Changes by Jim Butcher

[meganbmoore]

I put off reading his book for a while because I suspected from what I knew of the plot, and this fandom, that a chunk of this would annoy me. I was right, though not quite as much as expected.

Like most Dresden Files books, this is madcap fun that starts off with a plot and then spends about 300 pages with people trying to kill Harry. People don’t like him much.

So, I like Susan. Fandom hates Susan and seems to largely view her as an obstacle to Murphy/Dresden and as not being a worthy enough love interest or as good as Murphy. Or something. (I like Murphy and am not really fond of Susan/Dresden due to Dresden’s habit of not trusting her and keeping things from her even when he knows that’ll just prod her to do things anyway.) I hate “secret baby” plots. Largely because (A) I almost always side with the mother (the only thing with Susan keeping Maggie a secret that I disagree with is that she maintained contact with the family) and (B) they mostly end with the mother dead, and often feel constructed to make us feel less bad about that.

Also, I totally don’t get how switching the blood curse to Susan spared Maggie.

And why must McCoy be Harry’s granddad? I prefer him as the old guy with a fondness for training wild kids.

All this sounds much more critical of the book than I actually feel!

I kind of can’t help but think that Maggie needs to be with either the Carpenters or Murphy. Or Ana. I get the “hide her” bit, but the kid is the daughter of a powerful wizard from a line of wizards and a half-vampire. I’m thinking she’s going to want some people around who know how to answer certain questions before long.

I sincerely hope that “not-quite-dying” or “temporarily dying” doesn’t get Harry out of his deal with Mab. Though I’m down with the idea of it being someone trying to delay that.

Trufax: I love Harry, flaws and all, but part of me wants a timeskip where teen!Maggie meets goth!wizard!Molly and they set off to solve the mystery of Harry’s disappearance after this.