Skin Games by Jim Butcher (Dresden #15)

Skin Game by Jim Butcher

My rating: 2 of 5 stars







Jacket Blurb:  Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard, is about to have a very bad day….

Because as Winter Knight to the Queen of Air and Darkness, Harry never knows what the scheming Mab might want him to do. Usually, it’s something awful.

He doesn’t know the half of it….

Mab has just traded Harry’s skills to pay off one of her debts. And now he must help a group of supernatural villains—led by one of Harry’s most dreaded and despised enemies, Nicodemus Archleone—to break into the highest-security vault in town so that they can then access the highest-security vault in the Nevernever.

It’s a smash-and-grab job to recover the literal Holy Grail from the vaults of the greatest treasure hoard in the supernatural world—which belongs to the one and only Hades, Lord of the freaking Underworld and generally unpleasant character. Worse, Dresden suspects that there is another game afoot that no one is talking about. And he’s dead certain that Nicodemus has no intention of allowing any of his crew to survive the experience. Especially Harry.

Dresden’s always been tricky, but he’s going to have to up his backstabbing game to survive this mess—assuming his own allies don’t end up killing him before his enemies get the chance….

Chapters 1-8, I was wondering if I had stepped into some male wet dream.  The first four female characters were pretty much Barbie-doll copies: long legged, big chested (as in they filled out their sweaters quite nicely, or so I was informed), long hair of all shades, and quite fuckable.  Then we morphed right into a 20 minute (on audiobook) dream sex scene.   Gack.  I seriously contemplated pitching the whole audiobook right out the window right there and paying the library the fine for not returning it.

But I kept going.

And listed to Harry wallow in self pity.  Poor Harry.  Everybody Loves Harry but Harry thinks nobody loves him.   I am beginning to wonder why anyone likes Harry because he's a major git.

But I digress.

And I listened to Harry wallow in self flagellation on how he killed Susan.  Again.  And again. And yet again.

And I listened to Harry's soliloquy on how he's brought all this harm to his friends because he's been freezing his ass off on Deamonreach trying to protect everyone. 

And I listened to Harry pontificate on his terror of raising Maggie.

And I listened to Harry's tough guy exterior snarkiness.

And somewhere in all of this I *think* there was a plot.  Something about raiding Hades for the Holy Grail, but not really, because it wasn't about the Grail, but it wasn't about Harry, and it wasn't about the money, but maybe it was?  Too many loose ends left floating around like bits of sticky ectoplasm.

Not my favorite Dresden book.



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