I think his prose and humor are just fine as they are.
Yar, I didn’t mean that it was badly written, it’s just…depressing. 
Now I have to read it cause I don’t think what happens is what I most dread.
So, now I have to find out.
I read it in a night. It…did trippy things to my head for a while later, and I suspect that was not the best way to do it. But it’s one of those things you can’t stop reading once you start.
Kathy Reichs does that to me. Many late nights.
I feared it might be painful, with a title like Changes.
Only thing I didn’t like was the very end. It seemed like a copout assuming Harry doesn’t stay dead then the whole thing seems like a contrived way to make sure that Harry and Karrin don’t have sex.
Aw fuck! Caught part of that spoiler in my email. I’m leaving the thread. (Not in a huff, but leaving).
I have a feeling this might get used to get Harry out of the the winter court.
I thought Mab or Maeve was going to show up at the end to perform a little coitus interruptus. But no.
I had that thought too, but I find that too a bit cop-out-ish.
My thought, given the whole Mab-is-an-evil-weasel thing?
[spoiler]She makes mortals into her Winter Knights by killing them and then giving them a new fairy-made body. This a) gives them non-human powers and attributes, and b) lets the Winter Queens control them directly whenever they so choose. The light at the end of the tunnel turning out to be a train is her messing with Harry’s head. Because Mab is an evil weasel, and she doesn’t trust her underlings.
(I suppose you could ask why Lloyd Slate was able to betray her. I don’t remember the events of Summer Knight, but I assume she didn’t know he’d do it until he did? So she wouldn’t think to take over his body until after the deed was done. Then she’d ensure that he couldn’t die until she let him. Because Mab is an evil weasel, etc.)[/spoiler]
Nope, I don’t buy it.[spoiler]The whole point of a Knight of the Faerie Court is to have a mortal with a mortal’s free will able to conduct Court business in the mortal realm. Faeries are bound by their nature, which restricts them in certain ways. The Knights are there to aid the Courts in the areas faeries can’t go.
And Mab is not evil (and don’t think Summer is good, either). She’s cold, brutal, and ruthless, but not evil. Summer and Winter are completely removed from the good-evil continuum. They’re just aspects of Nature.
My current theory? The shooter was Kincaid, for reasons yet unknown. Kincaid told Harry in an earlier book exactly how he’d kill a wizard, with a sniper shot. That fits with Harry’s death.
Of course, Harry’s not dead. He’s not. Seriously. He isn’t. I WON’T HEAR OF IT LA LA LA LA[/spoiler]
This last book leaves a bunch of unanswered, so it’s like only half a book. I presume we get to meet the Jade Court before Mr. Butcher decides to end the series.
I thought I’d be able to hold out until the Kindle edition releases. I might be wrong though…
Butcher’s stated in the past that he’s planned like 20+ books. I wouldn’t be at all shocked if this is only the halfway point in the series.
This isn’t really directly related to the latest book, but there aren’t any other Dresden Files threads active right now, so I thought I’d put my random, moderately pointless thought here.
For some strange reason, when we first met him, I pictured Michael Carpenter as black. I have no idea why. No reason he had to be, and absolutely nothing about the way he was written should have led me to that conclusion, but that’s the way I pictured him; just a bit like John Henry in the DC Comics world (maybe not quite so weight-lifter-ish in his physique). In fact, I think it was long after Molly’s introduction that it sunk in that she was blonde (well, when her hair wasn’t purple or blue). My head picture of Molly was the eldest of Murtaugh’s daughters in Lethal Weapon.
Conversely, I could not see Morgan as anything but black. There’s a reason for that, of course; I watched the TV series long before I read the books. I had to consciously read Morgan’s description in Storm Front slowly, building an image in my head, before I grokked that he was more Viking than black.
Michael Carpenter I always just saw as someone like Jonathan Frakes.
It is available on iBooks (Apple’s iPad bookstore). I sure hope this is just the Amazon folks taking their time getting it up, and not some dumb “exclusive” on the new platform. But why would it be available for one e-distribution platform and not the other?
It’s due to amazon and penguin negotiating over price. It’s 13bucks on the other platforms. Amazon wants to keep the price down around 10.
Okay, so he still needs to be human. I still think Mab is behind this, somehow.
Technically Mab is neutral, but practically she’s evil. That is to say, whatever her actions mean in some amoral higher reality, in the real world her actions come down as evil. They certaintly cause much distress.