My routine for a new book for a long time was to go to the nearest bookstore (a considerable distance away, actually) acquire the book and stop at the nearby Pizza Hut to start reading it over a nice meal. The last Dresden books to come out did so while Pizza Hut had a moratorium on dine-in courtesy of COVID. And there have not been a lot of books lately where I wanted to get the hardcover, since I have been mostly using Kindle ever since I lost all my books in a fire. So this is the first time in over five years I actually got to do my "bought a new book" routine.

It was pretty good, for what it was, which was a kind of necessary catching-up with all sorts of elements of Dresden's life that had been on hiatus or left unsettled after the string of events beginning with his near-death in Changes, and up through the battle for Chicago in the last two.

The solution he comes up with for the White Court issues was rather intuitive, in fact, I once came up with the idea of a White Court vampire who had a wizard's talent, and fed his Hunger on his own magic. So it made sense in the way that Harry was able to pull it off, with the twist that the Hunger is an actual Outsider and Harry's starborn status being a good reason why no one else has managed or bothered. It also was a nice coherent bit of world-building explaining why the formal/ceremonial languages of the White Court and White Council are Etruscan & Latin, respectively. Or maybe it's just been so much intake of Disney & Amazon content in the genre, that I am now overly impressed by worldbuilding and backstories that don't contradict. And of course, the revelation of the twist of Mab's intentions was hilarious. Usually the rules in a story are employed to create problems for the heroes, it's great to see that even the villains can run afoul of things like "Don't make bargains with the Fae." Speaking of whom, Mab is consistently my favorite character in the series, and it was great to see her being both psycho-villainous and sympathetic. And a Mother Winter cameo is always good to have, too. FFS, being a Winter Queen has actually made Molly a lot more tolerable. I am tentatively intrigued by Drakul, and it's good to see we've got a strong cast of villains for the home stretch.

Speaking of which, I am wondering how that is going to go. Butcher has always said that he had the outline of the series from the first, with a planned 20 books, then a finale trilogy titled, Stars & Stones, Hell's Bells and Empty Night, with explanations for those expressions forthcoming. Another pattern Butcher obliquely confirmed was deliberate was the appearance of Nicodemus & the Denarians as the antagonists in every 5th book. Which means there would normally be expected to be two more in the pipe, and the next one is supposed to be called Mirror Mirror, and sharing some concepts from the original Star Trek episode of the same name.

However, Mirror Mirror was supposed to be Book 17, immediately after Peace Talks. As we now know, Peace Talks got out of hand in the writing and had to be split into two books, the latter of which was Battle Ground, and now we needed Twelve Months to take the breath and give Harry some necessary character development. So we're two books off the pace. That suggests the series is going to 22 books but if Nicodemus was due to appear in #20, and possibly as the penultimate villain (or IS he? I have a theory... ) before the finale trilogy, does that planned conflict get pushed to #22, or does he make his regular appearance in #20 and the whole thing gets reworked?

Anyway, my theory is that Harry is being frog-boiled into villainy. His relationship with recurring local villains Mab & Lara seems more amicable than ever, and he & Marcone are even getting called out diegeticly for the "doth protest too much" element in their rivalry. Marcone has always kind of been there as a sort of foil for Harry, and now he has been revealed to be a Denarian, along with some cryptic comments by Nicodemus & Deirdre in Small Favor & Skin Game, makes me think Harry isn't as done with them as he hopes. Butcher once said that he did not know for sure when writing Changes whether Harry would accept the mantle of Winter Knight, take up the coin of Lashiel or employ the Dark Hallow spell to save Maggie from the Red Court, and settled on the one he did as the organic one that fit the story (and explaining his line to Mab justifying his choice of her, over the other two options). Which makes me think Butcher did not develop all three of these options to leave two of them on Chekov's mantel. I think, in his own perverse way, Nicodemus is also opposing the Outsiders and trying to prevent Empty Night, which makes sense from the usual materialism-driven fictional depiction of the perspective of Hell (but you always get fucked over in a devil's bargain, and Nicodemus cannot be the exception, see above, re: Lara's lesson about making a deal with Mab, so based on Lucifer's real issues, the Prince of Darkness might just be ready to yank the rug out from under Nicky & friends by siding with the Others). Anway, I think Harry has gotten a lot more comfortable with this sort of alliance, and at some point he will find himself allied to guys like Nicodemus, Marcone - increasingly using Namshiel's power - and Cowl & Drakul, while wielding a coin of his own, the necromantic powers gleaned from Kemmler's lore, and employing some of his charges in Demonreach as thugs, on top of his Winter authority, all in the name of the Greater Good and Saving the World. And he's going to have to fight his way back to being an actual good guy. I think, too, that Amoracchius is going to come into play in this. He's done his part to get Fidelacchius into the hands of a new knight, but Amoracchius has barely been mentioned. I could see him taking it up to even the odds in his final fight, after having given up all the evil powers and allies he had accumulated until then, with the Sword of Love as part of the compensation. And probably stepping into the gap when all the evil powers fail to save the world using cheat codes.

So I am really hoping that Butcher has, like Harry, worked through enough of his personal problems to get back to a semi-reasonable release schedule (note that the gap between Battle Ground & Twelve Months was as long as that between Skin Game & Peace Talks, and he had a divorce, remarriage and major home move to excuse the former hiatus, and ended up delivering two books at the end; I know he's got that Cinder Spire series, but he was also cranking out the Codex Alera simultaneously with the Dresden Files for a while, and both series were hitting regular release dates). His website claims Mirror Mirror is 30% complete, so he's not doing a Cinder Spires book before that, which is promising. There is also a Dresden novella due in May, and I think we might be getting close to filling up a third anthology book, too. Out Law is the fourth published work and there have been a bunch of on-line stuff too, all since Zoo Day.