 5 minute book review. Dead Man's Hand is the first book by James J. Butcher, the son of Jim Butcher, author of the Dresden Files, my personal favorite book series, and either it be coincidence or because he wanted to distance the fact that this is an urban fantasy book from the Dresden Files as much as he can, the main character of this series is about the exact opposite of Harry when it comes to magic. Harry is a nearly 7 foot tall wizard who is incredibly skilled at what he does. He was born under these proper circumstances and has an incredible amount of skill at just being able to do magic which most people aren't. I can get into a beggar Dresden Files thing later if you want or you can go watch this video on why you should read the Dresden Files if you'd like more information on Harry and his characterization as a whole. Now Grimsby is pretty much the exact opposite to Harry. Grimsby is about 5 foot 6, he wears massive dorky glasses, he has burn scars on about half of his body so that he can't actually perform magic to a very high level and he really only knows about three spells he can do without having a book in front of him telling him how to perform the spell. And honestly the biggest difference between Harry and Grimsby? Grimsby is a bit of a cower. Grimsby wants nothing more than to be an auditor and auditor works for the Department of the Unorthodox for the US government. Department of the Unorthodox is an organization that works to keep the unorthodox or the magical world safe from the mortal world or vice versa keep mortals safe from the unorthodox the unorthodox are pretty much all facets of the unknown and magic and the like so witches like Grimsby are part of the unorthodox the unorthodox also includes demons, vampires, werewolves, wedges, things like that. Wedges is a character in this book and we don't know a ton about him and I don't know what his species is so I'm just calling him one of the wedges that's all he refers to himself as is a part of the wedges but Grimsby wants nothing more than to be an auditor he just wants to help people like his mother before him unfortunately for Grimsby he failed out of being an auditor so he now finds himself working at MMDFK mighty magic Donald's food kingdom which I can only imagine is an absolutely horrific mashup of Burger King, Taco Bell and McDonald's because oh my god it sounds absolutely terrifying and according to the book the food is next to inedible get back on track starting the immense of the books the person that failed Grimsby out of being an auditor is found dead with a note beside her pertaining to Grimsby so now Grimsby has to go on the run and find out what exactly happened otherwise he is going to wind up dead however this case is such high profile that if Grimsby is able to pull off surviving and revealing who the true killer is he might be able to find and get himself into the department and become an auditor himself this book is incredibly fun if you like urban fantasy and it's a really cool take that I haven't really seen that often which is the modern world knows about magic in the world of the unorthodox chronicles this potential series magic is a known factor people know that magic exists they know about witches and so it is a very real threat that someone could use magic against someone else that is why the department exists to protect both the unorthodox those that can perform magic and those that cannot and this book is honestly a lot of fun I really enjoyed that level of world building there are monsters and other you know nasties out there that can do harm but there is an entire department that is known to the world to protect people from these things and that was a really really cool little twist unfortunately with this being the first book that is about as much world building as we can generally get but other than that this book is incredibly fun if you're looking for a new urban fantasy book to read and you don't know where to start I would 100% recommend dead man's hand it is an incredibly fun book and I'm really excited to see more from James in the future because I think he's a really good author all that being said for me personally I would say that dead man's hand rolls a 17 it's an incredibly entertaining book it's a lot of fun and I think that if you give it a chance and go there to read you are going to have a really fun time with this book that's a first for me hopefully I managed to get all the information out to you for you to be able to make your own decision on if you want to read this book or not like I said for me I thought the writing was very well done the book was incredibly fun it was very well paced I liked all the characters in it and if you give this a shot I hope that you enjoyed as well that all that I had if you'd like to follow me on any of my socials links to all of those are going to be in the description down below as always but I hope that you guys enjoyed this video and I hope that you have a fantastic day peace