Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

 3.5 stars

I struggled to really connect with this second of the Harry Dresden novels.  Whether this was because I was struggling with my concentration in general or because of the storytelling I cannot be sure.  It just didn't grip me the way the first novel did.

There is still the same snark present and an overall character development for everyone, but especially Harry, that should have made this a truly enjoyable read.  I suspect that it was actually the mythology behind the different ways that one could become a werewolf and the struggles to figure out what type it was that was committing these murders.  It just all felt a little bit off somehow, kind of hinky and cobbled together without too much thought.  It is an Urban Fantasy Novel so you don't expect versimilitude but you do expect the author to have thoroughly thought through the more fantastical aspects of the tale and it just doesn't feel that way - to this reader at least.

Plenty of guts and gore, if thats your thing - personally, I'm not bothered by it in the slightest but it is starting to feel a little overdone and (dare I say it) boring.  Certainly the best bits for me are poor old Harry's attempts to get along in a society that he is not really a part of - this goes for the Magical Community from which he has all but been ex-communicated and also Human Society because he isn't fully Human as far as they are concerned.  I love his clumsy social maladroitness.

Definitely not giving up on this series just yet as there is something that does speak to me about it all.

This review has been a long time coming.  I actually read this book between the 10th and 16th June 2020 so my memory is a bit foggy about all the plot lines.  Fortunately, I have a notebook where I jot some initial thoughts on the book and an overall ranking so between the book blurb and that I did have a reasonable handle on what I thought at the time of reading.