I suspect I’ll be in the minority on this but wanted to get my thoughts down on the latest book in the Dresden Files, Peace Talks.
To put a point on it, I’m very disappointed. While I’m certain that I’d overhyped the book quite a bit in my mind because of the wait, to have a very short book loaded with unnecessary fluff and rehashing of the same interactions we’ve had repeatedly was an unpleasant surprise. (I would add that charging $15 for a soft copy of such an abbreviated work is uncool by the publisher).
So much of the book, with its already very short runtime, was devoted to concepts we’ve already experienced over and over. Examples include:
1) The effects of the Winter Mantle – right, we get it, it makes Harry want to screw and fight. He’s been dealing with that (and monologuing about it) for the last three books now. Devoting so much time to him essentially complaining about it adds nothing to the story and diminishes the character. It would have done better service to the character to have him say something along the lines of “the Winter Mantle continued to drive me towards the darker side of human emotion, something I’d been able to mitigate to an extent through an enforced regimen of heavy exercise” early in the book – that would have acknowledged it was still there and something he had to keep in mind while moving the character forward a bit AND giving a nod towards Harry’s increased physical strength.
Side note – there is so much talk of the violence and cruelty of winter. What about stillness? Anyone who’s been outside on a snowy night in a rural area knows how still and quiet winter can be. It would be nice for some of that to come into the equation. The series deals with balance a good bit and the idea of stillness would be a nice balance to the violence, particularly if done as kind of a “calm before the storm” kind of thing. Something like, “the stillness of a snowy winter’s night settled over me as I prepared my strike” would be nice.
2) Michael – hey, look, Harry has a moment of personal turmoil, goes to Michael, gets advice, and sallies forth… just like he did in Skin Game, and similar to interactions with Michael in Proven Guilty and Small Favor. Michael’s a great guy and a solid character, but can we maybe get some growth from Harry to indicate that the conversations he’s had with Michael in the past weren’t just wasted breath and he’s actually internalized some of these things?
3) Murphy – yet another case of Harry wanting to protect Murphy, her telling him she makes her own decisions, and him coming to the realization that he can’t run her life for her – the same realization he’s had over and over for years. If I had a nickel. It would be nice to see her character grow a little bit and realize that she DOES have limits and that going to battle in her very limited (or not? More below) condition puts handcuffs on Harry. She knows he’s irrational about protecting the people he loves and so would be keeping one eye on the fight and one on her (which could get them both killed) yet wants to go be a distraction because “it’s my life!”
4) Lara – Yep, super(naturally) sexy. Check. At what point does Harry put mental defenses into place, the way he’s done in the past against pain (see Small Favor) to mitigate her influence? A wizard should be able to do that, I would think. Instead, he’s still drooling all over himself with the extra added bonus of yet ANOTHER opportunity to talk about the Winter Mantle and its nasty attitude! Hooray!
Then we get into some new stuff that didn’t track:
1) Butters – The threesome scene was totally unnecessary and felt very forced (and like a little wish fulfillment on the part of the author, honestly). I assume that Butcher is trying to show the change in Butters over time, but he’s not acting like a Knight of the Cross – he’s acting like a Knight of the Sidhe. If he’d replaced Fix, that would be one thing, but he didn’t. Having him casually threaten Harry (the whole “tell anyone and I’ll knock your teeth out”) felt very off when held up against what we’ve seen from the other Knights – but would have been perfectly in keeping with the attitudes of the Sidhe.
2) McCoy – Well, that escalated quickly. Right from the jump, McCoy was a different character than the one we’ve known since Summer Knight. I get it, under stress, etc., but he’s been under tremendous stress before and not been so completely irrational. Then, after the underwhelming fight between them where Harry spends as much time fanboying as fighting (“Hell’s bells, was he better than me!”), we get the old “tough to learn that your parents aren’t perfect” thing – except we’d already gotten that in Blood Rites when Harry learned about the Blackstaff. It took him two years to get over that one – let’s do it again! Also, to have the setup of the White Court doing something horrible to him BEYOND Lord Raith killing his daughter and NOT say what it was seemed weak. I’d expect that we’ll get the story in the next book when Harry and Ebenezar make up and talk through things (very possibly as Ebenezer is lying in a pool of his own blood counting his last breaths), but it felt contrived that Harry, a private investigator, wouldn’t INVESTIGATE that a little more since it’s a massive clue as to why Ebenezer is acting so irrationally.
