Dresden Files: Winter is coming (Cold Days Spoilers)

[Mauve Shirt]

It was a combination of a few things. One I think was what Kagan mentions, the book is about Harry's change in perspective and not on Harry solving mysteries and kicking ass. Recognizing that that won't work for a whole book, Butcher threw in a pair of weak villains and weak ass-kick plot. It focuses on the ghost world is like, which is not as interesting or as fleshed out as the Nevernever. And it's a flashback episode. We learn about Harry's first magical fight and it provides us with some information about Justin, with the useful addition of "this stuff is absolutely true because ghosts." So that's good for our speculation.

Along with that, Harry's personality pretty much is magnified by him being his soul AKA his personality, what makes him him. So the book contains a lot of "Poor me!" and nigh constant pop-culture references. That was probably an accident brought about by Butcher being kind of bored with Dresden. He needs to write another series while he works on DF, I think. Somehow he was on time with the books when he got a mid-year break.

Also there was no Thomas.