Anyone who may have read my reviews knows I am consistently impressed with many of Butcher's full-length stories from The Dresden Files. A combination of urban fantasy blended with suspenseful mystery-detective themes with generous dashes of comedy make the series an entertaining read. Cold Days is no different, expanding on the wonderful world of the Chicago supernatural and its self-tortured wizard, Harry Dresden. 
 Admittedly, I found several elements of Cold Days predictable. What I never saw coming was how these predictable elements might unfold. Fortunately, this added greatly to the plot, making the evolving conflict worth its read to the bitter end (Get it? Bitter cold? ...Oh, great, Harry's terrible sense of humor is rubbing off on me.) 
 In several previous books from this series, I found aspects of the plot and events slightly conflict-hyper-inflated. Trying to avoid spoilers from previous books, one might say some personal/group conflicts, other minor conflict, hard feelings and "side quests" (such as in the previous book in this series Ghost Story) feel added to the main stories. However, in Cold Days, aside for Harry's slight suspicion of some people (or was Butcher trying to show Harry's paranoia without expressly stating it?), the primary and sub-conflicts were balanced. 
 Considering my favorite Dresden File books such as this one, the skeptic in me cannot believe Butcher will *wow* me again with a future book. Yet somehow, he still does. Maybe this is why I am anticipating reading Skin Game, the next book in the series.