Grave Peril

Grave Peril by Jim Butcher, 378 pages

Wizard-for-hire Harry Dresden is at it again, trying to help people but managing to get himself stuck in a horrible supernatural situation. This time around, he's fighting some super-powered ghosts (which sounds much lamer than it really was), including one that seems dead set on taking out Dresden and his pals.

This is the third book in Butcher's Dresden Files series, and it recovers nicely from the absolutely horrible second book in the series, which is nice and bodes well for the rest of this REALLY. LONG. SERIES. The plot, while still a bit heavy on the action sequences, is much easier to follow, despite the menagerie of supernatural beings that pop up in Dresden's path. My biggest complaint with this series is that it is SO OBVIOUSLY written by a man, for a male audience. Many of the female characters are simply cardboard stereotypes of women, generally either as generic sex objects or as hormonal control freaks. I get that I'm not the target audience for this series, but would it kill Butcher to add a bit more dimension to these female characters? My only hope is that this happens over the course of the series, since some of them seem destined to stick around a while.