Review: Peace Talks by Jim Butcher

First of all, let’s get this out of the way. I am a Jim Butcher fan. Point blank period. I love his writing, I love his characters, I think he is the reigning king of the urban fantasy genre. There are acres of pages out there dedicated to Dresden-lite characters. A bunch of copy-paste gumshoe wanna-be wizards out there that couldn’t hold a candle to the current Winter Knight. Jim Butcher has written us a wonderful world, with ninja goblins, murderous fairies, Biker Santa, the genocide of an entire race of vampires and places it all lovingly on top of the Windy City.  I mean, Butcher’s writing credentials are bona fide, he made me fall in love with steampunk via The Aeronaut’s Windlass (and I hate steampunk) and he wrote a best-selling series (The Codex Alera)  on a double dare, based on two horrible writing clichés (Pokemon and a Lost Roman Legion). Peace Talks is book 16 in this series. Book 16! And up to this point I could only point to one book (*cough* Ghost Story) that I thought missed the high mark that Butcher has created. When Jim Butcher drops a release date, I generally clear my calendar and prepare to dive in. I wanted this book to be great. I expected it to be good. It ended up being, ok. Earlier this year I was overjoyed when I found out that after an almost 6-year layoff, Butcher was going to bring us back to the Second City with Peace Talks. As a fan I was ecstatic, I couldn’t wait to dive back into Harry’s life and see what was going on since Harry…