Heads up: I don’t tag spoilers. I often write these reviews with foreknowledge of the series, and will reference future events without warning. If you don’t want to be spoiled, turn back now.

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Of the myriad words I would use to describe the Dresden Files series, one word I would not use is scary.

Alright, now that I got that out of the way: this book is scary. Granted, I’m not a horror kind of guy when it comes to my regular media diet, so most media only needs to register a two or three on the Spookymeter for it to get to me. But something about this book gets to me. I even had a bit of trepidation about re-reading it when I was thinking about doing a re-read of the series.

Having now read it a second time, it’s not so bad. But there are elements that are uncomfortable and drive that primal part of your brain that doesn’t like the dark and giant scarecrows. Of course, that tone fits thematically well with the concept of our main antagonists: the fetches.

As with the last book and the Kemmlerites, these villains feel sort of “monster of the week”ish to me (almost literally in this case). I’m not sure we ever get a full explanation as to why the fetches are coming out of Faerie and preying on people; they’re mentioned offhand to be some of Mab’s elite guards, so perhaps this is all set up to push Molly towards becoming the Winter Lady? I doubt it, because that seems like an accident to everyone when it happens.

I guess at the end of the day it doesn’t matter - there are big spookies coming after a damsel in distress and Dresden is on the case. The good news is, for this book, the antagonists aren’t holding up our A plot like in Dead Beat. They’re more of a nuisance who show up every so often to shake things up. The real story here is that Molly is a warlock.

The scene that kicks off this book - the kid accused of first degree warlockery and being summarily executed like an animal - helps set the stakes of what we’re dealing with. If the reader is familiar with the series at all, we already know Harry has a chip on his shoulder over the treatment of warlocks, especially kids. But that introductory scene makes no bones about it: the White Council does not fuck around when it comes to Black Magic.

Which ratchets up the tension when we find out the warlock who has been invading peoples’ minds is Molly. I’ve tried to figure out where I land on the whole situation Molly created with her mind magic. The idea of a young, haughty kid with power forcing their friends to fear their drugs is a unique angle. And then there’s this extra piece tacked on about how Nelson (Molly’s boyfriend in case you forgot his name like I did) was the father of her friend’s baby, and that caused Molly’s mind magic to go in to overdrive which messed up the spell. All told, it makes enough sense, but looking forward in to the series, it doesn’t jive with the Molly we end up growing to know (it sort of jives with the character of the Rag Lady though. Hmmm…)

The part where it falls apart for me is at the end where she tries to seduce Harry. That scene is so uncomfortable, though I’m glad Jim (through Harry) shut it down real quick by dumping the cold water on her. Still, Butcher was the one who manufactured the scene in the first place. Again, it feels out of place with the Molly character we end up getting to know, which perhaps was not as fleshed out at the point this book was written as she is at time of writing.

All in all though, I’m so happy Molly joins Dresden’s Army as a permanent (and increasingly important) member. I’ve mentioned before that, to keep the series feeling grounded while also allowing Harry to grow in power (to continually ramp up the stakes), we need characters that are “out of their depth”, magically speaking. Molly ends up carrying that torch for a decent amount of time, and combined with her haughtiness, we get some great scenes in later books where she’s told to sit the fuck down, which helps sell the high stakes (I’m thinking specifically of a scene in White Night where Harry almost roasts her with the mini-sun).

Molly isn’t solely coloured by her own actions, though. One of the other aspects of this series I love is the recurring cast of moderately important side characters. I’d relate it to a series like “The Simpsons”, where the show doesn’t just star the titular family with a handful of close friends to fill in the narrative gaps. You have hundreds of characters in that cast, all with defined backstories and personalities. I’m aware that it gets taken too far (see Flanderization), but the Dresden Files strikes a balance that helps draw me in to a world that feels alive; not one that revolves around the heroic protagonist whom all other characters orbit like celestial bodies, hoping he does something interesting near them.

Which brings us around to the Carpenters - more specifically, Charity.

I’m so glad Jim has had Charity “come around” on Dresden; her first couple appearances in the series where she’s staunchly against him feels so one-note and somewhat unjustified. Well, until this book, that is.

Any time spent with the Carpenter family is time well spent in my books, and the scene with Harry and Charity in the chapel is one of the best. Once we learn about Charity’s history with magic, it starts to make more sense why she had an inherent dislike of Harry. Couple that with this image of him being this idyllic bad-boy hero that has (somewhat unintentionally) lured Molly in to the world of magic, and Charity springs to life as so much more than the “tired angry wife” trope. We get to see her as a fiercely loyal and devoted mother and wife - one that would do anything to ensure her family’s safety. Even foregoing her own magical gifts.

It turns out, though, that Charity doesn’t need her magic to kick ass.

I count the storming of Arctis Tor as the first instance of Dresden’s Army being fully operational. We have a couple “regulars” show up for the big fight, both vanilla (Murphy and Charity) and magical (Thomas, Lily, Fix, and even Maeve ends up allegedly helping by manipulating the flow of time in Faerie). These larger-scale confrontations are a step up from battling Victor Sells in his beach house, and give the whole series a more “epic” fantasy vibe.

Although the set-up for this final confrontation is awesome, the actual execution feels like a mixed bag. I love the scene in the horror movie theatre, where the gang fights off these jump-scare fetches and leads to one of my favourite interactions in the whole series - when they are looking for the third and final fetch and Dresden asks how they know there will be three:

“Because they’re fetches, Harry”

I love that interaction so much because it shows Butcher is fine hand-waving some of the more “technical” aspects of the magical lore away. I found Grave Peril got bogged down with the metaphysics of how The Nightmare worked, and I think Fool Moon had similar problems. This one little interaction is indicative of a writing style shift where Butcher doesn’t feel the need to explain everything, and I think it helps keep the pacing up in future instalments.

Okay so we kill the third fetch in the theatre (because there’s always three), and then we head off to the big showdown at the O.K Corral: heading in to Arctis Tor. We have to leave Lily and Fix to mind the door, brave freezing winds and an uphill climb to find our way to a fortress made of black ice that is….already empty.

Whomp whomp.

There’s one big bad guy left. Which is for the best, since the Army still barely makes it out of there in one piece. It did feel somewhat underwhelming to have this Citadel of Doom in the heart of Winter be almost empty by the time our heroes arrive. The implication it sets up (Harry smells brimstone, which means Denarians) around the Black Council and the Outsiders and all the other Big Story Stuff is interesting in its own right; I just wish the Army had more baddies to kick around than one giant scarecrow and a couple lackeys.

