Cold Days (book 14 The Dresden Files) -- Jim Butcher

HARRY DRESDEN LIVES!!! After being murdered by a mystery assailant, navigating his way through the realm between life and death, and being brought back to the mortal world, Harry realizes that maybe death wasn’t all that bad. Because he is no longer Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard.
He is now Harry Dresden, Winter Knight to Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness. After Harry had no choice but to swear his fealty, Mab wasn’t about to let something as petty as death steal away the prize she had sought for so long. And now, her word is his command, no matter what she wants him to do, no matter where she wants him to go, and no matter who she wants him to kill.
Guess which Mab wants first? Of course, it won’t be an ordinary, everyday assassination. Mab wants her newest minion to pull off the impossible: kill an immortal. No problem there, right? And to make matters worse, there exists a growing threat to an unfathomable source of magic that could land Harry in the sort of trouble that will make death look like a holiday.Beset by enemies new and old, Harry must gather his friends and allies, prevent the annihilation of countless innocents, and find a way out of his eternal subservience before his newfound powers claim the only thing he has left to call his own…His soul.

It is hard for me to give an honest review of this book as I am a bit of a fanboy about the series. I have long awaited this release with baited (insert Tim Curry voice) antici-pation.

Harry Dresden is back, now with an actual body! Not unlike HBO's True Blood, at the end of the last book I was left with more questions than answers.

• Will Harry live?
• Will he keep his old friends?
• Will he fundamentally change now that he has signed on with the Queen of Darkness?
• Will Harry's daughter show up in the story?
• How do I get a dog like Mouse?
• How did Mac get his bar listed as neutral territory under the Unseelie Accords?
• Will Jim Butcher ever release a recipe for some of Macs beers?

The answers are as follows:

• Yes
• Yes
• Yes/No (HA! How do you like THAT ambivalent answer?)
• Not yet
• I can't (the Landlord doesn't want me to have pets)
• Unanswered (STILL!!!!)
• I'm waiting Jim... I'm waiting.

There isn't much I can really write about on this book without severely giving away the plot twists. The few things I can say is that Jim Butcher wrote Harry with the same nerdy/wise-ass dialogue that he always has which is to say: Kind of formulaic. 

Please don't get me wrong, the book stands on its own in the series. One of the things I love about this series are the ancillary characters. Jim is one of the few authors that I've found that invests almost as much time developing the supporting cast as the main characters.

I truly look forward to book 15. Hopefully, Jim can get better soon (he is currently suffering from gastroenteritis) so that he can get back to entertaining me!

Meme Monday II

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen Dear Methadone clinic patrons,

As today is yet another Monday in the all-too-soon-ending cycle of our lives I bring to you another Meme Monday.


This weeks meme is another gem I discovered about a year ago and started relating.

I present to you: Scumbag Brain

EVERY GOT-DANGED NIGHT!!!

I'm fairly certain that my wife actually created this one. Apparently in her dreams I hook up with other people. The Dream-me is a Dick, but I suffer the wrath of a woman scorned all damned day...

like one? Have some more to share? Let me know! Leave a comment!

For The Win- Cory Doctorow

My post for today covers a book I've read three times so far.
FTW by Cory Doctorow

I've included the book jacket copy from Corys website:

In the virtual future, you must organize to survive
At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in multiplayer online games, questing and battling to win virtual “gold,” jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world’s poorest countries, where countless “gold farmers,” bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay.
Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of “General Robotwalla.” In Shenzen, heart of China’s industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.
The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power—including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister’s people must out-think the system. This will lead them to devise a plan to crash the economy of every virtual world at once—a Ponzi scheme combined with a brilliant hack that ends up being the biggest, funnest game of all.

This book covers a lot of ground and while it is listed as a Young Adult book, I would recommend it to ANYBODY interested in learning something new. One of my favorite parts of this book is the surprising economics lesson you receive. There’s a lot of money in play and the plot is entangled in the intricacies of markets and both virtual and real. It is necessary to the plot to know a little about how these things work.

His characters are believable and complex. They are fallible  interesting and sometimes distasteful, and FTW doesn't offer simple redemption or punishment, but satisfying and real conclusions for each of them. They are from all around the world, but then that’s the beauty of the internet, paths can cross without either person needing to leave their chair and Doctorow handles the multiple cultural and linguistic collisions well.

Another great part of the book, that pairs up (obviously) with the economics is the organisation of labor into unions. As a union member myself (shoutout to my brothers and sisters) I feel strongly about workers rights no matter where they may be, or what they may do.

Some of you (geekier people) may recognize the name Cory Doctorow. He is a co-editor for BoingBoing.
Aside from writing posts on one of my favorite websites, and writing fantastically engrossing books he is also a force to be reckoned with in the world of copywrite law. And as such has made every single one of his books free to download as an Epub.

If you are interested in reading FTW, please check it out here: http://craphound.com/ftw/download/

If you're not making art with the intention of having it copied, you're not really making art for the twenty first century-- Cory Doctorow