Goodbye, Harry Dresden

I've been reading Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden novels since about 2004 (based on the fact that the first four books were out in paperback when I started, and the first book was published in the year 2000). As you can see in the sidebar, the series is listed as one of my guilty pleasures.

Well, I should probably remove it from that list, because I think I'm going to stop reading them now, finally. His two most recent novels of 16 total were just published very close together: Peace Talks and Battle Ground. I don't know if Butcher is getting tired of the series generally (who could blame him after all this time) or if our current world is weighing him down (again, who could blame him), but I think the story has both run out of steam and gotten too ugly to keep me as a reader. 

These two books have been a slog to finish, plus the second one gave me nightmares, which I have enough problems with these days anyway. As the title indicates, that book was literally 344 pages describing a single battle. Which is hard to make interesting and more and more it just sounds like blah-blah-blah. Plus, I find I don't care about the characters enough to continue with them (the ones who survived it all, anyway).

So goodbye, Harry Dresden. No more money from me, Jim Butcher.