Scarecrow fight aside, we do get some rather mysterious plot hooks set up when we find Lea, who’s encased in ice and clearly bonkers, and is being “tortured back to health”? Leave it to Mab I guess. We also get to see what became of Lloyd Slate, the “current” Winter Knight. Yikes. I think this imagery of Slate, brought to the brink of death to then get restored to start the slow cycle of pain and misery over again, more than anything else in the series, shows us the depth of Mab’s cruelty. It also highlights how desperate Harry must have felt when he accepted the mantle himself.

All said, we kick the crap (straw?) out of the scarecrow, leave the toturees to their torment, and leg it out Faerie. To add even more sad trombone noises to the previous “whomp”s, there’s this second underwhelming story beat where the entirety of Winter is descending on the group as they try to escape. Which they do. With almost no interference from “the entirety of Winter”.

I think the climax of this book hits too close to my feelings on the climax of Dead Beat. The epic showdown with the big bad pales in comparison to the more personal story of conflict that preceded it: Cassius is to the horror theatre as the Kemmlerites are to the Scarecrow. Something about these more intimate fight scenes with arguably weaker enemies feels more visceral than the big showdowns.

Given all that, I do like this book. It sets up Molly, it has the turning point of Jim not over-explaining the magic, the plot has a nice simple bow put on it, and we get our first look at Dresden’s Army.

The one “loose end” I would consider cutting is the whole Madrigal bit. I imagine his introduction was to help set up White Night, where we go full White Court internal squabbling. It’s funny in later series when Harry can reference that he was once almost sold on eBay, but otherwise, this subplot doesn’t add much to the story, and could have been left out. Madrigal also does that annoying “call your family by your relationship to them” thing, which drives me nuts.

I have never called my sister “Sis”, or any of my cousins “Cuz”. I call them by their people names. Because they’re people, not props. I think what irks me most about this tired trope getting used in the Dresden Files is that it’s lazy writing, and this is something Butcher most certainly is not.

I’ll use the myriad nick names Harry comes up with for Molly as a counter-example: Molls, grasshopper, and padawan. This works so much better because it conveys the same level of closeness as a character calling out specifically that they are family, but with added context. Simple permutations of their given name (Molls, Hobbit, Tommy and Karrie all spring to mind from various points in the series) imply that the characters have spent enough time together that their names have hit semantic satiation for one another. Grasshopper implies the master/apprentice relationship, as does padawan, but padawan adds another layer to the relationship implied between the two characters: they both know and like Star Wars.

These are all miles better than “Cuz”.

Yes this is nitpicky, but I also think it’s necessary from Butcher to force this information upon us, assuming he is planning for White Night. I assume this because it’s the only reason I can think of to have this subplot around. I couple this “information forcing” with the appearance of the jann, who, while similar to other scions in the series (Kincaid and the changelings), goes nowhere and then dies. Djinnis are also left behind after this one reference. Which leaves me thinking that Butcher felt he had to have some kind of call forward in this book to set himself up for the next one. It’s too bad that this information couldn’t fit more neatly in to the existing plot.

I would love to someday get a look at Butcher’s notes for the series over time. I have my suspicions about which plots and characters get tacked on post-hoc to push the overarching narrative forward, and which elements were intended to set up more, but end up disappearing from the series (looking at you, Tera West). Aside from the Madrigal plot, which to me seems like a clear post-hoc addition, the other element that seems post-hoc is the Black Council/Outsider war that comes up right at the end.

As Ebenezar and Harry are “comparing notes”, they jump to a lot of conclusions that feel under-developed to me. They end up agreeing on the fact that there is some sort of Black Council that is wreaking mayhem in the magical world, who are responsible for not only the mishaps in Harry’s life, but broader events the world over: the implied Denarian attack on Arctis Tor and the raid on the Wardens’ training camp. They also intuit that one of the members must be highly placed in the White Council to have access to the kind of information they seem to have. There’s also a reference to Outsiders showing up at the raid on the Wardens, implying the Black Council is playing for pretty high stakes.

My belief that it’s a post-hoc addition added near the end of the creation of the book is because it comes across as a lazy exposition dump. A couple significant narrative bombs get dropped in that one scene, which ends up overwhelming the reader. I much prefer the “slow-burn” style that Butcher is great at, where he reveals the big picture slowly, through the actions of characters. Skin Game is a great example (that I’ll talk about in due course) that gradually reveals the layers of plot going on in that book, without having to have characters come out and say it. A couple characters do come out and say it all at the end, but even then they add subtle nuance that the reader may not have picked up on (I know I didn’t).

A great book feels like a beautifully woven tapestry, with plot, setting, and characters as the thread. So many of the Dresden Files books are not only tapestries in and of themselves, but they weave together existing threads from other books in the series (or even threads from the zeitgeist) to create a work of art of such a sheer scale that it is by itself impressive if only for its size. These post-hoc feeling additions are like patches added to that tapestry, and they bother me more by what they take away than what they add: they destroy the feel of a “grand design”, reminding me that Butcher is indeed mortal, as are we all, and even he can make mistakes.

Heads up: I don’t tag spoilers. I often write these reviews with foreknowledge of the series, and will reference future events without warning. If you don’t want to be spoiled, turn back now.

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This book breaks my heart. On the one hand, this feels like the beginning of a distinct arc that takes us up to the end of Changes, and Changes is my favourite entry in the series. On the other hand, the antagonists in this book do nothing for me.

These reviews have been helpful for me to remember more information about each book, and given me the opportunity to reflect on the themes, ideas, and characters that resonate with me. In doing so, I’ve realized that the Kemmlerites do actually matter and show up more in the series, which was my annoyance with this book in my initial read through. Although I don’t blame Butcher at all for not carrying every character/villain forward in the series, I always count it as a plus when we get to see characters re-appear in later instalments.

Although, I do deduct points that the re-appearance of the Kemmlerites in later books made almost no impression on my memory. The most egregious example of this is Grevane, who for my money is the most interesting Kemmlerite, but gets abandoned after this book. Ho hum.

It’s possible that my affinity for Grevane is solely the aura from my actual favourite antagonist splashing up against him: Liver Spots.

AKA Quintus Cassius. I will be forever sad that the climax of this book was supposed to be a fight with the Kemmlerites and their armies of the undead, but the much more tense scene is when Cassius is torturing Harry in the museum. I love this character because he feels so real and is pathologically, murderously obsessed with revenge against Dresden for losing him his coin.

