Though the pace suffers from the other improvements, this feels like the first competent book. It’s less hyper sexualized, despite a ton of fae around, Murphy feels more believable, and the world building feels more fair too, and less like Harry is influencing everyone in the story and is a red headed step child unfairly beat around by everyone but everyone somehow still wants to sleep with him.

Rather than frenetic fight after fight, a good chunk of this is how the council works and the politics at play, and generally shoring up the soft worldbuilding, which this has mostly done throughout. It feels like Harry Potter in that regard: the author has some ideas and they just are inserted, despite some internal logic and consistency that would make it suspect. Especially around the magic Harry knows. There’s plenty of Deus ex machina, where he just has the magic to deal with certain things and sometimes it’s expounded on and sometimes he just does it. It’s nice that the workings of the fae and council feel more rooted in fantasy elements you will have probably heard of, from one source or another. Gifts between fae and humans, Changlings, lots of standard stuff. And the factions function like codified things. Feels like Butcher is being reigned in, and/or is learning some craft. Though, still pulpy fun, and fairly trashy; the ACOTAR primarily catering to guys analogy I made in the previous book still good.