume immediately after finishing one of the Dresden Files.

That alone probably indicated how much I enjoyed Death Masks. This review can also be found at Booknest Sep 08, Philip rated it liked it Shelves: To anyone who still isn't convinced that Harry is a chauvinistic, narcissistic douchebag: Someone's cocky pun intended? First of all ew. Second, woman , not girl , that's demeaning- and to think you consider yourself chivalrous.

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Third, en 3ish stars. Third, enough with the" blasting rod" talk, a little humility would do you some good. View all 14 comments. I really do love this series. This book was my least favorite but I did enjoy it a little. I loved the last four so I am excited to start the next one.

Death Masks is the 5th in the series and I really have to say that I am so over with the war with the red court. In Death Masks, a vampire named Ortega challenges Harry to a duel that will end the war between the vampires and the wizards. Harry has no choice but to accept, and almost no hope of winning the duel. However he has another problem. A c I really do love this series. A catholic priest - who doesn't believe in magic - needs Harry's help in finding the Shroud of Turin, which stolen by a trio of thieves, on of which has turned up very dead.

Harry traces the remaining two thieves to his hometown of Chicago. He also quickly finds out that he isn't the only one after them. A group of terrifying demons wants the shroud, and the demon leader wants Harry's soul too. Life is never easy for Harry, all he wants is to just do private investigations and earn a living. He realises that he must accept help from all of his friends, including three Holy knights, his police-officer friend, and even his half-vampire ex-girlfriend, Susan. The story is well-paced, the action well done, humour abounds in spite of grizzly events.

Jim Butcher cleverly twists religious history and the occult, and builds on events from the previous books without you needing to have read them. Harry's world is increasingly complex, and he continues to grow as a character. However, I just couldn't say this is a 'wow' book for me - a few things irk me. Why is Harry the only Wizard doing anything - yes I know he is on the out as far as wizarding goes - but this is threatening the whole magical world, why let him do all the work? I hope there is less war and more investigations into creepy magical beings in the future books.

View all 19 comments. You sweet, oddly sexy, powerful wizard. You just CAN'T catch a break! I adore this series and I adore listening to it on audio. I think James Marsters just keeps getting better and better. I could listen to these books all day, every day. Interestingly, a lot is left hanging at the end of this book. I can't wait to see where the next few books take me!

View all 24 comments. Harry Dresden can't catch a break He's up against the Red vampire court, he's being attacked by supernatural creatures with powers he's never seen before and his ex-girlfriend is back in town. But, you can't keep a good wizard down, right? Even when you introduce a holy relic into the tale: This changed things a lot.

Harry Dresden is a wizard for hire. He solves supernatural crimes, he finds lost items and he never seems to make enough money to be comfortable. Never walk into a fight when the bad guys are the ones who set it up. Wizards can call down lightning from the heavens, rip apart the earth beneath their enemy's feet, blow them into a neighboring time zone with gale winds, and a million other things even less pleasant- but not if we don't plan things out in advance.

But I still love it. Purely for effect, I locked it too. I'd go in with the best of intentions and end up with the most mediocre of results.

Harry stands up for the little guy and has a soft spot for the ladies. He protects children and holds the door for women.

He likes to drink, wears a leather duster and can't seem to sleep even when he's exhausted. Aren't we all, in some ways, Harry Dresden? Fighting the good fight, even though we know that death waits around the corner?

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Apocalypse is a frame of mind," he said then. A surrender to inevitability. It is despair for the future. It is the death of hope. I am a fan of The Dresden Files despite the fact that it can seem formulaic. I think Harry Dresden is worth the read. Jul 02, Lindsey Rey rated it really liked it Shelves: The story continues here and stays true to form. The Dresden books are some of my favorite novels These are great brain candy. They're pure escapism, total Urban Fantasy fun, comic drama that do several things very well. Each novel tells it's own story making them individually readable and enjoyable while in the back ground evidence and details mount to tell a larger more involved tale.

