PEACE TALKS BY JIM BUTCHER

By Marilyn Armstrong on 2020-12-06 • ( 0 )

I have waited six years for book sixteen of the Harry Dresden world to be published. I waited patiently. Then, after a while, with less patience. A few months ago, there was a book by Jim Butcher called Spiderman: The Darkest Hours. It wasn’t Harry Dresden, but it was good and Jim Butcher wrote it. It kept me from madness. This is truly a year in which if books disappeared, my brain would die.

Peace Talks is as good as I had hoped it would be and it is eerily timely, given COVID-19 and our so-called president sending his own secret service into the streets to beat down protesters. Peace Talks are the least peaceful talks ever attempted. Harry Dresden is no long a kid. He doesn’t even have that sense of youth anymore. Life has become deadly serious for him. He’s a father. He’s not a young wizard. He’s isn’t aged, but he has an old soul.

I waited for the previous five years for this episode. This year — year six — I was getting desperate. I couldn’t bear the idea of reading one more political insider story extruded from our dark and creepy White House. I needed magic. I needed Harry. I needed Jim Butcher. Considering you-know-who is threatening Chicago with his secret police, Harry, it’s time to come out of hiding. Chicago won’t survive without your help. Hell, Harry, the WORLD is waiting.

Peace Talks is deeply satisfying. This book isn’t a full story. It is clearly the first episode heading towards a climactic ending. I can hardly wait! Jim Butcher extracts Harry from impossible predicaments in which he faces overwhelming odds, then adroitly weaves these events into the storyline, taking Harry and the series into the next level. He wastes nothing. No phenomenon is accidental. Everything is part of a giant jigsaw puzzle, a piece of a picture to be finally revealed.

I love the Dresden universe. My world has more than enough evil to keep an army of wizards busy, but the evil in my reality plane makes fighting them similar to trying to punch a hole in Jello. You can’t beat them; they have no substance. More to come.