Dresden Files fans know my pain. For fourteen books or so, we were used to a book a year(or sooner, in the early years when Butcher had a back-stock of stories), then the fifteenth took a bit longer. . .then we get hit with this 5-year famine. Unbearable! Unconscionable! A few months back though, it was announced that the next book, “Peace Talks” would release July 14th! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Yes, I am perhaps a bit too happy about that. We at last have a date to break our fast, and yet another reason to avoid that thrice-damned plague. I’m gonna be pissed if a virus denies me when the next installment is so very close!
I was still riding that imminent Dresden-Files-release glow when I recently read another announcement. “Battle Ground”, the 17th book in the series, will be released on September 29th! A five-year famine, and now a feast fit for bibliophile gluttons! Butcher is a prolific writer by nature, and when he finally stopped letting the real-world distract him and sat down to write, there was no stopping him.
I’m gonna try to get another Kindle e-reader in celebration, to replace the one that’s gone missing. I have an old color tablet, but I just can’t stand reading books on those.
So, fellow Dresden fans, take note: Polka will never die, and we’ve got not one, but two new books around the corner!
Unquestionably. I guess we’ve got a couple of 400-450-ish page books coming instead of one 850-900 page opus. I’m not really surprised they’d try to get two books out of it after waiting five years. Still, I’m glad to know we’ve got that much material coming.
WRT Cinder Spires, I’m looking forward to reading it - when it’s finished. I’m not signing up for another will-he-or-won’t-he finish it, or worse, a will-I-or-won’t-I finish it. Bad enough I’m riding the 20-some book Dresden Files train.
He lost me when he decided he didn’t like any of his characters or the story arc he had been building for a dozen novels and half a dozen short stories over more than a decade and decided to start over.
I got a few books in and liked the worldbuilding. In every new novel the main character gained some new superhuman ability, and I liked that conceit. By about the 8th book you’d have to be bonkers to go up against Harry and his friends, so I left it there.
Looking forward to it, but also dreading it a bit based on the dire hints dropped in Christmas Eve:
[SPOILER]I picked up the piece of paper. If you left off the decimal points, it was a prime number. It represented the costs of medical care for tens of thousands, and funerals for thousands more. On a rational level, I knew Molly was right. It could have been worse. Much worse.
But in my heart, all I could see was blood on asphalt, and all I could feel were empty places inside me where people should have been.[/SPOILER]
He powered up, so that he could go up against worse and worse things. That was Butcher’s plan all along, for young-by-wizard’s-standards Harry to grow in wisdom and power and move up the ranks to battle tougher opponents. In book ten, he didn’t just smash the bad guy by the end of chapter one and call it a book.
I didn’t like it, at first, when it went from being a sort-of Spenser with magic to Harry having to stop world-changing/ending events, but the power-ups were just a symptom of that, not the part that bugged me. I got used to Harry moving on the world stage, with time, but I get it if others didn’t make the transition. I’ve read both the Codex Alera and the Dresden Files, and building up the protagonist to change/shape the world seems to be Butcher’s thing.
The transition was gradual enough for me to follow, but it’s still a bit jarring to go back and read short stories I’d missed before, from when he was at a much lower level of power. Like, the guy struggling with the fate of the World is worrying himself about the White Sox curse?
I actually picked that up at Half Price Books a couple of weeks ago, but I’ve been too busy working on my upcoming D&D adventure to do much reading. But I’ll have to make time for it.
I wish I was excited about it. I loved the series up until Changes and Ghost Story. After that, I just kind of lost my passion for the series and drifted away.
I liked Changes, but didn’t care for Ghost Story and Cold Days. I loved Skin Game, though. A little more scaled-down than some of his recent adventures, I thought.
We at last have a date to break our fast, and yet another reason to avoid that thrice-damned plague. I’m gonna be pissed if a virus denies me when the next installment is so very close!