Here we open up with Harry broke not that unusual and in a spot he isn't all that happ The story continues here and stays true to form. Here we open up with Harry broke not that unusual and in a spot he isn't all that happy about He's on the Larry Fowler show seems like it might be something like the old Jerry Springer show???

The producer offered double his usual fee. He's trying to control his emotions lest he accidentally destroy thousands of dollars worth of TV equipment. Things seem to be going pretty well We'll not go into the damage done when Harry loses a bit of emotional control. One of the other guests is a representative from the Vatican. The priest and the Vampire are not really in town to appear on Larry Fowler of course big surprise, right?

You see the vampire war is dragging on a bit What does the vampire Duke Ortega want? What does "Father Vincent" want Harry to find? That would be telling. Don't miss any of the Dresden books. I know some aren't as taken with them as I, fine. But try them yourself. I'm not here to run down objections and complaints about the novels. While there may be some flaws and they may not be to the taste of some I think most will find this book these books at least greatly enjoyable and some, like me fantastic.

The series opens wonderfully and gets better as it goes with the books seeming to me to hit their stride around volume 3 or 4 and continuing to get better as they go. Highest brain candy recommendation. View all 6 comments. Jul 12, Chris rated it really liked it Shelves: Reasons to read this book.

Harry Dresden is a believable character. He learns, he grows, but he does not gain a new power every book. In fact, he doesn't seem to gain any power in any of the books. He gains awareness and knowledge. Susan is cool, but flawed like Harry. Godfather with a helicopter. Butcher could write a good romance novel. Good female detective who has smarts. Butcher knows his myth, le Reasons to read this book. Butcher knows his myth, legends, and religion. An agnostic black Russian knight. A woman who knows how to make armor. Most importantly, an ending that works in terms of the rules of the series.

View all 9 comments. Mar 25, Robin Bridge Four rated it really liked it. Buddy at Buddies Books and Baubles with some Dresdanites 3. Mostly I like all of the side characters more than him. Good men are hard to find and he is the best of them. Anyone with a holy sword and Crusader Armor is interesting in my book.

Molly - The Fourteen year old daughter of the Fist of God. She was hilarious, a little bit of a romantic and full of enough teenage rebellion to be interesting but not annoying she was one of my favorite new additions. Miyagi of the book much knowledge and a great sense of devotion to his cause while Sanya is very different from what you would expect of a holy crusader of God. IVY - Also known as the archive. I hope she shows up in future books as she was really interesting. If the reaction of my wards was any indication, it meant that she was at least as strong as any Wizard of the White Council.

There are some and new additions including the Oracle, Ortega, the Fallen and Nicodemus. So many people for Harry to interact with it gets staggering at times. While I really like most of the characters of this series I sometimes find the plotting kind of thrown together. It sometimes feels jumbled crashing together until we get to the end.

In this corner, one missing Shroud, one impossibly and thoroughly dead corpse, one dedicated and deadly vampire warlord, three holy knights, twenty-nine fallen angels, and a partridge in a pear tree. And in the opposite corner, one tired, bruised, underpaid professional wizard, threatened by his allies and about to get dumped by his would-be girlfriend for John Q. I will give it up to J.

Sanya in particular is a Warrior for God but….. I loved the twist to his character. The inclusion of the 30 pieces of silver that were paid to Judas as well was a fantastic re-imagining of how to incorporate Christian lore into story. I also very much liked the addition of a duel between Harry and a Duke of the Red Court and how the rules for that were incorporated. There are a ton of great ideas in the story. Possible even too many which is why at times it felt slightly jumbled to me at times. Still right now this is a series I could read a few and walk away for a few months then read a few more.

Still Harry is a good dude to hang out with and go on a ride into crazytown. Also you can feel better about your life because I guarantee he has way more problems with romance, people trying to kill him and just paying the rent than you do. View all 16 comments. My sister and I listened to this on Audiobook in the car.

