And by "newer," I mean after book 3, Grave Peril which started the whole Vampire War arc.

Books 1 and 2 were good, but didn't gel as well as later books, I think.


Anyway, I just finished rereading Proven Guilty. And it was good... just, kinda off. A bit all over the place.


There's just so much going on, and most of it doesn't really have anything to do with each other.

-The whole "Mab is acting crazy, so the Summer Fae can't fight the Red Vampires thing," complete with interactions with Lily, Fix and Maeve

-The "fear-eating monsters that look like movie villains" thing

-The reintroduction of Molly Carpenter, whom we last saw as a 14-year old giving bondage advice

-The "creepy director that kidnaps Harry and tries to sell him on eBay" thing

-The expedition to Arctis Tor, with the added complication of discovering Godmother Lea is CRAZY

-And finally, the trial of Molly

-Then there's subplots of Thomas acting weird, dealing with Lasciel, the whole weird "someone fixed it OMG!" thing with Little Chicago, a romance with Murphy, and Mouse maybe being dead. Plus Harry's obsessing over the men he killed in Dead Beat.


That's not to say these things weren't awesome. It's just that a lot of them seem baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarely connected, and a bit forced.



The eBay director, for one thing, was completely unrelated to the entire plot.

Molly's plot was... weird. I can accept the fact that she accidentally used black magic (or rather, did it on purpose but didn't realize how bad it was). But that somehow made her a conduit for fear monsters? And then the fear monsters attacked random people at the convention, and only the convention? And then when Harry turns them back on her, they kidnap her to Arctis Tor? They either should have recognized she was their beacon, and left her alone, or not recognized her, and eaten her.

As for her having to go face the Council... I find it a bit convenient that there's a global "black magic" detector, which means that someone WILL eventually find out what Molly did. Wasn't Dresden supposed to be like, one of the only wizards, and the only Warden, in his entire area?


And then it was all tied together... luckily, Harry points out that it seems pretty obvious to him that this was a setup in some way, he just can't figure out how.

Anyway, it was good, but not great. But now it's almost time for the awesome- Small Favor, Turn Coat and Changes are my favorites by far. Dead Beat was great too, for obvious reasons, but the last three have been the best, IMO.


EDIT: It's mostly obvious that they'll be in here, true, but always good practice just to let people know that your post has series spoilers in.