Backup

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.

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.

Okay, I loved this book, I did. Except it felt like I opened it, read the first page...and I was done. Just like that. It was kind of disappointing. The pictures were okay, but they felt a little like space-fillers to stretch the book out into something a bit bigger-looking. Not that it would have looked that much thinner without them.
The plot itself was boring, except for the bit with the Venatori..and I won't say more so as not to ruin it for people who haven't read it. I guess it was so as to fit within his 80 page quota, but it's just wrong to give perfect storylines to one character and then sort of wave an all new approach to the Dresden Files off.
All in all, it was pretty disappointing. I'm not sorry it's part of my Dresden collection, but the next Dresden Files book should be better.

Up til now I have really loved the Dresden books. They are entertaining with great story lines. I pre-ordered Backup because of the description and was hoping to learn more about Thomas. What a disappointment when the "book" arrived. A slim thing of less than 80 pages, I'm still trying to figure out how one could charge $13 for this. And the story was even lighter than the number of pages. This seemed to be something that should have been a chapter in a book not a stand alone story. The writing was not up to the rest of the Dresden stories - no plot, no character, no heart. I hope this isn't a harbringer of what's coming for this series.

This was an excellent read, Jim has once again set the bar higher and cleared it without trouble. The writing was clear and precise, the story flowed beautifully and the characters were almost real enought to touch. Mike Mignola's illustrations were also on the money, his linework managed to capture the elements of the story in a manner that didn't distract from the story itself.