Which, given the character, is a great reason to want to kill Harry. Cassius being left broken and bleeding at the end of Death Masks gives him a solid motive for wanting to come after Dresden - and to make it hurt. It also shows us that there are repercussions in this universe to Harry’s anger, which is a terrific character flaw that helps him feel grounded and real.

Cassius also being a former Denarian, and having his power forcibly removed from him after lifetimes of wielding a coin lets us know he is capable of terrible violence. With all these elements set up, the scene where Cassius has Dresden “right where he wants him” and then starts cutting in to him is so refreshing as opposed to tropey monologuing. It feels grounded and real, and lends credibility to a universe where a wizard rides a zombie dinosaur through Chicago on Halloween. It’s too bad that most of this is happening in the background of a conflict with a couple of cardboard cut-out necromancers.

I wonder if the book would be better if Jim picked one Kemmlerite pairing to focus on, and we got to spend more time fighting with them and exploring their powers instead of getting like one fight scene with each pair. Cowl & Kumori are interesting as straight-up powerful dark wizards, with us seeing Dresden drop a car on Cowl and it barely phasing him, and Kumori having some grey morality where she saves some random passer-by from death. Corpsetaker’s body-swapping is inherently interesting and could have gone some interesting directions, and I’ve already expressed my love for Grevane & Cassius. Not to mention Grevane seemed to be the most competent, and had his cool zombie army that breaks in to Dresden’s apartment.

But no, instead we get spare samplings of each pairing. Even Corpsetaker’s big moment where she swaps with Luccio and Dresden has to have that lightning realization and shoot Luccio’s body happens too fast. It falls flat that we get to see Corpsetaker’s version of The People’s Elbow and seconds later see her get popped in the head. I would have liked to have one or two smaller instances of Corpsetaker using their power earlier in the book to build up the hype, like for instance a client that comes to Dresden saying “help someone is in my body, I’m not whoever this person is!” and have that be the inciting incident that drags Dresden in to conflict with the Kemmlerites.

Which is another criticism I have of the antagonists in this book. My personal main villain, Cassius, actually holds third in the villain hierarchy plot-wise. First is the Kemmlerites, but second is Mavra of all people (people in heavy air-quotes).

She also feels totally unnecessary to make this plot work. She pushes Dresden across the threshold for this quest, but he would have gotten swept up in it with his connection to Butters anyway. Grevane attacked Butters when Harry happened to be there, and knowing Harry, he would have gotten swept up in the Darkhallow plot, with or without Mavra’s intervention.

Which, hold on, let’s talk about Butters for a minute.

I appreciate Butters getting added to Dresden’s Army because it unlocks Harry to keep growing in power while leaving a purely vanilla, non ass-kicking member around for the reader to identify with. While I love adventuring with Murphy/Michael/Thomas/Billy Borden, they are all fighters. Butters throwing up from fear while the zombies attack and having “Polka will never die!” shouted at him is so endearing, and is probably how most of us would respond to the spectacular and terrifying world Dresden occupies.

Butters is also another one of these characters who are “half-and-half”. I’m classifying him along with the Changelings (half-fae) and Kincaid (half-whatever-he-is) as someone who is “half-science”. The other half-and-half folks are part magic part muggle, but Butters is coming at it from the other side in my mind; he’s half muggle and half whatever the opposite of magic is (in this case I’m calling it science as a catch-all). He seems to be even further in to the “magic can’t be real” camp than a couple of the other vanilla folks we’ve met, so much so that he comes up with scientific theories to explain why Harry can heal himself so well, or why wizards mess with electronics.

Which is fun to watch as Butters begins to accept the spooky side of the block over the course of the series. He gets more and more wrapped up in Harry’s life due to his functional nature as the one healer that Harry can rely on (and gives us some great Bonesian moments of “Dammit Dresden I’m a medical examiner not a doctor!”) At this point in the series, most of us have bought in to the world so hard that we lose that aspect of wonder. Butters is a great way for us to recontextualize what is happening to Harry daily is, in fact, not normal.

Speaking of weird circumstances that Harry often finds himself in: enter Lash.

I’m probably biased due to my unashamed love for all things Denarian, but Lash’s concept is so interesting to me. I appreciate the fact that she’s framed more as a “shadow” or “the footprint you leave in wet sand on a beach” as opposed to being the full-blown aspect of the Fallen Angel Lasciel. I mean, Harry’s strong and all, but it would be ridiculous for him to contend with a being that is older than time itself. Making Lash a scaled down version of the full blown Fallen gives the story credibility when Harry contends with her will (and wins).

Her introduction is also a lot of fun, playing around with the unreliable narrator. There’s this lesser known movie called “Thr3e” that I enjoy (though I am not known for having good taste in movies, so take that as you will), and, without giving too much away, Lash only being “real” to Harry hits similar notes. I would have loved to have some sort of visual reference for what Butters must have seen when he walked in on Dresden and “Sheila” in “her apartment”, which I imagine pushed Butters further in to the belief that magic isn’t real, and that Harry is mental.

Lash also gives Harry an interesting take on the nature of the Fallen and how they might not be as different from him as he wants to believe. She gives an allegory about how the Fallen didn’t want to live under what they believed to be an old, foolish, oppressive regime, and that they instead wanted to strike out on their own, in an attempt to be better than what they left behind. She then relates that to Harry’s own tumultuous relationship with the White Council, saying he of all people should be able to understand why the Fallen did what they did.

I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy when Butcher has Harry get self-reflective about his values, for instance his relationship to magic in contrast to Michael’s relationship to the divine. Having the Fallen throw this angle at Harry is another piece of evidence that the world is a lot greyer than a younger Harry may have believed.

I think a lot of great moments that come from the Dresden Files are when Harry confronts the monster within, and one of his biggest personal demons is the constant allure of using his power for himself. His joining up with Lash and her insinuation that he and the Fallen may not be so different is a double-whammy: it compromises some of his moral ground by equating his actions to those of Fallen angels, and gives him access to a tempting well of power (as if his current allotment of power was not temptation enough).

