Changes by Jim Butcher

Changes by Jim Butcher


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I have realized that reading this series is a live fire demonstration of that definition of insanity about doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

By which I mean that this book is hilariously inept but enragingly compelling, with a gratuitous magical brawl every fifteen pages and towering manpain and the stakes on the battle against ultimate evil, take 12, this time with ultimater!evil cranked up yet higher. So business as usual.

Seriously, I could not put this book down, and I spent over half the time wanting to punch it squarely in the face. If anyone ever needs an example to show the ignorant of what we mean when we talk about glaringly sexist books that the author doesn’t know are sexist, here it is. This book is all about terrible things happening to women and young girls for the purpose of making our hero feel manly rage. And he gets to – I am not kidding about this – stab a woman to death for plot-related purposes that essentially boil down to “so he can feel bad about it.” And there are a few agonizing moments where Butcher is clearly trying to cope with the multiple “dude, stop being a sexist fuckwit!” memos he must have gotten over the past decade, because he has his hero thinking things like, “I like strong women, I don’t understand what’s wrong with that! I said I like women, God!”

. . .

Dear Jim Butcher: Dude, stop being a patronizing sexist fuckwit. And also try to think of women as actual people rather than just objects of violence for the purposes of male angst. Actually, try thinking of women as people, full stop.

This is what I mean when I say it’s enragingly compelling, because omg, next book please?

View all my reviews >>