Skin Game: A Novel of the Dresden Files / Jim Butcher / 464 p & Audio(13cds) / Fantasy

"Skin Game,” the fifteenth book in the Dresden Files-series, has all the ingredients a Dresden-junkie needs: larger-than-life battles, crafty plot twists, Harry perpetually being outmatched and outgunned, and everything spiced up by his trade-marked sardonic humor and the snappy one-liners we’ve all come to love from the only professional wizard who’s in the Chicago phone book. I’ll give the bare bones of the story, and try to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible.

So here’s Harry, having another bad day… He’s stranded as warden on the island penal colony of Demonreach and oh yeah, Harry has this parasite in his head that is giving him migraines of the killing kind. But no worries. As he’s Winter Knight to the Queen of Air and Darkness, his boss Mab is willing to help him get rid of it. Is there a catch to this offer? Of course. Before you know it, Mab has him up ‘fecal matter’ creek without a paddle because to pay off an old debt, she loans out his services to Nicodemus and his Denarian followers.

You remember Nicodemus Archelone, last seen in “Small Favor”? Well, this time he’s out to break into one of Hades’s vaults in the Underworld and grab the most famous chalice in recorded history. And Nicodemus, one of Harry’s most dreaded and despised enemies, has assembled an Ocean’s Eleven-type group of supernatural villains to bring off this caper. A group that consists of Deirdre, his psychotic daughter; Binder the Summoner, last seen in “Turn Coat;” a warlock named Hannah Ascher; a shape-shifter named Goodman Grey… and of course, our reluctant Harry.