Harry’s struggle against the influence of Lash is one of my more favourite mini-arcs because we get to have a quasi-Denarian around full time. Pair that up with Mouse now joining Harry on missions in the field (who doesn’t like dogs?) and Thomas moving in with Harry, and the Lash arc represents a great slice of the series. We’re through the “powering up” phase and can move in to the “fighting bigger and badder threats” phase with pick-and-mix parties from Dresden’s Army. All the while, Harry has this constant drum beat in his ear:

“Take the coin, use the power for good, you’re stronger than all the others who have come before…”

“Take the coin…”

“Take the coin…”

“Take the coin…”

Heads up: I don’t tag spoilers. I often write these reviews with foreknowledge of the series, and will reference future events without warning. If you don’t want to be spoiled, turn back now.

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Thomas might be my favourite sidekick in the series.

I’ve written before about how the Denarians are like a manifestation of the corrupting influence of power made flesh in a villain (or villains). Thomas’s demon seems to be another angle of that idea. When Harry and Thomas share their soulgaze and Harry sees the White Court demon that lives alongside Thomas’s soul (for lack of a better term), it solidified this idea to me that the White Court deal with a similar problem as the Denarians.

Butcher points out that Thomas must draw upon the demon’s strength to access his superhuman abilities, which is then fed with mortal life-force (often with disastrous consequences; more on that later). I don’t know how much more literal you can get when drawing allegories to the corrupting nature of power. Your power runs on other peoples’ souls and you must go eat people to maintain it.

Which makes Thomas’ reluctance to feed and his relationship with Justine that much more impactful. Harry has this constant moral dilemma of not using his power to exploit people, and then over the course of the series gets in to conflict with other characters who do precisely that. Enter: Thomas Raith. Up until now he has been on the periphery of Dresden’s Army, but after the revelation that he is Harry’s last bit of family left (that Harry knows about anyway), he gets thrust in to the action more often.

Which, as I explored at the end of my last review, raises some uncomfortable questions. Thomas is a perpetual Trolley Cart Problem. To help Harry, Thomas must hurt people. But in the course of hurting people, he gains enough strength to save lives. Do the ends justify the means?

What I love about the reader’s deepening relationship with Thomas is that it repaints the previous books in a new light (which, I think, Butcher does a couple times over the course of the series in spectacular fashion). If we put ourselves in Thomas’ shoes, his playboy lifestyle is the most moral way to live his life. He uses almost none of his demonic power, and thus must feed a minimal amount, causing minimal direct suffering. One approach to the Trolley Problem is that of non-interaction: “If I do not interact with the system, I cause no suffering. If I do interact with the system, I cause suffering. Even if the suffering I create is hypothetically less than had I not interacted with the system, who am I to say which suffering should exist?”

I’ll leave my exploration of Thomas’ values there for now, but I’m sure it will come up in the a future review. I want to move on to discuss the context Thomas was raised in: the White Court itself.

I’ll admit I’m not a big fantasy reader, I trend more towards sci-fi in my fiction, or towards the classics with some “deep resonant meaning”, like Brave New World, 1984, or Atlas Shrugged. I mention this so as I start discussing what I think of as novel concepts in the Butcherverse, if they are actually clichés of the fantasy genre as a whole, you’ll excuse me.

Breaking up the Vampires into different “courts” with different abilities and temperaments is something Butcher does that I appreciate a lot. It gives each group more depth and personality, and allows the reader to “bucket” traits and characters together. This can be tricky when working with well established archetypes in fantasy settings, and can often lead to overcorrections to not play into archetypes.

The easiest example is all elves and dwarves taking after LotR’s elves and dwarves. If you build a world where all your dwarves are tall, regal, and anything but Scottish, the reader has a harder time processing your story because of this unnecessary cognitive burden the writer puts on them every time they use the word “dwarf”. At the same time, writers seem lazy is they have dwarves that are effectively Tolkeinesque. Like I said, tricky.

This is where the idea of the Vampire courts becomes functionally a useful literary tool for Butcher. You get to have it both ways: creating a distinct grouping (the Reds or the Whites) that share a lot of traits with the idea of vampires in the zeitgeist, while simultaneously being able to give them your own flavour. Then, when we meet a new character in one of these factions, we get to assume they have a lot of their group’s traits (“the Whites are tricky” or “the Reds are violent”) with a brief description. It then also sets that character up with a pattern of action we can assume they will take, which Butcher can then use to subvert our expectations to colour the character.

For instance, at the end of the novel, we assume Thomas will feed to the point of killing Justine at the end of the book. Justine even knows it, and is willing to sacrifice herself. When Thomas manages to pull back in the final moments, it’s much more impactful because “that’s not what a White Court vampire does!” It pulls double-duty of showing us that Thomas has incredible willpower to be able to resist the demon’s desire to feed, as well as a genuine love for Justine that drives him to accomplish this incredible feat. It also subtly implies that all the other White Court vampires that feed to the point of killing could pull back, but don’t.

Zooming out to the rest of the White court, I want to talk a bit about Lara and her father, Lord Raith. I’ll be the first to admit it: I think the sexual domination of the Raith household is icky. Thomas explains that Lord Raith has “dominated” all his sisters (through some kind of sex magic?) and Thomas is in danger of getting killed because his dad doesn’t swing in ways necessary to enthral Thomas as well. We also have Lara turning the tables on Lord Raith at the end of the novel and instead enthralling him. Perhaps I’m a prude, but that whole angle doesn’t sit right with me.

Weird incest-power-kink aside, Lara’s a great character in my books. She walks the frenemy line well, often working with Dresden and the White Council in later books, to the point where Harry has to remind himself she’s a monster. She also has this weird angle where she’ll “help” Harry by more or less tricking him in to doing what she wants (the whole Skavis arc comes to mind), but what she wants is also what he wants so it’s okay? It’s a reverse “the means justify the ends” scenario for Harry accepting help from grey morality characters like Lara.

I’m also pleased that we get to have Lara as the functional head of House Raith for the majority of the books as Lord Raith feels rather flat as a villain in this book. He gets points for being a believable bad guy after we find out that Margaret LeFay hit him with some kind of magic impotency curse when she died, as it explains why Lord Raith has been so reluctant to act personally for the last couple decades. Other than that, his plot with the pornstar witches is unremarkable (which seems unbelievable on the surface) up until they summon He Who Walks Behind.

Hoooooo boy He Who Walks Behind. I love this idea for a villain, and the Outsiders in general. I won’t spend a ton of time talking about Him now, as He shows up in more significant ways in future books, but I can’t help but gush a little. I find the outsiders juxtapose a lot of the other entities of the Butcherverse by existing outside the realm of myth and fairytale that Butcher draws from. My comparison is that the non-Outsider enemies Harry faces have an almost musical quality to their stories: the antagonists are familiar and Harry and (for instance) the Fae almost have a dance they do whenever they tango.

