Cold Days
(Dresden Files # 14)
by Jim Butcher
young adult, fantasy
copyright 2012
read in July 2018
rated 6/10: read to pass the time
Have you ever read Asimov's Foundation books ? I read the first three -- "the" Foundation books -- and thought, Good fun, solid ending. Later, I read more in the series. And it just went on and on... There is a secret agency controlling the first Foundation. Behind this secret agency is an even more secret agency which controls the first secret agency. And behind that... well... each book discovers that the people "in control" are puppets for an even more secret group.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Butcher -- with his Dresden Files -- has a similar problem: how to find ever more powerful villains for the hero to battle. Dresden has -- so it seems -- battled his way to nearly the top of the power tree. (Sure, that's not all good news.) But now, who on Earth could possibly challenge him ?
The latest villains are -- spoiler alert -- from *outside* the Earth ! Possibly from outside the Universe, or from another dimension... or somewhere. Somewhere we have never before even heard of. Good grief ! What next ?!
On the other hand, this book is still a lot of fun. Comic book fun. With a hero who wants to be good, while he exterminates people and creatures who -- thank goodness -- are *not* good. (Actually, not many are "exterminated". Most villains are thrashed -- then left alive to come back in future books.)
The plot is as complex as the book series, with villains behind villains behind villains. There is also a supporting cast of thousands, so many that key battles are run off-stage, simply reported as "successful". Butcher has also -- in the spirit of controller behind controller -- explained a lot of past adventures as being part of the long-term plans of various controlling interests.
The main problem with all this complexity is... Do not make this book your first-ever taste of the Dresden Files !
Finally: Harry -- as the first-person story-teller -- seems to be getting very wordy. Those off-stage battles, for example, took many paragraphs to set up. Hmm... more words to set them up than to describe them. Perhaps saving the graphic battle descriptions for battles where the star is directly involved.
There are also several pages devoted to moral statements. Sure, they are fitted into the plot. Really, though, they are the author stating his values for the reader. Which is fine, all part of the pleasure of reading. And all part of the "young adult" genre... I guess.
Overall it's an enjoyable book. With too much dependence on previous books, too many characters who appear largely because they are entrenched in the series. And too ridiculous a set of villains -- and heroes -- to be taken seriously.
Violent, yes. Serious, no. Still good fun.
Dr Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper
... Agamedes Consulting / Problems ? Solved
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"I've found that there's a reason for everything… I constantly make the wrong decisions." … Pardon my Planet
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