Sunday, July 14, 2013

Death Masks by Jim Butcher

Finished on 5/27.

Is this one why I quit reading the Dresden books? I'll know if I have already read the next one, I suppose. The good guys win, of course, but nothing - absolutely nothing - is conclusively ended. Both of the uberbads are conclusively defeated - but they both get away to return in a later book. And as for contradictions, Dresden is left holding one of the swords of the Knights of the Cross, promised by the dying holder that he will know the inheritor when he meets him - personally, I'm betting on Michael's two-year old son, Harry. Also, he has acquired one of the cursed coins of the Denarii, which turns its holder into the slave of one of the Fallen. And - Susan has departed forever, having hooked up with a group of people like her, who have been half turned by the vampires of the Red Court - or has she? She left Harry her phone number.

Up to the last chapter, it was all good gruesome Dresden stuff. Everybody, including (or especially) the White Council, is out to get him and all he wants to do is save the world - and the Shroud of Turin, which has been stolen by Chicago's leading Mafioso to (hopefully) heal a mysterious young woman hidden away downstate. By the way, that line doesn't finish either; Dresden makes a deal with Marcone to let him try - as long as he returns the Shroud unharmed. And we don't know how either part of that came out.

I love series fiction, really I do, but remember how annoying it always was when you got to the part in an episode of Law&Order where things ought to start wrapping up and you realized that they were going to do a Perils of Pauline thing and drag it out for another episode? I like each piece of a series to have a fair amount of structural integrity of its own. Even if something is announced as a trilogy or some such, each piece ought to be readable on its own (notably, The Two Towers fails that one miserably - file under Why I Didn't Finish The Lord of the Rings the First Time I Tried It).

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