Peace Talks: The Dresden Files, Book Sixteen

Sorry, I love these books and have waited years for this but it's short and feels like a filler story before we get to the good stuff. After soo long waiting the story is split into 2 (released a short time apart). What is this,the deathly hallows movie? . The story itself is pretty good but not the best in the series. Update. I waited a LONG time and came back to read this when I had the next book to follow. I liked it more this time round but still feels like half a story.

After a 5-year wait, Peace Talks is a little underwhelming at less than 300 pages, much of which feels like filler. Butcher's style of setting Dresden up with multiple unknowns is there but pretty much all the loose ends remain loose by the end of the book. There is some good pace in places but it does, as I say, feel like a lot of the text is filler. And in what I can only describe as 'Injury Bingo' at this point, we get yet more random injuries to protagonists that are beginning to feel a bit tired. I also found the constant sexualizing of the female characters in the book, including some of very yound age, rather creepy. Lastly, the text flitted about for the majority of the book without progressing the story at all, seemingly in order to reference a number of the short stories released over the intervening years since Skin Game - most of that text was lazily written and made me feel that Mr Butcher has given up on the Dresden Files. I fail to understand why Mr Butcher didn't just make Peace Talks and Battle Ground one book - Peace Talks on it's own could have really just been tightened up and made the first third of a really great story, as it is I felt that I'd been sold part of something and it wasn't particularly satisfying.

Loved the way this book works. Its a precursor book, leading up to a much larger, and better upcoming book. But that doesnt stop this book from having all the aspects you have come to love from the Dresden Files.