Review: Mean Streets by Jim Butcher



Mean Streets by Jim Butch­er

My review


rat­ing: 4 of 5 stars
Mean Streets is one of the best antholo­gies I’ve read in a while. It only has four dif­fer­ent pieces in it, but they’re all novel­las, and all by strong, expe­ri­enced writ­ers. I don’t think any of them are here rid­ing on some­one else’s name on the book cover.

Jim Butcher’s “War­rior,” the first piece, is very good. It fol­lows Har­ry and the Car­pen­ter fam­i­ly after they expe­ri­enced some major changes in the last Dres­den nov­el. I could have stood a lit­tle more Mol­ly, but Har­ry and Michael were the focus char­ac­ters and they worked out some things that real­ly need­ed to be dealt with. I’m glad I read this before the next Dres­den nov­el because I feel there’s impor­tant char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. I seri­ous­ly rec­om­mend this book to all Dres­den fans.

I haven’t read any of Simon R. Green’s nov­els, though I’ve heard of the Night­side series and thought about pick­ing one up. If “The Dif­fer­ence a Day Makes” is typ­i­cal, though, I may not both­er. He is a good writer, so I’m not sure what it is that both­ered me so much. I know that some­thing framed as one of the nas­ti­est things peo­ple could choose to do in this piece isn’t even in my top 10, but I feel there’s some­thing else that I just can’t quite artic­u­late yet.

I’ve read all three of Kat Richard­son’s Grey­walk­er nov­els and enjoyed them enough that I plan to keep read­ing. “The Third Death of the Lit­tle Clay Dog” is my favorite piece of her work, hands down. There’s more light, some­how, and that’s impor­tant to me.

“Noah’s Orphans” is my first expo­sure to Thomas E. Sniegos­ki, as far as I can recall. It was an inter­est­ing piece. I found myself won­der­ing about Remy Chan­dler’s past, about how the char­ac­ter has devel­oped. If there are nov­els fea­tur­ing that char­ac­ter, I may give them a read. In any case, it brought up some inter­est­ing ques­tions about faith and obe­di­ence. I think it would have been more per­son­al­ly rel­e­vant to me about 20 years ago, though.

View all my reviews.

Cyn is Rick's wife, Katie's Mom, and Esther & Oliver's Mémé. She's also a professional geek, avid reader, fledgling coder, enthusiastic gamer (TTRPGs), occasional singer, and devoted stitcher.
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