A short story set 1 month post Battle Ground just dropped.

7.5/10 an enjoyable read. Not vital to the meta plot which is nice.

Seeing Harry and Chicago post battle and healing is good as well. Not really a spoiler so I’ll just say, it’s good to see him get his full wizard kit back.

 

Where can I find it?

What's the latest on the next book, do you know?

 

I got it on kindle for 10nzd.

Nothing on the new book, which is odd as we are the two year mark almost.

 

Jim's gone through another divorce in that time so we may be waiting a while longer.

 

Alas, the number of hot redheads in his next book will surely diminish.

 

Lmao, did the girl he left his wife for go the same way?

 

Yup. I think this marriage lasted about 2 years?

 

I believe ex wife #2 has an onlyfans now... seriously.

 

Alright, that's the context I needed heh. I'll keep my hopes low.

 

I figured this thread is as good as anything else to ask this question.

Are the last books if the Dresden files still worth the read? I dropped peace talks about half way through. I listened to the audiobook of stormfront a couple of days ago and enjoyed it, but even before peace talks the series moved away from the weird urban-fantasy-crime-noir mix that I enjoyed.

So, I am not really interested in epic good Vs evil battles where the fate of the world is at stake, but I really enjoyed the fantastic detective stories and all the side Stories dealing with the "little problems".

 

I've personally found the last few books a bit of a struggle, for similar reasons. Given that we're headed for an apocalyptic trilogy, seems like epic good vs evil battles with the fate of the world at stake are par for the course. So maybe best avoid?

I'll personally read the books when they come out because I was invested heavily in them for a long time. But I don't feel the excitement I used too.

 

I’ll say this short story is a more return to norm for the series. But I do feel it’s a bit of a one off before we dive into the larger meta story again.

 

Personally speaking, I haven't enjoyed the Dresden Files since the end of Changes, and that was several books ago. I still follow the series, but more as an investment I've sunk too much time into to abandon the ship. IMO Peace Talks, and Battle Ground, continued the same downward wash for Dresden's persona that has been on-going for a while now, and its not likely to improve going forward. As for as you said the epic battles of good vs evil, that is becoming the norm as we build toward the back-half of the series and is also unlikely to scale back down given the scale and scope of what went down in Chicago in Battle Ground.

 

I think I'm more interested now that the masquerade is being broken and the regular humans are waking up to the supernatural world. Not many urban fantasy series actually go in that direction and it'll be interesting to see how he handles that.

But yeah, Jim's not as good at writing the big, supernatural blowout set pieces as he'd like to be and given the way the series is going I can see that being a big problem for future books.

 

I see it as a good thing. He's bad at it now, but this way he can see what works and what doesn't work before the BAT

 

Butcher is good at writing detective fantasy novels. It was good till Small Favor. What he is not good at is writing apocalyptic fantasy like Mistborn, Stormlight. Its been downhill since then.

 

Just finished listening to the audiobook version.

The story was actually decent, and not as over the top as some of Dresden's adventures.

But the thing that threw me off was that Butcher reads it himself, and - aside from the fact that his voice sounds nothing like it does in Youtube videos - his enunciation and emphasis felt off. Like, if I had read some of the passages, they would have sounded different.

The gag reel at the end wasn't bad, though.

And it was nice to see how Dresden's getting his life back together. I will agree that the tone and overall flavour of the series shifted signifigantly after Changes - maybe after Turn Coat - and it wasn't all to the good.

 

Oh btw someone makes a Dresden is Harry Potter joke in this story. So Harry Potter stories is canon in DF now.

 

Think Slytherin came up in one of the short stories? Some wannabe warlocks "threaten" Dresden while he is waiting for Luccio to show up, during that brief period they were dating. I think.

 

You know thinking about it I still find the whole change from urban fantasy to epic fantasy jarring and actually made me give up on the series. Its not even like he does whole world ending apocalyptic epic fantasy stuff good anyway. And you don't really need some many books for it. Sanderson finished his Acopalyptic trilogy in 3 books. And will finish another one in 5. I don't really want to compare Butcher with Sanderson but Sanderson is leagues ahead when it comes to Acopalyptic epic fantasy with world ending plotting that makes you go wow. Butcher is good at urban fantasy tho. I think the problem here is the whole breaking the urban fantasy to epic fantasy thats just made it go downhill.