The Outsiders are nails on a chalkboard. Which is great for Butcher, as it gives him an antagonistic faction that is not bound by any source material he may be working from for creatures like the Fae or the vampires. And He Who Walks Behind is one of the loudest and longest screeches. The hairs stand up on the back of my neck whenever He shows up, which I consider a testament to the sheer creepy, otherworldliness Butcher has managed to convey through He Who Walks Behind. More fangirling to come in a future review.

Having covered the White Court and that whole plot, the last thing left to discuss is what I consider the B-plot of this book: Harry’s confrontation of the Black Court with Murphy and Kincaid.

The Black Court of Vampires feel like the red-headed stepchild of the Vampire Courts. We don’t get a lot of time with them, we meet one character of note (Mavra), and they like…go away after a little while. We get lots of allies and fun stories and moral problems when dealing with the White Court, and the majority of the series takes place during the war with the Reds. The Black Court ends up being a footnote, and as such I find it hard to engage with their subplots.

The scene where Dresden, Murphy, and Kincaid assault the den of the Black Court is a great sequence, but it feels out of place in this book. The one justification I have is that it sets up Mavra a bit in the next book. Other than that, the Renfields aren’t resonant enough to me to warrant significant screen-time (contrasted with another minor specie like Gruffs in the later books; they are the billy-goats Gruff. Got it. Cute.) so their inclusion as a distinct entity adds unneeded mental complexity.

The redeeming parts of the sequence are the characterizations we get out of it, though. Murphy as this holy avenging angel in Wizardvision is a call back to Grave Peril where we see Murphy’s true nature in a similar way; this radiant protector filled with righteous fury. We also develop Murphy and Kincaid’s relationship, which I personally enjoy because it helps reinforce that the world doesn’t revolve around Harry - that these characters have lives outside of their interactions with him.

And, of course, who can forget the stand off between Kincaid and Ebenezar McCoy. This is the first time Harry hears the name Blackstaff and we get to reveal more of the wider magical world through the revelations of the chat between Harry and Ebenezar afterwards. We learn that all the magical nations have a “wetworks” guy and the Council is no different, and in turns out Harry’s adoptive father-figure is also a magic assassin.

This is so significant because of Ebenezar’s philosophy that he espoused to Harry throughout Harry’s formative years that “magic comes from life” and “killing with magic is wrong”. It destroys Harry’s hero-worship of his mentor and causes him to have to reflect on his own beliefs now that the ideas that formerly grounded him are gone (“Ebenezar is good, and Ebenezar lives out and believes these ideals, thus, I should too”).

It’s the same moment all we all have when we discover our parents aren’t special - that they’re as flawed as everyone else.

It’s the crossing of a threshold into adulthood, where, sometimes for the first time, we realize that no one actually has it figured out, we’re all making it up as we go.

Heads up: I don’t tag spoilers. I often write these reviews with foreknowledge of the series, and will reference future events without warning. If you don’t want to be spoiled, turn back now.

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This might be my favourite instalment in the Dresden Files.

Going through this series a couple times and engaging in this exercise of trying to tease out precisely how I feel about certain books has highlighted something I wasn’t aware of until I turned a lens to it: in almost every book, there’s some annoyance I have with it. Whether it be an extraneous plot-line, unnecessary character, or the way Jim writes a certain scene, almost every book has at least one “problem”. Granted, I’m not a critic, I’m some guy, and these are just my thoughts, so take these criticisms with a grain of salt.

All that said, this book has no problems.

Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t perfect. But I appreciate this book for a bunch of reasons, not least of all being that Butcher seems to have been able to shed some of his “bad habits” from earlier books. To skip ahead a bit, I’d say the most extraneous character is Anna Valmont. Other than that, the plot feels coherent and cohesive, all the characters we engage with are “important”, and Butcher doesn’t get too in to the weeds with any of the mechanics of magic. It’s a solid ride from beginning to end.

Now, let’s talk about that ride. At its core, this is a book about a MacGuffin. I don’t want to focus too much on the MacGuffin though, or even the events surrounding what is basically one long game of Hot Potato that is this book’s plot. I want to focus on the players, because I think they make this book (and whole series) shine.

In the red corner we have the Denarians. Coming from the Christian tradition myself, this is such a cool concept for a group of villains. I think one of the best characterization moments for the Denarians comes when Harry asks about how, if the church has been fighting them for two thousand years, and keeps taking coins and locking them away, how is it that the coins get back out in to circulation so consistently? This highlights the idea of the corrupting influence of power, and how the coins themselves aren’t the problem. It’s our human nature and the temptation of power that’s the real problem. I’ve heard it said that the best villains never die, so “the corrupting influence of power” seems like it would make a superb villain.

Of course, I can’t talk about the Denarians in general without talking about one in specific: Nicodemus Archleone. What a guy. What an incredible villain. I love Nick, and I’m not afraid to say it. He has all the hallmarks of what I consider a top-notch villain.

When I think about villains, I think a lot about Syndrome from The Incredibles:

“You sly dog, you got me monologuing!”

That lamp-shading of a villain trope sticks with me and has ruined a lot of otherwise good media. I can’t stand it any more when some supposedly big bad evil guy doesn’t do the thing and instead has to give the heroes time to recover. This is noticeable in media not directed explicitly at adults, since most of the time you have to skirt around violence and outright killing someone when it’s the most expedient option.

Which I think is what makes me love Nick so much. He and the Denarians just kill people. No monologues. No taunts. You just die. The end. I find it so refreshing and it puts me on edge whenever they show up in later books because you can never feel safe. It also feels thematically consistent with who Nick is and the ancient nature of the Denarians in general. I can picture Nicodemus in 200 A.D. taunting some Roman general and almost getting skewered right then and there. At this point, he wants to get on with his plans for world destruction, to hell with the talking. He almost seems jaded with the whole business of villainy, which makes him more callous and ruthless.

To top it all off, it’s not enough that he’s “pure evil”. He’s also fucking creepy as shown by his relationship with his daughter Deirdre. It moves him out of ruthless bad guy territory and into the territory of wrong. And I think it suits him. He’s totally inhuman at this point (to the reader at least… looking at you, Michael), so fully corrupted by Anduriel and the allure of power that he almost has the obligation to be as inhuman as possible. When Harry talks about fighting the monsters and keeping back the predators that lurk in the shadows, there is no better example of that kind of creature than Nicodemus.

