Continuity drift - Lara and soul gazes

[g33k]

... Then there's the fatal flaw of doing a "untold story from earlier" book, which Jim has avoided doing ... so far. 

Jim does this with many of his shorts.

[g33k]

This is about the only thing I dislike about the Dresden files books.  After the first 6 books explained the "Blue Beetle" to us over and over and over I was like "Yeah Jim, I already freakin know this....."   If someone starts reading a book series at the end they deserve to be lost and not clued into the small details..

I think the conventional wisdom is that writers of long series should do this; it's not unique to the DF, there's lots of longer series that recap old info for new readers.

[Snark Knight]

I have a feeling a few key beta readers have left in the last few years the ones who really pick up on tiny things.

I think that might be the case.  I noticed a scene in the lab in 12M described the summoning circle as fire-ruined copper.  There were a couple of upgrades to the circle in previous books ... IIRC by Changes it was some complex mix of metals that he'd had to subcontract the svartalves to make.

Reverting that doesn't seem like a clue, it just seems like he's shorthanded on betas with a memory for details.  Or else they themselves are also in the same trap of seeing so many drafts that they forget the published one.