Changes

Have been gradually administering doses of this series to myself for quite a while now, spacing it out so as not to blunt the empty-calorie thrills too much. This one doesn't even make a token attempt at the detective half of "magical detective" and continues the drift towards a bog-standard apocalyptic confrontation, messianic hero, etc. Even some family romance thrown in (spoilers! but really, I'm not the one spoiling the fun here). The always chauvinist representation of women gets a bit more chauvinist, but the thing that really irked me was that Murphy's Aikido expertise is once again underlined and once again Butcher has not bothered to finish reading the wikipedia entry on Aikido; he seems to think it's a kind of karate. I can suspend my disbelief for vampires, "soulfire" magic, fairies (I'm sorry, Sidhe), etc. but hands off my niche martial art. These extremely serious and probing criticisms aside, obviously, I raced through it and will be eagerly awaiting my next hit. How will Harry Dresden ever get out of his next scrape? etc.

Lives up to it's name! I'm actually really eager to get to the next book. There's a ton that changes here and not totally sure how it will progress... But Butcher has upped the ante.

If i could have given this book 10 stars I would have. Every book I read in the Dresden files keeps getting better, and everytime I wonder how is Butcher going to top this. Except for the often prolonged and somewhat cheesy dialogue, the movie references that totally fly over my head because I am a bookworm, not a movie buff. This book lived up to its name. Harry loses his house and his car, and any hope of rekindling a relationship with Susan. The battle with the Red Court in Mexico was epic. I can't say I was commpletely surprised when Harry took up the post of the Winter Knight, though I wonder if his death at the end of this book relllieved him of those duties.