But you can’t have good bad guys without good good guys. And there are no gooder guys than the Knights of the Holy Cross.

There’s another annoying trope that, once pointed out, gets hard to ignore, and shows up often in lazier media. It goes: “The bad guys are doing Bad Things, and the good guys stop them the end”. It’s easy to characterize the heroes as anti-villains, but it ends up creating characters that don’t have any defining traits themselves, and are instead defined by their much more interesting counter-parts (see: Batman).

I know I’m sounding like I’m stuck on repeat, but another W for this series is how the Knights feel alive and autonomous, not bound to being anti-Denarians. For instance, we’ve established Michael as a dear friend to Harry and a family man, and his relationship with his kids and his wife makes him feel vibrant and alive. I won’t get too much in to it now, but a lot of the Carpenters end up getting a good amount of screen time, and I’m not the least bit upset about it.

We don’t get much out of Sanya’s backstory this book but he also grows in to another relatable and important character. I adore how he asserts that he’s an atheist and doesn’t believe in a God while being a Knight. Butcher has this great way of being able to have characters go against their archetype without it feeling forced. I’ve seen lesser works where characters are quirky for the sake of being quirky, but when Butcher does it, it somehow feels natural. When we later learn that Sanya used to hold one of the coins and Shiro ultimately turned his life around, it makes a ton of sense how Sanya could get wrapped up in this job without believing in the divine.

Speaking of Shiro, let’s talk about the last Knight. It’s a little sad we only get one ride with Shiro, but what a ride it is. His sacrifice for Dresden when he turns himself over to the Denarians is what I meant when I thought of the Knights not being simple anti-Denarians. His character is so powerful it echoes forward through the novels, and deservedly so. He is truly heroic, and his death heaps more wood on the “Kill all the Denarians” fire, for both Harry and the reader. I’m still unsure how I feel about the revelation at the end that he had limited time due to his cancer, and knew it. It undercuts his sacrifice a bit, but not by much. I’ll get back to you.

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Man this book has one star-studded cast! I still have a couple characters I want to cover. Okay, rapid fire time:

We meet Butters! As Dresden gets more powerful (which he kinda has to for the series to have any sense of increased stakes), I always appreciate having someone along who is out of their depth. Near the beginning of the series, it’s Harry himself, later on Molly ends up taking over that mantle, and spattered throughout it’s the vanilla mortal du jour who gets to scream “what the fuck was that thing!” Butters fills this role on occasion, as well as being a handy functional literary element: medical aid not tied to a hospital.

I think it’s smart to not have Harry stuck in a hospital all the time (“my magic might interfere with life support systems”), so having a Bones-esque dammit-Harry-I’m-a-mortician-not-a-doctor around is handy to keep the story moving forward after a couple of scrapes. I find Harry has that Spiderman-like quality of getting the shit kicked out of him all the time, which helps ground him as still vulnerable and relatable while hurling crazy fire magic around. I’ll certainly talk more about Butters in future reviews.

Next up: Ivy and Kincaid! I read the canonical six Dune books the first half of 2020, so the notion of preternatural knowledge passed from mother to daughter gave me Big Bene Gesserit Energy. Ivy is more than that though, as she also gains knowledge of everything written down, but the comparison still stands in my mind. She wields a ton of (magical) power during the duel between Harry and Ortega, and she has that Bene Gesserit-style wisdom beyond her years (which, by the way, is another instance of Butcher playing against type while still feeling natural: a being with tremendous amounts of human knowledge and tons of magical power contained in the body of a little girl).

I lump Kincaid in with a subset of magical folk we meet throughout the series as half-magic and half-mortal, kinda like the series itself. I think of characters like the Changelings, who are children of mortals and Fae, or Thomas, child of the White King and a mortal. You could draw a parallel with Greek mythology here: the full-blooded magic folks are like the Olympians and these half-and-half characters are like some of the old heroes (Perseus, Theseus) who feel much closer to humankind than their parents because of this mixing. I feel like we never get a complete view of Kincaid, but his actions certainly paint an interesting picture I’ll explore in future reviews.

Lastly, I want to talk about Anna Valmont, because I want to own up to a somewhat silly mistake I made when I first started reading the Dresden Files. I started the series at Skin Game, which is notably the one other book Anna shows up in. When I first read it, though, I had no idea this was her second appearance, so I put her on par with Murphy until I got around to actually reading the series in its entirety. If I am to be intellectually consistent, I’d say Anna is probably the most extraneous character in this book, though she is somewhat redeemed with her fight through the Underworld.

Alright, I want to make two more points, and then I’ll stop gushing.

I’ve made this somewhat nebulous point about there being “no extraneous characters”. It’s a big problem I have with the first couple books that makes them less enjoyable for me. For instance, Harry’s apprentice in Fool Moon, the CIA agents, Tera West, Ferrovax in Grave Peril, and Lydia all get pretty heavy screen time in their book, but then just…go away. I can’t fault Butcher for it, as I can’t imagine when he was writing those first couple novels he was planning on hitting it big with (at time of writing) an 17-book-long series. But, because these characters don’t go anywhere, it can feel a little pointless to try and invest in them when doing a re-read.

To contrast those characters to Death Masks, effectively every major character ends up coming back and being important to the overarching plot of the Dresden Files later on. Where this stuck out to me most was the revelation that “Father Vincent” was actually Quintus Cassius, one of the Denarians, masquerading as the now deceased actual Father Vincent. To me, this tied together all the plot threads this book had on the go, and creates such a memorable scene. Harry is no saint, and his brutalization of Cassius echoes forward through the series: it further defines who Harry is and the contrast between his philosophy and the Knights’; it gives Cassius a really good reason to come back for Harry; it sets up a heroic moment for Mouse and Butters; it shows how callous the Denarians are to their own when they are no longer “useful”. The layered meanings in scenes like that are what make this series so special to me.

To top it all off, this is the book where we discover Marcone’s secret shame. We learn more about the girl in the coma in later books, but seeing this incredibly human moment where Marcone is reading to this unconscious girl in a hospital far away from his empire layers ever more complexity on to him. Couple that with the fight on the train cars and the fact that he saved Michael and Harry when he could have left them to die moves him out of purely “bad guy” territory and in to some weird moral gray area.

Which, I think, is hard on Harry. In the initial books, Harry wants to classify beings as either “monsters” or “not monsters”. Marcone is a monster. But now, he is also not a monster. We’ll see how this plays out in later books, but with Harry’s penchant for protecting women and children, sharing core values with a monster like Marcone must be deeply unsettling.

