Have been gradually administering doses of this series to myself for quite a while now, spacing it out so as not to blunt the empty-calorie thrills too much. This one doesn't even make a token attempt at the detective half of "magical detective" and continues the drift towards a bog-standard apocalyptic confrontation, messianic hero, etc. Even some family romance thrown in (spoilers! but really, I'm not the one spoiling the fun here). The always chauvinist representation of women gets a bit more chauvinist, but the thing that really irked me was that Murphy's Aikido expertise is once again underlined and once again Butcher has not bothered to finish reading the wikipedia entry on Aikido; he seems to think it's a kind of karate. I can suspend my disbelief for vampires, "soulfire" magic, fairies (I'm sorry, Sidhe), etc. but hands off my niche martial art. These extremely serious and probing criticisms aside, obviously, I raced through it and will be eagerly awaiting my next hit. How will Harry Dresden ever get out of his next scrape? etc.