Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Unlike most of the negative reviewers I'm not docking stars due to cost or length. I thought the description made it clear what Backup would be, so I did not feel deceived. This is however, the first of Butcher's books to get less than 4.5 stars from me, and surprisingly it is entirely due to characterization, writing and plotting. Characterization - Thomas is awesome. His character arc has been great, and the scene with him, Harry, the race, and the water bottle from "Dead Beat" is probably my favorite of the series. So what do we learn about him now that we are in his head? Nothing new. Nothing about his relationship with his sister, his girlfriends, his clients or even his brother. Honestly, he seems less interesting and intelligent to me now than he did before. Writing - Thomas's voice...is Harry's voice. Sure, different in some details, but the tone, the rhythms, the wise cracks, they were all Dresden-esque. Far more than genetics would be able to explain. I felt like it was lazy. You could have swapped Harry and Thomas's role in the story, and a significant amount of the internal dialog would not have had to be rewritten. Plotting - So we get the first Dresden Files story from a non-Harry point of view. That's exciting, I can't wait to see what we learn that we haven't been able to see before. Who is in the story? Thomas, Lara, Justine, Mouse, Bob, Harry, Villian du jour. Not a particularly new cast of characters, eh? Where does the bulk of the exposition take place? Harry's basement, talking to Bob. Where do we go in the Dresden universe, Thomas's apartment and Harry's apartment. What do we learn about Harry from this new POV - he's noble, too trusting, and a really really powerful mage. There is a new major supernatural conspiracy, but it is unrelated to Harry, extremely non-time specific, not particularly threatening compared to most of Harry's cases, and is unlikely to show up again. So all in all I was hugely disappointed. I expected to walk away from this novella with a different perspective on Thomas, Harry, their relationship, their priorities, the White Court, what it is like to be a Vampire-in-exile, something. But no, there wasn't anything new. That scene from Dead Beat I reference above did a much better job making me empathize with Thomas than every description (or illustration) of "His Demon" in Backup. Was it awful, of course not. I enjoyed it in parts, and the humor was well done, but there wasn't anything there I'm going to take away with me.