“If Marcone is a monster with the same core values as me, could I become the monster the White Council fears while still maintaining my core values?” Scary thought, Harry.

Heads up: I don’t tag spoilers. I often write these reviews with foreknowledge of the series, and will reference future events without warning. If you don’t want to be spoiled, turn back now.

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I love the Fae.

I find the stories that involve them so fun, the Fae feel unpredictable and yet wholly consistent. I find it interesting that some of the High Court Fae have tremendous power, yet are also bound by some sort of metaphysical laws that forbids them from outright subjugating mankind.

Between their inability to lie, their inability to interfere with mortals directly (though Harry makes the analogy that they could drop you in the middle of a deadly forest in the Nevernever and technically they wouldn’t have killed you, the forest would have), and their obsession with bargains, they make interesting fradversaries to Dresden. They end up being like the White Court in my mind, having a sort of gray morality/amorality that makes them difficult to classify as monsters most of the time (though I’m sure Harry would disagree).

Now, let’s talk about some of the Fae.

Mab! What an entrance. As the series goes on, she feels a lot more like the “wicked faerie godmother” we’re told Lea was. It often feels like while she will help keep Harry alive, it’s just barely most of the time, and while it’s expedient to her. She exemplifies what I meant by the amorality of the Sidhe. She isn’t protecting Harry’s life because life itself in innately valuable, she’s protecting him because he’s still useful to her. Her aesthetic is also fantastic, “The Queen of Air and Darkness” and ruler of the winter court is a great mirror to the cold ruthlessness of her character.

And then there’s her daughter, Maeve. I think the initial books in the series suffer a bit from being a little too heavy on the pulp and Maeve at her worst exemplifies this. One could argue that we’re seeing the world through Harry’s filter, and his views of women are a…mixed bag. At her best though, she does feel like a young Mab. Ruthless and manipulative to the point of near insanity, until you remember the amorality of the Fae make this behaviour entirely consistent. Which, again, in my mind makes them a great set of characters. You’re able to have characters like Maeve who are almost cartoonishly evil at times, but it’s due to her nature, which keeps the world believable while still having wild characters.

While I do dig the Fae, the rest of the characters introduced in this book are pretty meh, except for the odd one that sticks around post-Summer Knight. Most of the Summer Court we meet (who are effectively the villains of this book) are unremarkable. Aurora and her entourage (which, aside, skip past cartoonishly evil and right into “leaving the hero alone in a room and assuming he died” levels of stupid. The whole scene where a guy rooting through the dead summer knight’s personal effects is actually Grum who was actually Lord Talos feels like a stretch. Ditto to Korrick as the unicorn. Anyway…) are underwhelming. Perhaps they’re tame in contrast to Maeve and Mab so they’re overshadowed when placed alongside them. Fix and Aurora end up growing into their roles in pretty rewarding ways, so that’s nice, but in the context of this book, they’re okay.

On the other side of the board we have the White Council. It’s nice to get some exposure to the White Council beyond the thug Morgan, and also helps colour in the world of the Butcher-verse more broadly. Generally the Council feels underwhelming and toothless compared to the Fae High Courts, but it’s possible Dresden as storyteller colours this interpretation. The Merlin exemplifies this; we’re told he’s super powerful but we almost never see it, kinda like the Council itself. It seems like bureaucracy most of the time (unless they’re meting out punishments for breaking the Laws).

They do offer a good check on Dresden’s power via the Laws, though. One of the recurring themes of good heroes (in my estimation) is that they have a code. The Laws are what separate Dresden from the monsters. It also adds to his character when he follows the Laws to the point of his own death, even though he is on the outs with the Council most of the time. It gives him a great excuse to flaunt the Laws should it suit him, but his integrity will not let him do it.

The Senior Council has a couple of notable exceptions of this toothlessness, namely Ebenezar McCoy. We don’t get a ton of insight into Ebenzar’s character this book but his importance certainly ramps up as the series goes on. It also helps us as the reader understand more of Harry’s views as his relationship with his mentor unfolds before us. Specifically, Harry’s view on the source of magic being “life itself” (and all the interesting problems the Blackstaff reveal causes in that department).

I’ve been talking about the characters and their development a lot because the plot of this book is kinda meh. Which is a shame, because, as I mentioned, I love the stories about the Fae. It feels like this plot could have been more interesting, but it had some of the same problems Fool Moon did; there was a little too much going on plot-wise for anything to stick. The idea that one of the scions of a house that controls a god-damn season has decided that Mutually Assured Destruction is a good idea has a lot of potential, but for whatever reason Butcher has this bad habit of layering in a couple extra plot-lines in the initial Dresden Files that muddy up the core concept.

For instance, there’s this whole sub-plot involving “the Tigress” who is some ghoul-assassin who feels unnecessary. In my review of Grave Peril I mention that you probably have a better book if you cut out the entire Kravos character - I think similarly you can cut out Tigress (and Ace for the ~10 pages of time he gets) and have a better story. In my previous review, my criticism of an overloaded plot is a problem for me because I’m trying to keep a bunch of fantasy-magic crap straight in my head. If I’m also trying to keep straight a lot of clues on the detective angle, it gets to be too much. Even though it ends up being a “magic” sub-plot (it’s a ghoul and a changeling trying to off Harry), they’re trying to cause mortal problems i.e. killing him with guns, and it’s not obvious most of the time we’re dealing with this sub-plot that it’s a magical problem.

The plot gets near the ridiculous with the Talos/Korrick reveals near the end of the book. I have a problem with universes where you can have 100% imitation. In this book, we have this long reveal chain of this unnamed brute character who was rooting around the previous Summer Knight’s effects, who “revealed” himself to be an ogre named Grum, who then reveals himself to actually be Talos of the Summer Court. It feels Scooby-Dooesque and in my mind can ruin a universe if you have characters who can appear as a perfect copy of another character, as you can get to these chains of fleshmask reveals that are absurd. I give this a minor pass because Talos isn’t imitating an existing character in Grum, he is instead wearing a perfect disguise that Dresden can’t pick up on when he later meets the true persona of Talos.

I think the last major element of this story is the introduction of Elaine. It felt a little obvious and clichéd when Harry and Bob would bandy back and forth about Elaine’s “death” in the fire but “oh they never found the body” and then woah wow she’s actually alive who would have thought?!?

