M.J. Whitehead

I’m in love with Changes at the moment. For those of you who, like me a few months ago, have not picked up the Dresden Files, you’re missing out. It’s contempory fantasy at its best, borrowing a little from other genres, going interesting places and inventing new rules to do it. It’s not particularly hard fantasy, although there is a little bit of rules-based magic going on, there’s no underlying explanation of the structure of magic or anything, it just happens.

Changes is a great example of how to keep a long series fresh. Jim changed things up with the typical life changes, family revelations, backstory reveals, and all those other tricks we use to keep people interested in a series.

Changes went a step further. It’s completely rebooted the series’ dynamic. As we find out on the first page, Harry is looking for a daughter he only just learned he has, and he goes through some tremendous losses in his attempt to make her safe. This is the kind of book we need more in fantasy- the plot-changing twists and turns follow their own theme. (the title telegraphs that there’s a theme behind the changes, but doesn’t give you a clue at all)

I’m not going to say we should all beat our characters up in exactly the way that Harry gets it in this book, but we should definitely consider having Huge Game Changers™ like this in the middle of a fantasy series. If the Dresden Files were a trilogy, this would be the second book that not only improved on the first one, but really kicked its ass.

If I can do half this well I’ll be gushing with pride.