Ah-hah. Ah-ha-ha-ha. WHOO! Spent a quiet few hours in the cemetery, then came home, ate dinner, and finished the rest of Skin Game. And my initial reaction can be summed up as: holy crap.

The last few books have been kind of a slog - lots of transformational setup - but not many moments of awesome and fewer of cheer. And given the jacket blurbs on this one? Was kind of expecting more of the same from entry 15 in the series. Especially given how the last Denarian episodes went. And all the problematic stuff in Cold Days that made the Knight mantle even more alarming. But while there were teary and apprehensive moments in this one ... there was a lot more cackling and gasping and shrieking with glee.

And goddamn, pardon my language, but: you can really, really tell sometimes that the skeleton of this whole intricate series has been largely planned out from the beginning, because with every book it seems like more and more threads from earlier novels that seemed innocuous when first encountered suddenly pay off with a vengeance. And not just the mentioning of earlier especially relevant events, such as Death Masks and Small Favor for this one; but stuff that had me going, "oh, I had my suspicions about that four books ago, but damn!" and "hah, called it!" and "what the heck, he's been planning that for how long? Well, that puts a different spin on that scene in Dead Beat!" and so on.

There are, of course, plenty of new threads added to chew on. But the sum's a lot more energizing than otherwise, for once. And Harry's finally digging himself out of the trench of depression that, in retrospect, is probably why the last books did seem like such a slog; unreliable narrative POV at work. I see what you did there, Butcher!

Oh, and one more thing, to cap off this largely spoiler-free review (I'll have to reread and get more in detail later; it's just too much to break it down now): sometimes I suspect Butcher goes trolling trope sites for completely ridiculous-sounding ones to reclaim in kickass fashion. Because, again, damn. (Said with all the admiration in the world).

(My dad would have loved it.)