More Dresden Files on the way

I learned by way of a recent Publisher's Lunch e-bulletin that Roc Books in the US has bought books #12 and #13 in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series.

I dropped Darren Nash of Orbit Books (Butcher's UK publisher) a line, and he confirmed that Orbit have already signed up books #9 through #11 and that #12 and #13 probably wouldn't be too far behind...

Speaking as a big Dresden fan - books and TV series both - I think that's great news. And I also think that there ought to be enough in the way of open story arcs and plot development in the first eight books to sustain the development of the series into the next five and hopefully beyond. As long as neither Butcher nor his editor start thinking that anything goes because he's got a TV deal - as long as the writing stays sharp and the action scenes stay fast and furious - then the risk of the law of diminishing returns setting in and ruining things should be minimal.

Which is more than can be said of some long-running series. I thoroughly enjoyed the first six or seven books in Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series. I thought they were well-written, sexy, action-packed, intelligent and above-all interesting takes on the modern-day vampire hunter mythos (and the earliest installment was published in 1994, - two years after the Buffy movie, but three years before the TV show hit TV screens, in case you were rolling your eyes already).

But then Hamilton's books started degenerating into little more than supernatural soft porn, with what seemed like minimal plot and not much in the way of character development to speak of either, and I just gave up reading them.

Hell, I'm no prude, but I generally want to get more from the fiction I read than just titillation and the occasional wise-crack. So when it got to the point where the sex-scenes were dominating the books rather than adding colour to them - becoming the point of the books, or so it seemed - then that was it for me. 'Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter' I was interested in. 'Anita Blake, Vampire Shagger'... not so much.

Incidentally, I read the first two of Hamilton's Merry Gentry books and they're even worse (or even better, depending on your point of view and preferences, of course...) so I've given the latest four of those a miss as well...

I admit, they might have improved drastically in the past couple of volumes... but then I wouldn't know. If you've read them and they have got a whole lot better recently, let me know, would you?

Edit 10.05.07 Dave Hebblethwaite sends me a link to John Grant's review of the second Merry Gentry book on Infinity Plus. Nice to know I'm not alone...