Finished up "Changes," the latest Dresden Files book, and was unsurprisingly underwhelmed. It wasn't that it was bad, per se. It was just a foundation of the Same Old Stuff combined with an author apparently deriving a fair amount of glee from kicking over all the sand castles he's spent years building. I approve of sand castle destruction as a purgative measure, in general, but I still feel a little cheated when pretty much all of the emotional resonance of the book comes from wanton destruction of the familiar.
Also, the power level is getting on my nerves. This happens in RPGs all the time, and apparently Jim Butcher learned little from his time with White Wolf. We call it "power creep," where each successive expansion (or "splatbook") has to be Bigger, Badder, and More Awesome than the last, and you end up with ridiculous power disparities from characters made with a book from Year 1 compared to characters made with a book from Year 5. The Dresden Files started out where ONE person getting killed with magic was a shocking, horrifying thing. Now we're at the point where, in order to be interesting, the climax has to involve ten thousand blood cultists, seven thousand vampires, thirteen vampire demigods, and a blood-crazed vampiric god-king in opposition to Our Hero. I just don't care anymore.