I had to return the CDs to the library, but fortunately, they had the Playaway, so we were able to finish this. I loved James Marsters' narration. He doesn't sound a thing like Spike and I'm glad. He showed a wonderful vocal range, and he really gave life to Harry Dresden for me. He's really fantastic at accents and different inflections.

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He does women voices without them sounding cheesy or falsetto which is a huge thing for me. I think My sister and I listened to this on Audiobook in the car. I think I will definitely have to listen to more of these on audiobooks. My sister had never read any of this series, and she really liked this.

Of course, she loves James Marsters and Spike , so that was a good way to suck her in. As far as the book, I really liked it. I think it could probably give this five stars if I wanted to be generous. I think the reason I didn't is because the story doesn't really wrap up to my satisfaction. I would have liked a lot more closure than I got.

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But it was a good follow-up to Summer Knight. Harry is a hero, but he doesn't ever seem to get that day in the sun or the resolution of his personal and private issues that you would hope for. Susan is back, and that was very cool. I think that her return was pivotal to the storyline, and the storyline in itself has a nice complexity to it in which various elements tie together very well. I can't say I was a huge fan of the Susan relationship, but it's treated well in this book, and there was a surprisingly steamy love scene that I wasn't expecting.

I wonder if the author's wife is rubbing off on him Shannon K. I can see that there was genuine love between them, and I can't help hoping that works out in the future. I think that Harry gains a lot of personal growth in this book, acquiring new allies along the way, and realizing that there are people who really do believe the best of him and trust him to do the right thing.

I know I am seriously behind in this series, because I tend to get behind in my reading of series. I actually wasn't lost, even though it had been years since I read Summer Knight, so that was nice. He also develops more nemeses, not like he needs them. Harry really does have a kiss my butt attitude that makes people hate his guts. But those people are usually jerks, so that's okay with me. I have heard things about Dresden being a sexist. I think listening to this on audio does reveal this flaw in his character. While I am not for sexism, I still like him a lot. I think that his sexism backfires on him because he allows his preconceived notions about women get him in trouble again and again.

My hope is he will learn from his mistakes. But despite this shortcoming and others, I count Harry as one of my favorite characters for many reasons. I think that even though Harry has some really obvious flaws, he's a good guy that I'm very fond of and I always look forward to spending time with him. Like most of the books in this series, the secondary characters are great.

They add so much to the read. The Knights of the Cross including Michael , Murphy, Susan, Martin, Susan's work companion who is on the surface very mild-mannered but is really kind of like Jack Reacher, Molly Michael's daughter , his wife who hates Harry, and not to mention some truly despicable bad guys. I loved the Archive and her bodyguard Kincaid. I am ever a fan of authors with rich imaginations who can put that on the page in a readable fashion, and Jim Butcher has that in spades.

The humor is great, and parts of these stories are genuinely scary and thrilling. And the action is top notch. I'm such a geek for urban fantasy and magic noir, this is very up my alley for that type of story. I have most of these in paperback, but I'm thinking about going back and listening to the first books on audiobook, just for fun. This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life in Books. I really enjoyed this book! This was a re-read for me and I liked it just as much the second time around. I did remember some parts of the book from the first time I read the story but I had forgotten most of the details.

It has been about a year and half since I listened to the last book in this series and I really enjoyed spending a little bit of time with Harry Dresden once again. This is the fifth book in the series and I do recommend that this series be read in order. This was a book that entertained me from beginning to end. Harry has a lot going on in this book. I don't even know how he is able to keep everything straight. He has a vampire from the Red Court that wants to duel him. A priest wants his help in finding the Shroud and a few other people would like to get their hands on it as well.

An old girlfriend is in town to keep things interesting. Plus there are all the other situations that Harry seems to regularly find himself in.

If you are looking for a book with a lot of action, look no further because this book really never slows down. The characters in this book almost feel real to me. One thing that I love about reading a series like this is how well you get to know each of the characters. It is almost like they are old friends and you can somewhat anticipate how they might react in certain situations. I do think it is also a lot of fun to re-read a longer series like this because the groundwork for future events is being laid. Having already read the later books, I know that some scenes will become more important later on.

