Editorial Content for Twelve Months: A Novel of the Dresden Files

Harry Dresden has post-traumatic stress disorder. You type that sentence, and the next sentences kind of type themselves. “Well, of course he does.” “He was overdue for it, really.” “After what he went through in the last book, it’s only natural.”

In BATTLE GROUND, Harry foils the invasion of Chicago by a Titan wielding a doomsday weapon, reinforced by a legion of half-octopus, half-gorilla creatures, among other allies. This would be enough to drive a lesser man to despair, but Harry also has to deal with the death of his friend and on-again off-again love interest, Karrin Murphy. TWELVE MONTHS is, you guessed it, the story of the year following the epic battle and how Harry learns to cope with the aftermath.

"Jim Butcher has invested enough soul-force into [Harry Dresden] to the point where the reader not only cares about him but actively worries about him. The book takes its time in letting us know that Harry is going to be okay and hopefully will be fortified for the battles yet to come."

The official name of Jim Butcher’s series is The Dresden Files, which gives you an idea of what the books were at the start --- sort of a magical police procedural (although with less police content than Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series). The early volumes put Harry in conflict with a variety of bad guys, who he was expected to make vanish. The stories have since diverged from that pattern, placing Harry in a richer, fuller environment with attendant shades of gray morality.

TWELVE MONTHS differs primarily because it takes place over time, with more in the way of diplomacy and less in the way of fireballs. And a lot of time is spent checking in with the various subplots in the previous books that didn’t get addressed in BATTLE GROUND. (Those new to the Dresden experience will need to do a lot of reading to catch up --- and given that the last novel came out over five years ago, even established fans may need a refresher course.)

Interspersed in the various responsibilities and problems that Harry has to deal with (including but not limited to training a new apprentice, maintaining his own private island that doubles as a prison complex, and handling intricate issues involving social breakdown in a ruined metropolis), he has been betrothed to the fetching Lara Raith, a sex vampire and the behind-the-scenes ruler of the White Court (and, as we find out, the minority owner of the Chicago White Sox, which explains a lot).

The idea of introducing a romantic subplot in a fantasy novel is to create sexual tension, which doesn’t exactly happen here, as Harry has good practical reasons not to have intercourse with a White Court vampire and have his life energy sucked out of him. But the two proceed on a carefully planned series of date nights, which turn into magical science experiments of a sort. (“Come with me and stand in the center of my magical circle” isn’t much of a pickup line, even in Dresden’s Chicago.)

One way to look at TWELVE MONTHS is as part of a process in the last three books. In PEACE TALKS (which was written after a six-year hiatus), Butcher was busy setting up the pieces on his chessboard. In BATTLE GROUND, he hurled those pieces in every direction, shattering some and scattering others. In TWELVE MONTHS, Harry is less of a chess piece and more of a piece of wreckage left behind in the wake of a cataclysm.

What this means, practically, for the reader is a lot more introspection and much less action. Harry usually spends at least some part of most books questioning himself, going back over his decisions, and seeking affirmation that he is still a good person and hasn’t gone over to whatever dark side with which he has to temporarily ally himself. There is a good deal more of that sort of moralizing here, but the reader can’t honestly say that Harry hasn’t earned his introspection.

TWELVE MONTHS is opaque to newcomers, branches out into perhaps one too many extraneous plot lines, and doesn’t have either a coherent organizing principle or a villain who is up to Harry’s fighting weight. Still, it works, because Jim Butcher has invested enough soul-force into our protagonist to the point where the reader not only cares about him but actively worries about him. The book takes its time in letting us know that Harry is going to be okay and hopefully will be fortified for the battles yet to come.