Summary:

When the Supernatural nations of the world meet up to negotiate an end to ongoing hostilities, Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard, joins the White Council’s security team to make sure the talks stay civil. But can he succeed, when dark political manipulations threaten the very existence of Chicago–and all he holds dear?

Goodreads

Thoughts:

Well, it’s great to be back in Harry’s world! I do have a few qualms about this book but overall it’s another great entry of a fun series. Some spoilers for previous books in the series below so if you haven’t read those then you might want to skip this one.

We pick up not too long after the previous book. Harry is navigating a lot of things, post the destruction of the Red Court. But we do get a ideal scene of domesticity with Harry, his daughter, and his brother over breakfast. Later we see the state of Harry’s love life and his new relationship with former cop, Karen Murphy. Things seem to be going relatively good. But then of course everything goes to shit because of course it does. For some inexplicable reason, seemingly out of no where, Thomas attacks one of their kind of allies which means they’re now kind of enemies and he’s been captured and held so Harry has to go and rescue him. Then of course there is a lot of politics involving the white court, the white council, and the fae. Of course all of this is happening while there’s some kind of meeting taking place in the supernatural world to go over a peace accord because everything always goes wrong all at once.

Basically, with Harry Dresden it’s almost guaranteed that things are going to go wrong before they go right and at some point hell is going to break out (sometimes literally). So much of this book is really par for the course in that regard. One of my issues with it is that it’s clearly the first part to a two-part story. I’m wondering if the latest book was so big that they split it in two and that’s why we’re getting two books this year. This didn’t bother me too much since I do read some serialized fiction anyway and I’m used to things just leaving off in the middle but I do think this will bother some readers more than others because there’s a lot of build up for something that hasn’t happened yet. But plot-wise there’s a bit of a heist in this one and that was kind of fun! So, it’s got that going for it.

My other main issue is Harry’s….weird misogyny is back to like books 1-3 levels. I thought we were over this! But nope. Harry is once again a cartoon character whose eyes pop out dramatically whenever a beautiful woman walks into the room. We get every curve described to us in loving detail. LOL Oh lordy hahaha. Also, there’s a weird focus on Butters’ sex life at one point? Like, good for Butters but what did that bring to the story? I actually kind of hope this comes up again in Battle Ground and becomes relevant to the plot. (If it does then kudos lol.)

Anyway. Despite my eye-rolling, I did still have a lot of fun with this book and thought it was a good return to the series, overall. Butcher is clearly ramping up to something huge in Battle Ground and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what that is. 3.5/5 stars.