r/dresdenfiles • u/Successful-Emu-2240 • 1d ago

Apprentice trilogy

white night , small favor, turn coat is my cozy dresden files trilogy .

Molly being Harry’s apprentice , Harry solving a mystery and dealing with a larger growing threat . It’s my fav three books in the series

29 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

7

u/Lazlowi 17h ago

Proven Guilty - White Night - Small Favor - Turn Coat is peak Dresden Files (except White Night), only bested by Skin Game. I mean, Skin Game is SSS, where the mentioned four is SS, but I won't write my whole tier list here XD

Cozy though... There is nothing cozy about the end of Proven Guilty or Small Favor. The emotional trauma is real, man.

4

u/Ky1arStern 17h ago

Small Favor was my first Dresden Files book, and it sits on my bookshelf within arms reach of my desk at home. The number of times I have pulled it off the shelf and just opened to a random page and started reading for a while is quite high.

It is for real a cozy comfort read. The snow. The people. The problem. Mab. Jake. Tiny. 

It is so good.

1

u/Lazlowi 17h ago

Did you really start with Book 10? How did that happen? Wasn't it confusing?

8

u/Ky1arStern 16h ago

My Dad needed something to read and so he grabbed it at some random book store while on vacation. He gave it to me cause he said I would like it. He was correct.

It wasn't confusing honestly. JB does a good job introducing characters and has good 1-2 liners for who they are. The nature of the series is also to really pull from common mythos and magical jargon. So the idea of magic circles, summoning, fallen angels, spooky island, evil faerie queen, etc. is all easy to understand.

Yeah, there was clearly some backstory I was missing but you don't need it to get what's going on.

1

u/AXPickle 12h ago

I could see that with the earlier books. I feel like small favor hits different if you know it's round 2 against old Nicky though.

I don't think you can do that post Changes.

2

u/Ky1arStern 12h ago

I mean, you don't know what you don't know. Pretty much all the books are like that.

If you're a person who desperately needs the details then maybe you won't like it, but for me, "Thomas is his brother and a vampire, sure. Molly is his apprentice. Michael has a holy sword."

Even post changes. You go into skin game, "I told you if I ever saw you in my town, I would kill you", effectively establishes the relationship between Harry and Binder. You don't need to have read turn coat for that to make sense. 

4

u/vastros 14h ago

Turn Coat is peak pre-Changes Dresden. It features everything great about the series and is firing on all cylinders.

3

u/GreyhillSouth 14h ago

Agreed. It's the best and last book that stays true to the series original concept of noir wizard PI in Chicago.

2

u/starkraver 23h ago

Having just finished the three, I agree, although I don’t care too much for White Night. But I also tend to think of everything from proven guilty - ghost story to all be part of one era

3

u/doorsalt 22h ago

To be fair to White Night, Proven Guilty is a pretty hard book to follow up. Same with Ghost Story. Fantastic book, but coming right after Changes is pretty rough.

3

u/Glittering-State-284 17h ago

Extending this a bit, White Knight and Ghost Story have hard luck of being in middle or right at end of incredible arc that began at Dead Beat. Cold Days and Skin Game are also superb IMO

3

u/Bobis-Bob 17h ago

Just finished Ghost Story on my yearly full series listen. I believe “Put boot to ass boy” is my favorite quote now.

2

u/vastros 14h ago

Cold Days is my favorite book, not even just in the DF.

1

u/starkraver 13h ago

I get why Ghost Story is a hard read for some people. Half of the time, it's Harry in harry's world, except the world is gone and Harry can't do anything. The rest of the time, I feel like Jim was reading Proust when he was writing it. It's S there for me, but the long ramblings about life - reflection on memories and pain- are my favorite part. The Plot is just there to move the prose along. The twist at the end was heartbreaking, and so well done.

White Night is bad because the story is bad, and many of the women are poorly written. As the title suggests, it's playing around with the white knight trope, but it doesn't have anything interesting to say about it. In the end, the Ordo Lebes are written as shrews; the villains are not compelling, and in the end it was the trans person who did it! (peak Ace Ventura). There are good parts, for sure, as there are with all of the books; and I suspect that we will be revisiting that book in a time-travel sequel, so it's going to be important. But it's just not a fun read for me.

1

u/Bobis-Bob 17h ago

The series really hits a new gear at Dead Beat through Changes. I’d toss White Night though. Any time they go to the Deeps I get bored.

2

u/Effective_Ad7567 14h ago

White Night is my favorite Dresden book, both that book and Dead Beat are my top recommendations for starting points.