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Backup By Jim Butcher ( Subterranean )
Release Date: 2008-10-31
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $20.00
Price: $13.60
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Product Description
Let's get something clear right up front.
I'm not Harry Dresden.
Harry's a wizard. A genuine, honest-to-goodness wizard. He's Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket. He'll spit in the eye of gods and demons alike if he thinks it needs to be done, and to hell with the consequences--and yet somehow my little brother manages to remain a decent human being.
I'll be damned if I know how.
But then, I'll be damned regardless.
My name is Thomas Raith, and I'm a monster.
So begins "Backup," a twelve thousand word novelette set in Jim Butcher s ultra-popular Dresden Files series. This time Harry's in trouble he knows nothing about, and it's up to his big brother Thomas to track him down and solve those little life-threatening difficulties without his little brother even noticing.
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 Short But Excellent ( chidiock2 )
I don't understand why people are complaining about the length and price of this book. It's not a short story, it's a 12,000 word novelette and that fact is clearly advertised up front. I guess there are people who think a sofa-sized painting from Starving Artists is a better buy than a miniature by an Old Master
Jim Butcher isn't old, but he's a master at his craft, and this book shows it. We step outside of Harry Dresden's POV and into that of his brother Thomas Raith (not Raife, as one reviewer has it) to find out about some supernatural badness of which Harry and almost everyone else is unaware. The book expands the dimensions of the Dresdenverse and gives us insight into Thomas' thought processes. What more can one ask from 12,000 words?
The only thing that prevents me from giving this five stars is the wish that Mr Butcher had added another 5500 or so words and bumped it up to novella length while using the additional wordage to let us see more into the workings of House Raith.
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 Excellent
In this novelette you learn that Thomas is just as much of a smarty pants as Dresden, as if you didn't know already, I mean they are related.
Awesome read. Very entertaining.
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Well done--now I want a Thomas Raith series, please ( bekintex )
I've been a fan of the Dresden Files, both in book and television, since the beginning. I knew what that I was purchasing a 72 page short story with Mike Mignola (Baltimore, etc) illustrations up front, so there's no disappointment in length or format.
The story's brief. Harry Dresden's in trouble with the Stygian Sisterhood and he doesn't know it. Worse, his big brother Thomas can't tell him because it would reveal his own involvement in the Oblivion Wars. So, he goes undercover to prevent Chicago's only wizard PI from getting into trouble.
I've loved Thomas from the beginning and am delighted to see him get his own space in the Dresden Files stories. He's got a lot of humor and I think a lot of humanity for a 'monster.'
In my opinion, this is a book with a fairly focused range of appeal. Fans of Butcher and Mignola will want to grab up this lovely illustrated volume. The one 'nit' I'd pick is I wish there was just a bit more backstory so Butcher could use this book as more of an entree to the Thomas Raith stories.
Rebecca Kyle, December 2008
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I'd Like to Read More... ( michael_colon )
The story of Dresden's vampire brother, Thomas, is well written and a very good story. Yes, Thomas is a monster that feeds on the life force of others. Blah, blah, blah. The story is good and I would like to read more about this character.
The downside is that it is a SUPER QUICK read at 70 pages. Don't take this on a long flight thinking its going to keep you entertained. This could easily be read in an hour.
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Nicely done novelette
A nice story in the Dresden world. It was refreshing to see the same world from another perspective - to see how things that are known and used in all the books are totally unknown to Thomas. The comments about the tidiness and cleanliness of Harry's place and about the skull were hilarious. I would love to see more stories about the Oblivion War in the series - in short stories or in the novels. The story itself was solid enough - a bit thinner in the creation of the characters than a novel but you cannot do much more in 12 000 words. And here is where my only complaint comes: I would have given the book 5 stars if not for a small glitch: what is the target reader for it.
The story relies too heavy on back stories and even though the relevant parts are explained in short, a newcomer to the world will loose at least half of the message and meaning of the book - the small irrelevant for the story details which make this novelette a really nice read... The story would be clear -- the author did a great job with the back story but there was no way to add all of it. But most of the characters sounded too thin without the story behind them. I doubt that the goal had ever been to attract new readers with this story...
At the same time there was a bit too much back story which in some places were it was not needed (why the two brothers have the same pentacle amulet for example - if you do not know this, you are missing the whole story that fills the blank in the novelette). I do not mind reminders - I am reading way too many series so reminders are good... but they somehow felt a bit too much here.
As for the price of the book (which almost everyone complained about) - it is a normal price for a novelette/novella from Subterranean. This is what they do in the last few years so at the moment I saw the publisher name, I knew that this cannot be a novel. And the author's site was clearly saying what this will be (as was the publisher one). Amazon are well known for making mistakes in their descriptions... so I never rely on them only to tell me what a book will be...
In short: If you like the world and you can spend the money, get the story. If you do not feel that you want to pay that kind of money for such a short story - don't. Sooner or later it will get collected somewhere.
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