When Warden Morgan appears at Dresden's door wounded and asking for help, he dives Dresden into the worst of White Council politics and treachery. He has to figure out if Morgan was set up for the murder of one of the Council's leading wizards, find the real killer and traitor to the council, and stop a new attempt to start another war between the Council and the vampire courts. Lives are on the line, including his own if he's not careful. Just another day for Dresden!
Impression: Butcher jumps right in from the first word on this eleventh installment of The Dresden Files. It was a bit of a surprise since he usual has some bit of "introduction" before things amp up, but this wasn't necessarily a bad thing, just something that made it a bit different than previous Dresden Files novels. But, as in previous novels, once the pressure was on, he stayed on top of it.
I think my only real disappointment in the book was that I figured out who was "behind the scenes" VERY early in the novel. However, even though that was obvious to me, Butcher still made the ending interesting, surprising, and a logical result of the actions taken earlier in the novel. Dresden fell a little flat for me this time around: there wasn't the usual character growth and change that we see in the other novels of the series, and there was no struggle between his ethics and his conflict with Morgan as I would have expected earlier in the novel. While I understand that Dresden needed to accept the challenge, I would have expected a little more internal conflict over it. I'm not going to say that this is the beginning of the end for the series—I still enjoyed it, but I do hope that there's more of some of the things that initially made the series so cool in the future books.
But I did enjoy the book and, as usual, gobbled it up. The White Council is actually blown wide open in this book, which was really nice to see. Dresden has been a Warden for a book or two now, it's definitely time to see more of the inner workings of the Council. And even though I figured some of the story out, Butcher still had enough surprises come up to make things interesting and to keep a reader going. Not the best of the Dresden books, but still a strong showing for the series. And I highly recommend the series overall.
Unless otherwise noted, all books reviewed have been purchased by me.
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