Every series decays with time but Dresden held on pretty long, #13 Ghost Story being the drop off point for me, not sure it has jumped the shark yet though and it might not with only 5 more normal books and a finish out trilogy left. Cold Days and Skin Game were back up to snuff but felt kinda padded out.

Things that bugged me:
Harry'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

Deirdre. 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.

So 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.

Butters. 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.

Huge 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.

So overall a good book, Butcher hasn't lost his touch, but it did feel weaker than average.