WoWwA ~ Changes

*Book source ~ Purchased at Audible.

Title ~ Changes

Series ~ The Dresden Files, #12

Author ~ Jim Butcher

Narrator ~ James Marsters

Publisher ~ Penguin Audio

Published ~ 10 April 2010

Genre ~ Fantasy | Paranormal

Length ~ 15 hrs 28 min

Our Rating ~ 5 bites

Narration ~ 5 bites

Harry Dresden, Chicago’s wizard extraordinaire and private investigator for the supernatural (and the sometimes mundane) has just found out he has a daughter and that she’s been kidnapped by the Red Court. Fury such as he’s never known nearly consumes him, but his own good sense and the common sense of his friends keep him, barely, grounded. The Red Court has crossed a line that Harry will not tolerate and he’ll stop at nothing to get his child back. Even if it means he has to call in every favor he has and then some. Hell hath no fury like Harry Dresden and the Red Court is about to find out exactly what that means.

Guest reviewers:

A ~ my 17-yr-old daughter

T ~ my 15-yr-old son

K ~ my 14-yr-old son

The changes kept on coming in this book, from the very beginning where Harry finds out he has a daughter to the very end where, well, let’s just say the ending was a shocker. K & I had already read the book, so we knew what was coming, but A & T were blindsided. In fact, T said, “That’s bullshhhhhh.” The kids aren’t allowed to swear, but for this I told him, “Go ahead. This ending is worthy of it.” “Really? That’s bullshit!” he proclaimed loudly. Oh, my, that ending. *sigh* Yep, so many changes that I can’t even list them without spoiling the story. I will say this…there are a Baker’s Dozen (13) major changes to Harry’s life. Well, that’s really just our opinion. Some people may come up with less, some with more, but that’s the number we settled on.

We all love Harry and to watch him in this book was so extremely painful. One thing after another piled up on him, but he kept going and going, like the Energizer bunny. Now, this is typical of Harry, he pushes through all the crap to finish the job, but this book was saturated with Harry’s urgency and desperation to save his daughter. T did not like all the changes, A didn’t like them, but said they added drama and K liked all the changes. In fact, K said he liked the ending. What?! Of course, you have to take in the fact that he’s read the next two books in the series and I tried to tell him to think back about when he first read the ending, but he couldn’t separate then from now. Oh, well.

I asked them if Harry’s decision (can’t say what without spoiling) was the right one and everyone said yes. Well, K said Harry should have called in ALL his markers, but that boy likes to make things extremely difficult for the main characters. There weren’t all that surprised about Maggie (Harry’s daughter), but there are other things that did surprise them. Again, so many spoilers in this book! All-in-all, this book put us through the wringer, but was well worth the read.

Favorite quotes:

There were, as usual, many good ones, but we whittled it down to these.

“This creature serves you?” Sanya asked.

“This one and about a hundred smaller ones. And five times that many part-timers I can call in once in awhile.” I thought about it. “It isn’t so much that they serve me as that we have a business arrangement that we all like. They help me out from time to time. I furnish them with regular pizza.”

“Which they…love,” Sanya said.

Toot spun in a dizzy, delighted circle on one heel, and fell onto his back with perfectly unself-conscious enthusiasm, his tummy sticking out as far as it could. He lay there for a moment, making happy, gurgling sounds.

“Well,” I said. “Yes.”

Sanya's eyes danced, though his face was sober. "You are a drug dealer. To tiny faeries. Shame.”

**********************************************************************

“Da. This is going very well already."

Thomas barked out a laugh. "There are seven of us against the Red King and his thirteen most powerful nobles, and it's going well?"

Mouse sneezed.

"Eight," Thomas corrected himself. He rolled his eyes and said, "And the psycho death faerie makes it nine."

"It is like movie," Sanya said, nodding. "Dibs on Legolas."

"Are you kidding?" Thomas said. "I'm obviously Legolas. You're . . ." He squinted thoughtfully at Sanya and then at Martin. "Well. He's Boromir and you're clearly Aragorn."

"Martin is so dour, he is more like Gimli." Sanya pointed at Susan. "Her sword is much more like Aragorn's."

"Aragorn wishes he looked that good," countered Thomas.

"What about Karrin?" Sanya asked.

"What--for Gimli?" Thomas mused. "She is fairly--"

"Finish that sentence, Raith, and we throw down," said Murphy in a calm, level voice.

"Tough," Thomas said, his expression aggrieved. "I was going to say 'tough.' "

As the discussion went on--with Molly's sponsorship, Mouse was lobbying to claim Gimli on the basis of being the shortest, the stoutest, and the hairiest—

"Sanya," I said. "Who did I get cast as?"

"Sam," Sanya said.

I blinked at him. "Not . . . Oh, for crying out loud, it was perfectly obvious who I should have been."

Sanya shrugged. "It was no contest. They gave Gandalf to your godmother. You got Sam.”

**********************************************************************

And my personal favorite because I’ve basically said this all along:

“Then you know that Sam was the true hero of the tale,' Sanya said. 'That he faced far greater and more terrible foes than he ever should have had to face, and did so with courage. That he went alone into a black and terrible land, stormed a dark fortress, and resisted the most terrible temptation of his world for the sake of the friend he loved. That in the end, it was his actions and his actions alone that made it possible for light to overcome darkness.”