Date read: 6.13.10
Book from: Library
Reviewer: Emera
Ah, with the beginning of every summer comes the shutting-off of my brain for approximately 24 hours, as I devour the newest installment of my beloved narcotic of choice, Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series. Changes, as the twelfth book and approximate halfway point of the series (…I am simultaneously disturbed and awed to realize that I have, in fact, read all twelve), is, well, a game-changer. Butcher, who’s already infamous for his gleeful sadism towards his characters, ups the stakes tenfold in this book, and packs it with even more explosions, evil twists, and shocking revelations than usual.
On the first page of the book and in one stupendously awful phone call, Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard, finds out from ex-girlfriend Susan Rodriguez that not only do they have a daughter whom he was never told about, but that she’s been captured by the vampires of the Red Court. Behind the kidnapping is Duchess Arianna Ortega, who’s out for revenge for Harry’s role in the death of her husband. With the wizards’ White Council both unwilling and unable to help him, Harry has few allies at his side and little time to accomplish a seemingly impossible rescue. Harry finds himself forced to weigh his love for his daughter against his principles, and may have to go further than ever before in sacrificing his beliefs for the sake of power.
Multitudinous OMGWUT moments aside, I actually didn’t enjoy Changes as much as most of the preceding books. Butcher is so heavy-handed in writing emotional distress that I was irritated pretty much as soon as I heard the novel’s premise and realized that Harry’s emotional state for most of the book would be Righteous Fury of Wrath and Righteousness. I love Harry as a protagonist, and generally find the improbable extent to which he holds to his principles endearing and actually pretty admirable, but reading Harry in continual high dudgeon for close to 500 pages just gets excruciatingly repetitive, even with my brain mostly turned off.