Caution: Massive spoilers

I’ve been following Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files since Summer Knight, which I read on my Nintendo DS. I now own the entire series in physical form, most of the collection in audiobook, and a handful of favorites in ebook. I’m a fan is what I’m saying.

Skin Game has a tremendously simple structure which is the linear narrative with a satisfying amount of action A plot and emotional B plot. We longtime fans get a couple of shout-outs to previous events and reveal around the overarching series mystery. That ending, though.

Those of you who live in a linear timeline like myself, can understand the world as a bit of a sin curve or sometimes a rollercoaster without a loop-de-loop. In fiction, we aren’t bound by the gravity of our daily lives. That means the writer gets to stick in a loop-de-loop and, done right, really stick the landing. You’ll get an ending with wow factor. Or you’ll get an ending with WTF factor.

In our linear experience of time, you might see a betrayal or character reveal as coming out of nowhere. Ever have some loved one swear they’ll go to the store for that one item and it’ll be a quick – I swear, super quick – ten minute trip? And two hours later they walk back in empty-handed. This is the linear rollercoaster.

In reality, if we’re paying attention, our loved one says something two days prior about a friend coming back to town. Maybe they’ll get together. We know our loved one is super helpful, right? So our loved one goes to the store, sees their friend, and helps him with all his shopping and they catch up as they wander aisle-by-aisle and then they’re walking out and your loved one gets in the car and drives home so happy that he saw his old bud. What makes the line turn into a loop is foreshadowing prior to the incident, time and events happening before what was foreshadowed is revealed, and then a quick return to our present timeline.

In writing terms, turning your linear timeline into a loop-de-loop requires foreshadowing and the all-time favorite, a well-executed callback.

Skin Game pulls off one of these with two references to time and while the reader might be a little suspicious, enough word count passes that the reveal jumps up at what we expected to be nearly the end of a climactic sequence. See that? We were innocently hurtling back to the ground, the author reveals that crucial piece of information that was previously alluded to, and we launch back into the air. Without that foreshadowing in the beginning, we get the WTF ending.

For the wow ending in Skin Game, the main character references a time jump within the first few chapters. A little while later, a well-loved side character also mentions the time jump which the main character brushes off. At the end, we get to see the events within the missing time which greatly impact a careening ending.