Title: Fool Moon - Book Two of the Dresden Files
Author: Jim Butcher
Published: January 2001
Publisher: First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.
Book two of the Dresden Files truly lives up to the BookBrowser review, "Fans of Laurell K. Hamilton and Tanya Huff will love this new fantasy series". Or, more to the point, this is the first book of supernatual/mystery/horror that actually kept me racing through it, and actually lived up to the danger and background of the Anita Blake books.
In the wake of Storm Front, Harry Dresden is cut off from his usual police contacts due to information he withheld about magick. He's been a month without work, and in order to make it through, he's had to put up with conversations like this:
"What are we doing now?" Bob sniggered. "More weight-loss potions?"
"Look Bob" I said. "That was only to get me through a rough month. Somebody's got to pay the rent around here."
"All right," Bob said smugly. "You going to get into breast enhancement then? I'm telling you, that's where the money is."
"That isn't what magic is for, Bob. How petty can you get?"
"Ah," said Bob, his eye lights flickering. "The question is, how pretty can you get them? You aren't a half-bad wizard, Dresden. You should think about how grateful all of those beautiful women will be."
Dresden's police colleague Murphy calls him in on a case where a man has been torn to pieces during a full moon, and bloody paw prints have been left behind. He then finds out about the four kinds of werewolves, and becomes a target from just about every kind. The blood flows, manic battle scenes abound, and magic stretched as far as it can go, and then some.
"Murphy!" I shouted. "Roll!"
She saw me with the blasting rod and her eyes flew wide. The loup-garou shook its shoulders free of Charmichael's corpse and bit completely through the riot gun, thrashing its head left and right. Murphy scuttled sideways across the tiles and through the hole in the wall the beast had made earlier.
It took one snap at her and then whipped its head around to snarl at me. I saw the crimson light reflected in its eyes as I focused every bit of fury in the world on the tip of my rod, and shouted "Fuego!" I saw the reflected image in the beast's eyes brighten to nuclear white in front of a tall, lean figure of black shadow, saw the flood of energy as big as my hips rush down the hall like a lance of red lightning and hammer into the beast. Sound rushed along with it, a mountain's roar that made the gunshots and screams of the evening seem like a child's whisper in comparison.
The power lifted the loup-garou, hurtling it over the wounded figures moaning on the floor, down the hall, into holding, through the security door, through the cell door immediately across from it, then through the brick exterior wall of the building and out into the Chicago night. But it wasn't over yet. The lance of power carried the loup-garou across the street, through the windows of the condemned building across from the station, and through a series of walls within, each one shattering with a redbrick roar. Before the red fire died away, I could see the far side of the building across the street, and the lights of the next block over through the hole the loup-garou had made.
I stood in a blood-spattered hallway, filled with the moans of the wounded and the wail of the escape alarm. The sounds of emergency vehicles driften into the building through the ragged hole in the wall. A slender young black man stood up fron the floor of the cell the loup-garou had smashed through and gawked at the hole in the wall, then followed the destruction down the hallway to where I stood. "Damn," he said, and it had the same hushed tone as a holy word.
This is not a good book to read if you have an early bed time. Very enjoyable, very violent, and expands quite enjoyably on the first book...I find myself eagerly looking forward to picking up the next book after this.