Book Review: Peace Talks
I HAVE WAITED. FOR SO LONG. AND IT IS HERE. AT LAST.
The signatories of the Unseelie Accords are gathering in Chicago to come to an agreement with the Fomor, the undersea power which has been terrorizing the world in the wake of the Red Court’s demise. And, predictably for Harry Dresden, plenty of other trouble has decided to rear its head simultaneously: Thomas is arrested by svartalves for a crime he almost certainly committed, Harry’s enemies on the Council are agitating to have him tossed out AGAIN, Mab assigns Harry to perform some favors for Lara, and a bunch of Outsiders have shown up for a good time. Oh, and Harry’s sick to boot! Tough time to be a wizard, eh?
I’ve not reviewed a Dresden Files novel here yet, but this is a series I deeply love. It definitely has known flaws, but I enjoy Harry’s snark, his bullheaded commitment to doing the right thing even if it kills him, and the detailed and fascinating cast of secondary characters revolving around him. I love the world so much I’m actually playing a Dresden Files RPG game, in fact.
So right out of the gate, with the above caveat in place, let me just say that it’s almost impossible to judge Peace Talks without Battle Ground — they really are one book. Very little of the plates set spinning (as noted above) are actually resolved by the end of Peace Talks (and in fact, a few more have gone up in the air). So to some degree, I have to reserve some judgment until I’ve seen how Battle Ground shakes out.
With that out of the way, let’s talk about what is here.
If I’m being honest, I am on tenterhooks to see where Harry’s arc goes. I have a deep and abiding love of flawed characters with a core of darkness, who are determined to do right but sometimes screw up the method. (It’s one of the reasons why I loved the Tenth / Eleventh Doctors so much — “good men don’t need rules” indeed). And Harry is teetering on the edge. People he counts on, people he trusts, are turning out to not be who he thought — particularly Thomas and Carlos and Ebenezar, here. All three either betray Harry’s trust or demonstrate that they don’t trust his judgment, and it hurts him badly.
I’m guessing that this will drive him even deeper into the arms of people he shouldn’t trust, like Mab or Lara, both of whom are significant presences here. Because we’re in his head, we know Harry means well, but those around him see a man accumulating more and more dangerous power, and it’s starting to strain, well, just about everything.
There are two bright spots for Harry though: Karrin Murphy and Maggie. Harry is doing a remarkably good job of being a dad to Maggie, and it’s easy to see how much he cares. Meanwhile, as promised in Skin Game, Karrin and Harry are finally giving their relationship a shot and WE HAVE WAITED SO LONG BUT IT IS SO WORTH IT.
Like most Dresden books, the pacing is tight and the chapter endings brutal. You’ll be telling yourself “just one more chapter” until there’s no more book (and it’s not a long book). The tight pacing is aided even further by the seemingly endless stack of problem dominoes that get set up; to be honest, about the first 11 chapters or so felt like one new, entirely unrelated problem after another, with a breathless quality.
And there’s so much new worldbuilding here, so much more Dresdenverse to sink our teeth into! The Fomor, who have sort of been background boogeymen for a few books, make quite the entrance here. Mab is front and center, and we even get some tantalizing hints of her history. We’ve seen the svartalves in passing, but we get much more of their culture and customs here, with Harry living among them. There’s disquieting information to be had about the Outsiders and what it means to be starborn (with the promise of more to come). Some fan favorites make appearances (Vadderung, Ferrovax), and we meet some new terrors that expand on the list of gods and deity-class powers in the world.
That said, the book’s biggest flaw is its inconsistencies. There are some things that just don’t make sense. Others have covered them in much more comprehensive detail than I will here (items like, for instance, Harry not having been to Marcone’s little castle). The one I want to bring up, and the one that bugs me the most, is the repetitive attempt to have Harry chucked off the Council based on the argument that he “never properly did his trials” or such. Correct me if I’m wrong, but was that not the entire point of the White Council storyline in Summer Knight? Harry’s resolution of that conflict was supposed to settle once and for all that he’s a member of the Council. It’s annoying to see that line of reasoning replicated here.
There are also small things that seem out of character here and there, which are probably the pains of Butcher taking so long between books. No disrespect intended (dude had a lot going on in his life), but it feels like he struggles to nail the character voices now and then. And some things come way out of left field, like the all-consuming hatred Ebenezar seems to have for the White Court. I re-read Turn Coat and while Ebenezar didn’t like working with Lara, he was willing to do it for the sake of a shared enemy and he wasn’t overly rude. That’s all different here, and it’s jarring to say the least.
But man, do I have THEORIES about where this is all headed. Ugh.
As I said above, not much is resolved yet, and there is a HUGE crisis in progress at the end of Peace Talks. It’s a good thing Battle Ground comes out soon, because this would be a hard wait otherwise. I’ll cover any revised thoughts on Peace Talks in my Battle Ground review — stay tuned.
Grade: 4/5 stars
Memorable Quote:
“The light in the corner shifted weirdly, warped, spun into curlicues and spirals that should have existed only in Escher drawings. The stone of the building twisted and stretched, and then rock rippled and bubbled like pancake batter, and something started hauling itself out of the surface of the stone at the intersection of the three lines of light. My chest suddenly vibrated as if I’d been standing in a pool in front of an outflow pipe, and a surge of nausea nearly knocked me down.
The thing that slithered into our world was the size of a horse, but lower, longer, and leaner. It was canine in shape, generally — a quadruped, the legs more or less right, and everything else subtly wrong. A row of short, powerful-looking tentacles ran along its flanks. A longer, thicker tentacle lashed like a whip where its tail should have been. The feet were spread out, wide, for grasping, kind of like an eagle’s talons, and where its head should have been was nothing but a thick nest of more of the tendrils. It had something like scales made of mucus, rather than fur, and flesh squelched on flesh.
”Cornerhound,” Ebenezar said, his voice purely disgusted. “Damned things.””
