View original postHarry's new daughter seems like a retcon, like Butcher had realized his whole fan base had figured out the headache was due to Lasciel and rather than have it be an emerging enemy he made it a kid for surprise value. Story wise it's kinda silly since we hadn't gotten any facetime with his original kid till this book and not much there and kid #2 at this point sort of diminishes that thus far unexplored storyline
I don't think it was a retcon, so to speak- he tends to plan stuff out pretty far in advance. That said, I DO think it's weird, storywise. I mean, the last couple of books has been Harry coming to grips with the fact that he's a father, how should he act, will his daughter even want him as a father, the mother is dead, etc etc.
Then we get ANOTHER daughter, where the problems are almost the same. It was interesting how quickly he went from "get this parasite out of me" to "Oh, it's like I have a kid, I guess I love it now."
View original postDeirdre. You'd think Nicodemius would have brought along his most loyal servant to give that one a run first before sacking his daughter or tried something nasty like bringing along someone whose family was hostage.
Yeah, it was strange. A little note about how it had to be a sacrifice of someone you loved would have ironed that out.
View original postSo when Harry got his winter mantle depowered repeatedly I noted he wasn't paralyzed, has his spine healed already? Because last book when he forsook the mantle it wasn't.
When did Harry get his winter mantle depowered in this book?
View original postButters. Just a weird arc there. Note to writers: Character growth and progression does not necessarily need to include 'took a level in badass' particularly when the guy was supposed to be vanilla mortal with a brain. This also means we need another new character to serve as the 'smart but normal, not clued in' guy on the other half of exposition dialogue. And there's already a huge cast.
Yeah, his Batman/Benny Hill routine was a little strange. I guess it kind of makes sense- as much as we liked the clued-in medical examiner, it doesn't make much sense, plotwise, for him to stay that way. I mean, the dude is basically a D&D Munchkin who got his hands on a Real Life Players Handbook. Even if he's not a wizard, it's obvious he's been trying to learn as much as he can about what he CAN do.
View original postHuge cast not seen: Admittedly I hate when authors shoehorn in cameos, and we did get a fair amount of that anyway, but it doesn't require a thin plot excuse to have someone like Harry's badass grandfather show up on the island for a visit, for instance. A throwaway paragraph of him coming by months before or a quick memory bit would have done it.
Yeah... it wasn't as much of an issue in previous books, but the last couple books have made it very obvious that we are seeing a couple of days per year in the life of Harry Dresden.
