White Night
Written by Jim Butcher
Reviewed by John M. (age 13)
This book is about a wizard who fights vampires. The city's other wizards start turning up dead, so he investigates. It turns out that they're being killed by vampires who want to tip the balance of power in their government, the White Court of Vampires. He kills them in a duel during a summit meeting between members of the court, but an evil dude, Grey Cloak, whose motives nobody knows conjures up a bunch of ghouls to kill everyone at the meeting (who weren't killed in the duel). He escapes through the portal that the ghouls came through with the survivors. The moral of the story is evil can lurk in places you don't expect and you have to be vigilant to root it out and destroy it.
I liked it because it was interesting and had action. My favorite part was when the ghoul horde fought the vampire court. There are no illustrations except the cover, which was done mostly in shades of black and grey, and I thought they were very well done because they conveyed the nebulous and ambiguous world the protagonist lived in. I liked the authors writing style, which went into a lot of detail and had lots of violence, mostly magic and flames. This book is part of a series, The Dresden Files, and is very similar to the others because the writing style is very much the same. Throughout the series the author repeatedly states how important it is for good people to fight evil. The book is unique because it is a mix of action and fantasy, which is not normally done. This book reminds me of the war in Iraq.
I would recommend this because it has lots of action. I think fans of the fantasy genre would enjoy it. I think the plot is the main point of interest because of current world events.