not a fan of Ghost Story?
No, it's easily my least favorite of the novels. I thought that it could have used another judicious editing before publication. Jim's usually really good at including a lot of pop culture references without making them seem like obvious fan service, but he was less successful on that front with Ghost Story. Granted, this is all my opinion, and I love the series like I will love my first-born child (assuming he/she isn't somehow prenatally mortgaged in a deal with a Faerie Court in the next few years), but I felt like Ghost Story was a huge sidetrack from the over-plot of the series. I know that I'm not aware of where the series will go from here, so it could (and likely will) tie into the plot in future installments, but it seemed to deviate so drastically from where the series had been heading til that point. It's the only one that I haven't been able to reread more than once.
The Fitz plot was kind of hokey, and never referenced after it concluded. The sequence with Star Trek Molly was kind of out of the ordinary for Jim's writing (not tastefully done, but more gimmicky). And the Nazi beachhead where the Neutral Evil Bob and the... "Bob"-Bob fought seemed more like something from a Zack Snyder movie than a Dresden Files novel (and that is not praise from me). The whole city of Chicago had a very different feel to it, and the physics of the world didn't seem to work the same way that we were used to (magic works differently for Harry as a ghost, etc.). And finally, the over-villian (the Fomor) aren't explained and therefore don't carry a lot of threat to them. They're just a nebulous sort of boogity that sends lackeys to deliver threatening messages. And that's made worse by the fact that they're barely (if at all) mentioned in Cold Days. In point of fact, almost none of the events of Ghost Story are reprised in Cold Days, which leads me to believe that Jim came to similar conclusions to mine: that it wasn't his strongest effort, and he needed to come back to what worked well with his writing in the past.
I think that the publication team (Jim, editors, etc.) missed out on the real tragedy of the story, which was Molly's trouble dealing with a post-Harry world. The part of the story that I cared the most about was watching her spiral down into depression and self-destruction. If Jim was okay with changing things for this book (as in, you know, Harry being dead[ish]), then I would have preferred to see a story that focused more on the characters who had the most emotional weight to them (Molly and Murphy, specifically - though I know Murphy did already get a longer story in "Aftermath"). He wouldn't have had to change POV for it either, as Harry is a ghost, and can pretty much wander around after either of them and narrate their lives for a change.
Also: my first reading of it was on audiobook, and James Marsters didn't read that one. The temp guy drove me nuts (he said "potatuhs" instead of "potatoes"). It lent to the overall feeling of that book not fitting in sequence.
/endrant
The one thing I disagree with is...I thought the mind-battle in Molly's head was awesome. I felt it was consitent-ish with the character. How else would she portray all of that do you think?
Sure, I agree it's consistent with her character. I took issue with it being consistent with the mood of the story at the moment. At that point, Harry is powerless to help Molly, Molly is barely able to hold her consciousness together, and Capiocorpus is about to take control of the body of a very powerful practitioner of magic. That's fairly serious stuff. It's important to the narrator due to his inability to help his apprentice, it's important to Molly because of all the stuff she's dealing with (with regard to Harry's death, what has happened since then, and what's currently going on in her own mind), and it's important to the world at large, because the Corpse-Taker is about to steal a new body, one with a helluva lot of punch compared to her previous one.
And then we get a scene from 1980's Sci-Fi? To me (and this is only my experience, etc. etc.) that was the literary equivalent of a single obnoxious tuba note sounding in the middle of a concert. Especially because I wanted to be just emotionally distraught after Molly's denouement of "Not only did I invade your mind, I did so with your encouragement, and it's driving me insane," but I, as the reader, had my emotional priming blown by being on the bridge of the Enterprise, and the catharsis that should have come after the moment of truth with Molly kind of passed me by.
So, them's my thoughts on that. If you had a different reading, that makes me happy because the more enjoyment folks get from these books, the better place the world is.