Greetings. I'm obviously a bit behind the curve on current Dresden, in spite of the fact that I started reading the series a number of years ago. I tend to take big breaks between DF novels because Harry Dresden kind of annoys me. I'm frequently relieved when these novels end, and I wander away for a while.
I made a couple of false starts with Small Favor. Got distracted by other books, forgot where I was, started over. I did that AGAIN somehow... But I finally got a good hold of Small Favor on the third attempt and got into it enough to finish it. Kept the momentum up and went right on into Turn Coat. That one was interesting. Butcher finally started coming off some deeper details about the world of wizardry, and Dresden started picking up some serious assets, in particular
. Good stuff!
I was so pleased with Turn Coat that I immediately began Changes. (Even if I don't read Butcher's books right away, I buy them whenever they release. Which is good news for Jim, I guess. Write ANYthing and put "Novel of the Dresden Files" on it, and I'll buy it, and won't have a thing to say about it for nearly a decade as I wait to get around to reading it.) HEY, this thing is a COOKBOOK! *Haha! Sucker!*
Anyway... CHANGES.
In my memory of the rest of the series up to Turn Coat, my feeling about the series was that, though it was serial and self-referential in nature, it wasn't a "universe" until Turn Coat started adding layers to Dresden's wider experience, both within the particular novel, and the fact that he'd had a past more significant than the DuMorne episode (not to say that's insignificant, just that it's something of a Bruce Wayne's Parents / Radioactive Spider sort of backstory element), and more than that - that there were faces behind the collective label "The White Council" Again - I haven't ever gone back to re-read from the start, so this is my memory of the series, or at least, my impression of it. The individual novels seemed more narrow in focus, even if they featured supernatural-world politics or wizard business. The details were contained within Dresden's sphere of influence.
Turn Coat was a doorway to more, and CHANGES leapt through the doorway and set off pyrotechnics. To me it's the single most massive novel of the series. Old questions answered, new and significant characters introduced, hidden details explaining TONS revealed, enormous victory alongside horrid tragedy and definitely, definitely, CHANGES in many senses of the word, and it all ended...
...badly.
That assassination at the end - terrible. Naturally, the first person I suspected as the shooter was Kincaid. It was the exact method he'd said he'd employ. No idea why he'd do it. Assumed it was because Ivy had told him to do it because Dresden had become the Winter Knight. But in the first place, as the author: why kill Dresden?
I had a certain disadvantage as a delayed reader. I sit here looking at the final page, having just been so pleased that Harry was finally about to scratch the Karrin itch, and knowing that I have in my possession two novels that occur afterward (as far as I know) and that at least one more is being written. So, I know he doesn't stay dead - so I'm not shocked at the "death" as much as I am with the idea. Maybe it was different for readers before, when there were no existing sequels. I would doubt it, though. It didn't seem final, even within the story.
I had made the mistake of taking Changes with me on my annual Thanksgiving excursion to the middle of nowhere. I didn't take a backup/followup book because I figured I'd be lucky to find time to read, but as it turned out, it rained one of the days, so I finished the book aggressively and was beside myself the rest of the trip, trying to figure out why the hell Butcher had made such a decision.
Soon as I returned home, I went straight to the book shelf and yanked Ghost Story, honestly - not wanting to know anything from that book other than WHY!?
I hate to say this... but I don't give a rat's what happened in Ghost Story before page 438. It was such a laborious read, with malicious abuse of Dresden's friends and in particular his wonderful apprentice, right down to that horrid offense, the nickname "Molls." (I swear, if he keeps calling her that, I'm just going to read along with a black marker, to change all those Ss back to Ys.)
It is as if every momentous achievement in Changes was met with a flop or a dead horse in Ghost Story. Butcher had made the error of "killing" his main, just to see what would happen, and he didn't actually KNOW what would happen. He started typing and hoped for the best, I guess? So many times in that book, he repeats himself. So many times, he includes pointless pages of meaningless action. I literally skimmed large sections of narrative, and skipped past wasted ink, such as that Star Trek bridge of Molly's Mind - in fact, I could barely stand to read much of any of that Corpsetaker fight, because it was just bullshit in the way of the explanation for why someone shot Dresden.
It's even admitted by Butcher as Uriel "reveals all" that the whole story was bogus nonsense.
Why does this book exist!?
It would have been MUCH MORE INTERESTING - MMMMUCH - to have Harry actually LIVE THROUGH that "six months" (I'll skip discussion of that timeline and just go with the flow - sure, yes, the whole world went apeshit in six months, a great stone fortress was built and became a lived-in center of activity in six months, blah blah blah) of power vacuum and deal with it as the (rebellious) Winter Knight. Molly's magic could still have been developed by Lea and her own conflicts while Harry was dealing with Knightly duties. And that would have been a much more Dresden-like solution than the ridiculous plan to have himself killed. Who thinks Dresden needs to be TOLD by Uriel that he can't be owned by Mab? Yet more repetition. That was already realized, BY DRESDEN, in Changes.
UGH! Probably obviously, I just finished reading Ghost Story mere moments before I decided to log on to Paranet and bitch about it... I'd say I felt jerked off, but there was no reward at the end. Butcher just wasted my time.
Now, I sit here with my copy of Cold Days, pondering another long break.
Anybody else give a big ol WTF to Ghost Story, or am I alone here?
