[taosaur]

Finished yesterday and I wouldn't rate this one best in the series, despite my soft spot for heists/capers (mainly in film). It was a good entry, but for one thing it stretched the "beating the hell out of Harry" motif a bit beyond belief.

Spoiler:

For one thing, it never seemed to really matter that Harry had a badly broken arm. He got tossed around so much afterward and engaged in so many acrobatics that the broken arm might as well never have happened. As a plot device, it got him to Michael and the splint clinked against the knife, but for those two little payoffs it was a ham-handed move. The cumulative damage of operating under the Winter Mantle would have worked better in the cold iron scenes without the way undersold serious trauma.

The movement from act to act also seemed rather mechanical. Butcher's gift, IMO, is proceeding on formula but lending it a naturalistic feel. Here, the early movements were smooth enough but the later movements seemed telegraphed well in advance to the point that much of the latter third of the novel was just busywork. There was a grand scene toward the end, telegraphed or not, but I can't count this novel as Butcher's best work. Its redeeming virtue, as usual, was the character development. Movement of the larger arcs seemed to happen almost independent of the main action in this book, but it was still significant.

And harking back a bit to beating the hell out of Harry, one thing that should have occurred to Harry in this book and may yet come up in the future:

Spoiler:

He should totally be using cold iron to shut off the Winter Mantle most of the time, unless he's training or seriously needs it. One nail anywhere under his skin, or some lightweight version of the thorn manacles, and he can let his body recover while still having access to Winter when he needs it. If his thought process doesn't allow for such an option, then he's an addict and overdue for an intervention.