"Small Favor" by Jim Butcher

I really, really enjoyed this. In fact, it's got me going back to read
the previous books in the series.

It's a personal thing, but I liked the fact that this book answered a
question I'd been asking for years. I.e. "How dense does Harry have to
be not to recognize that the sword Fidelacchius and his friend Murphy
are made for each other?" Not the answer I expected, but still nice.

The Knights of the Sword are still taking applications, btw. I
suspected two other established characters as possible wielders but
neither one happened. rot13 - Zbyyl orpnhfr vg jnf fb boivbhfyl evtug
sbe ure, be Tragyrzna Wbuaal Znebar orpnhfr vg jnf fb boivbhfyl fperjl
naq gurersber gur fbeg bs guvat gung unccraf nebhaq Uneel.

A little less snark than usual, a little more genuine tragedy. Good
role for Thomas. Harry continues to be very bad for his friends' auto
insurance rates. Another Chicago tourist site sustains serious damage.

"I was going to put the dinosaur back, but I was unconscious."

Arguably the world's most expensive dough nut. With sprinkles.

A _really really_ good janitor.

Pretty much every speaking part in this one is a previously
established character, but fighting each other in new ways. That was a
little disappointing; I love new stuff, but given the amount of
established back story at this point it makes sense that Harry is
getting to know all the major players. As long as the books aren't
_all_ like this from now on.

A minor sloppiness: an established character suddenly acquired a first
name never previously in evidence, at the very moment that Harry
noticed she was (a) an attractive woman and (b) giving him the come-
hither. And there continued to be a disjunct between how Harry treated
her as <jobtitle> <lastname> and the way he treated her as
<firstname.>

Good news, Harry gets laid. Bad news, I don't think he's going to keep
his True Love(tm) defense against White Court vampires. The
relation****p may change but at the moment it's barely friends-with-
benefits.

Additional good news: Amazon shows both a novella from Thomas'
viewpoint and something called "The Dresden Files: Welcome to the
Jungle" as coming out in October. My guess is that the latter might be
an anthology of the shorter Dresden pieces that have been in various
theme anthologies, but that's only a guess.

I'm probably going to have to re-read this book fairly soon.