3) Murphy (part two) - She does the staggeringly stupid thing of cutting off her own casts to go put herself in harm’s way - but not as much as should have been the case. We get the bit in the beginning about how she “doesn’t get to be [her]” anymore and yet she has no trouble putting a sneak attack on a freaking Valkyrie who is already on her guard. Didn’t really seem too burdened by what should have been crippling injuries, huh?
4) Thomas – no time was spent trying to figure out why Thomas did what he did (or even proving conclusively that he DID do it). Based on how the Sidhe operate, if Thomas was used by someone else, he was just the tool (much like the Little Folks killing Aurora at Harry’s direction). As the situation is being adjudicated under the Accords (a Sidhe convention), wouldn’t it have made sense to figure out what the hell happened? It’s not like Harry’s not used to working under absurd time constraints.
5) Continuity – the book mentions the Tunguska event being the fallout of the last Dragon (capital D) being killed – but didn’t Michael kill Siriothrax after that? And didn’t Ebenezer claim credit for Tunguska when talking about his dirty work as the Blackstaff? I suppose he could have been killing a Dragon, but it doesn’t really pass the smell test. And then there’s Harry talking about the last time he was in the BFS castle was when he was a ghost – except that he was there at the end of Skin Game. I get that there’s a ton of lore to keep up with, so maybe the beta readers/editor should have caught that kind of thing, but it takes me out of the story when I see something that doesn’t match up with what’s gone before.
And then just some personal quibbles:
1) Starborn every 666 years, huh? Good thing no one’s ever used 666 as a mystical number before. Eye roll. Let’s get some “seventh son of a seventh son” action going, too, to keep the cliché train rolling.
2) The lack of information flying around was annoying. We’ve got McCoy pulling the “I’ve said too much already” crap, for crying out loud. There are literally packs of Outsiders materializing on the streets of Chicago – maybe this IS the right time to talk about Outsider-related stuff?!? Hey, Ebenezer – what if another pack shows up when you’re not around and Harry’s by himself? Wouldn’t it kinda make sense for him to know what’s going on simply to be able to protect himself??? Clear that Butcher is wanting to drag the audience along and is doing so by dragging Harry along with dialogue that doesn’t really make sense in the context of the moment.
3) Tying in with lack of information is Harry not telling Ebenezer up front about who Thomas is. I’m sure Ebenezer would have stormed off in a huff, but he would then have had TIME to think on it.
Side note – I know that Butcher lies in the WoJs, but in one he said that Ebenezer already knew about Thomas and didn’t really want to deal with it. Frankly, that’s a much more compelling and human approach than that a member of the Senior Council of the White Council of Wizards doesn’t even know about his own daughter’s children.
4) Lara attacking Harry on the island even though she saw how he operated there in Turn Coat felt off. I get she’s upset about her brother, but not even ASKING what happened before attacking was a bit squirrely.
5) Marcone, the most prepared, buttoned-up guy in the entire series, has exactly one guard on an extremely high-priority prisoner when he’s serving as a neutral location for a formal Accords matter? Really? And he’s being held in a freaking basement? Really really? No – Marcone’s better than that. But, hey, we needed a chance to show Lara’s sexiness and I guess an orgy of her seducing four or five guys at once would have been in poor taste (allusions to threesomes are, I guess, the limit).
6) Conjuritis… Good grief… he’s gonna sneeze stuff out of the air… And everyone knows what it is but him? Given what’s going on in the book, does stupid slapstick really fit? What purpose did that serve other than goofy sight gags?
7) Murphy (part three) – having her in the role she played relegated Goodman Grey, one of the most dangerous and capable people Harry knows who would, as a shapeshifter, REALLY have come in handy for the rescue/heist, to a bit part role. That’s a VERY interesting character – give him more airtime, please!
Now, I’m going to get the next book because I love the series and want to see how it comes out. But man, this book was a miss. Too short, rushed, and full of either unnecessary filler, stuff that ran counter to previous books, or just oddities (like Conjuritis). I’m really hoping that this book isn’t indicative of how the rest will be written because it’s nowhere near the standard Jim Butcher has set to date.