There are a lot of characters featured in this story that have been very important to the series. I liked seeing Michael and his family as well as the other Knights of the Cross. Thomas, John Marconi, Susan, and Karin also play important roles. James Marsters takes this book to a whole new level. I originally read this book on my kindle but if I had known how good the audiobook was, I might have went that route the first time around. I think he does a fantastic job in bringing Harry to life.

I know what Harry is feeling at times because I can hear it in his voice. I think that he does a great job with all of the characters and the dialogue in the story flows very nicely. He has a very pleasant voice that was easy to listen to for hours at a time. I do recommend this series to others. I like that it is a fairly complex story with some humor worked in at just the right moments. Harry is a character that is easy to cheer for because in the end he really is a good guy. I am looking forward to continuing with my re-read of the series very soon.

Initial Thoughts This was a re-read for me. I remembered parts of the book but no details. I think that Jim Marsters narration brings Harry to a whole new level. Lots of excitement in the one with appearances by most of the key characters in the series. Sep 01, Mikos rated it it was amazing Shelves: Best one yet, what a great ride! This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

- Death Masks: A Novel of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

I'm only two months behind on the series read. Another great outing from Harry Dresden. Susan was fantastic in this one and I really enjoyed seeing her again. She is nearly driven mad by the scent of the blood dripping from his wounds. To save his life and hers, Dresden magically binds Susan and has sex with her in order to quell her hunger. She informs him that The Fellowship of Saint Giles is an organization of half-turned humans she is working with in South America. In the morning, Susan and Dresden leave the boarding house and seek out the Knights.

They discover that Father Forthill has an Eye of Thoth tattoo similar to the one on the unidentified corpse in the morgue, which Forthill and Vincent received together. Dresden deduces that Vincent is a phony, the Knights defeat Saluriel posing as Vincent, and Dresden forces him to reveal that Nicodemus' plan is to create a deadly plague curse, powered by the Shroud. The spell will be cast that evening at the airport. As an international travel hub, O'Hare Airport is an excellent place to disseminate their plague.

Overpowered, Ortega draws a weapon but is shot by Martin. A swarm of Red Court vampires surge onto the ball field, attacking everyone and covering Ortega's escape. Dresden races to the airport with the Knights to save Shiro and stop the plague curse, finding him severely tortured and near death. Shiro entrusts Fidelacchius to Dresden, telling him to pass it on to the right person. Dying, Shiro states that Nicodemus is going to Saint Louis by train to spread the plague curse, which can be stopped by taking the Shroud from Nicodemus.

Dresden enlists the aid of Marcone and Ms. Gard to catch up to the Saint Louis train. Dresden, Marcone, and the Knights battle the Denarians to retrieve the Shroud. Thanks to a hint from the dying Shiro, Dresden finds Nicodemus' weakness his noose and takes the Shroud, cancelling the plague, but fails to kill him. Dresden and Michael almost die while escaping from the train, but Marcone rescues them. Dresden recuperates in Michael's home. He receives a two-week old letter from Shiro. He had been diagnosed with cancer and came to Chicago knowing he would sacrifice himself to save Dresden.

This news comforts Michael and Sanya. The next day, Ebenezar calls and tells Dresden to watch the news. In a freak accident, an old Soviet satellite, Kosmos 5, crashed into Casaverde, Honduras—Ortega's secret fortress. There are no survivors. Dresden realizes that McCoy has deliberately killed Ortega with the satellite.

Dresden trails Marcone to a secluded, rural hospital. He discovers that Marcone had the Shroud stolen hoping to cure a comatose girl. Dresden tells Marcone he can have three days to see if the Shroud will heal the girl. After that, the Shroud must be returned to the Church. Nicodemius drives by, tossing a coin into the yard.

Michael's youngest son Harry is about to pick it up, when Dresden snatches it just in time to prevent the child from becoming a Denarian.

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