He took a level in juggling.
Welcome to a spoiler-free review of Peace Talks, the latest volume of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files, the urban fantasy series that combines monsters from all the mythologies and throws them at one poor wizard. Said wizard has come a long way from the goofy geek we first met in Storm Front. So has the author.
For three fleeting chapters, we see the life Harry Dresden would like to build: Running with his brother, making pancakes with his daughter, cooking for his girlfriend. But Jim Butcher has always been good at interrupting the sweet moments before they can become cloying. It turns out that all the monsters are coming together in Chicago for a peace conference, the cops are after Harry and Murphy for what happened in the last book, and the White Council wants to throw our hero to the wolves. And that's just the first three chapters.
While Harry Dresden has grown as a person and as a wizard, Jim Butcher has been growing as an author. His style has been getting smoother every book, the characters more complex, the plots more intricate. He weaves together no less than four strands of action and makes it look easy. That is, four tense new strands in addition to the Black Council arc that has been going on for several books. Peace Talks feels short at just over 300 pages. Almost too short, in fact. For the first time in the series, Butcher wrote a two-book story. In Peace Talks, he shows us the stakes, the sides and some of the weapons. The epic battle is yet to come.
Yours sincerely
Christina Widmann de Fran
Peace Talks: A Novel of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
published on July 14th, 2020 by Orbit Publishing.
ISBN: 9780356515298
Get your copy on Amazon.co.uk.
