Hey! Jim Butcher's new Harry Dresden novel came out this week. Su - weet. 
 In case you were wondering, this one was really good. I'm glad, because while I enjoyed the past few books, everything since Changes has left me a bit less than blinded by greatness. I don't remember a thing from the previous novel aside from having a pretty good time reading it. So I guess the previous couple of novels have been fun but forgettable. 
 Which makes me sad, because I've said before that this is my favorite series. I want it to be great. 
 And this one, well, I feel like this was a return to form. It was pretty great. 
 Skin Game is a heist novel. Harry is in way over his head, again, and the stakes are getting higher, I'm starting to get a bit of a view of the larger game that's being played here, much the same way that the first twelve novels were really telling a much larger story, it looks like three books into the events of Changes, I can sort of see things being set up for a much larger story here as well. 
 So, I'm excited. I might go back and reread a few of the older books again to kind of refresh myself on what's going on though, there were just too many references made to events and people that I just don't remember. These things do tend to get pretty self-referential after awhile. It doesn't diminish my enjoyment very much, but it does make me rack my brains to try to remember stuff. 
 But Harry has been out of sight for the past few years (each book takes place, more or less, in time with the publication schedule, so events from the early books are going back 10 or more years for Harry and the gang too - they're getting older, changing, becoming more mature, etc.) and during the past few books he hasn't been around to protect his city and some bad dudes have been moving in and setting up shop. And of course lots of the choices Harry made during those first 12 books or so are still coming back to haunt him in major ways. 
 So there plenty of shit for the fan to scatter when the two meet. 
 This is really good stuff, although I'd not recommend skipping books and just starting with this, I suppose you could if you really wanted to, but I wouldn't understand why anyone would do that. This builds on all that old stuff and makes it much more potent. There are high stakes, drama, betrayal, all the good stuff you'd expect. 
 Can't wait for the next one.