That aside, Elaine and Harry is a bright spot in this book. The easy route in my mind is to bring her back as a love interest as Susan is now out of the picture and go with the trite summer love/old flame dichotomy that ends with “oh but we’re different people now but I’ll always love you X”. Elaine feels like her own person who has grown and made choices since that fateful day, and I enjoy that the romance is basically quashed right away. It shakes up the formula enough that I don’t know where this relationship will go which is exciting (granted it hasn’t materialized into anything thus-far but in the context of this book it feels like there is opportunity there).

Oh, and I have to call this out. The whole “chlorofiend” gag is great. High mark of this book in my mind.

The plant monster - No, wait. I couldn’t possibly refer to that thing as a “plant monster.” I’d be a laughstock.

later…

“What is it?” “Chlorofiend,” I said. “A what?” “Plant monster.” “Oh, right.”

Heads up: I don’t tag spoilers. I often write these reviews with foreknowledge of the series, and will reference future events without warning. If you don’t want to be spoiled, turn back now.

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I think my favourite part of the Dresden files is being able to empathize with Harry: constantly out of his depth in a crazy world full of wonder and danger. Grave Peril really starts pulling in the wider Butcherverse of magical entities. Up until this point we’ve dealt with “vanilla humans” using (and abusing) magic with minimal intervention from the denizens of the Nevernever. Grave Peril feels like this is our first foray into a “proper” Dresden Files novel, where we’re accompanying Harry as he battles forces way out of his depth on the wizard version of a shoestring budget.

Although it’s what I would call the first proper Dresden Files novel, its one of the weakest in the category. I learned that the first three novels were written as a sort of “pack”, and that there was a bit of a gap between Butcher writing this book and the next one (Summer Knight). I think this explains two of my major problems with this book: herrings and hormones.

My main gripe with Grave Peril is that the plot has way too many baits. I’ll start by acknowledging that a mystery novel needs some mystery by definition. I think the problems come in when Butcher applies the mystery to his particular flavour of fantasy. Future novels do a better job of weaving the investigative persona of Dresden with the wizard persona by making the fantasy elements much more straight-forward and leaving the mystery to the vanilla humans.

The reader is already trying to grapple with the metaphysics of Butcher’s fantasy, and I think it detracts from the enjoyment of the story if we’re trying to sort through the “real” fantasy facts we have from the “fake” fantasy facts. The biggest offender here is Dresden trying to figure who (or what) The Nightmare is.

I don’t know how Ghosts work.

I don’t know how Black Magic works.

I don’t know how Demons work.

Even though this was my second time through this book, and I more or less remember the gist of the twists, I still had a hard time following the current status of what the Nightmare was throughout the story. Couple this with the whole “spectral thorns” problem that Dresden was also trying to untangle, and the reader ends up totally overwhelmed with the fantasy side of the plot. If all that isn’t enough, I don’t even think that the Nightmare/spectral thorns is the main event from this book.

Bianca’s ball is.

Which I think underscores my problem with this books’ plot. You can cut all the Nightmare material out and you might have a better book: no Lydia (remember her? yeah, me neither), no Kravos, no Nightmare. Considering that, at the end of the day, there’s this implication the Mavra had somehow given Kravos some knowledge/power, in my edit you cut Kravos out and you have the Nightmare be Mavra or some other lesser member of the Black Court. At least that way you can either spend more time establishing the Black Court’s particular flavour of villainy or spend more time with the latest additions to Dresden’s Army.

Actually, let’s talk about those additions.

Michael! I find Michael such a great foil to Harry in the way they execute on a similar mission. Both parties are out to protect humanity from all the ghoulies that would otherwise waylay us, but I find it so fun to contrast their approaches. The most obvious being where they draw their power from.

Michael makes it clear pretty quick that he does not approve of Harry’s more pagan-sourced arcane abilities. What I love about this comparison is that it gives Butcher an opportunity to explore Harry’s own stance on where his magic comes from, and Harry’s take on religion. Harry has this personal relationship with “his magic”, and often talks about its power coming from “life itself”. It sets up some interesting dilemmas with Harry, in particular when it comes to killing people with magic.

One of the other contrasts between the two is how they prepare for battle. It’s more pronounced in later books, but Michael has this put-together aesthetic with his full suit of knights armour, his templar cloak, and Amoracchius. Meanwhile, Harry is performing rituals with side-walk chalk and brewing potions with Tequila. I mentioned this before, but I think a lot of the charm of Dresden is how scrappy he is. The typical “wizard” from fantasy novels is about a billion years old and has spell components like “eye of newt”, but Dresden is out there fighting the forces of evil with Coke. I love the texture it brings to the world and makes it feel so much closer to our own. As awesome as Middle-Earth is, it’s hard for me identify strongly with the setting because it’s so alien. The humour and tangibility of Dresden’s arsenal draws me into the series.

The other major player we meet this go around is Thomas. It isn’t obvious that he’s going to be important but I find his relationship with Harry is another interesting juxtaposition. Thomas is this aloof playboy with way more money than he knows what to do with. Harry meanwhile is scraping by, constantly on guard against danger and seemingly always strung out to his absolute limits. Thomas is sort of breezing through his life with no real direction (or purpose), while Harry fights for every minute, hell-bound on walking this path he has set out for himself as a defender of humanity, and it makes him seem so much richer in the important ways when put beside Thomas’ vapid existence.

Not to mention Thomas is a vampire.

To risk repeating myself too much, I love that the “bad guys” have all these material advantages. It makes Dresden’s victories so much more triumphant. It highlights Dresden’s character when we see someone with all these resources available to them (Thomas is physically formidable as well) squander their life, highlighting how heroic Dresden is using such meagre means to achieve his goals.

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Some rapid fire thoughts on the other characters we meet:

Lea feels like she gets a bad rap for reasons that are not the most obvious to me. As the books go on we get a clearer picture of how malevolent the faeries can be, but in her introduction, she’s painted as this crazy villain for no real reason. In fact, considering some of the real freak-shows we end up meeting from Faerie, Lea is pretty decent by comparison.

Ferrovax is so interesting. I’m sad we don’t get more from him until Peace Talks, and even then it isn’t much. Perhaps Butcher feels like Dragons are a little hackneyed at this point and didn’t want to follow that particular thread. Oh well.

Lydia turns in to such a nothing burger. At the beginning of this book she seems to have so much going on, she can sort of see the future, is somehow tied to this Demon, gets tangled up with the Red Court and then…leaves forever. Again, knowing now that the first three novels were written in a pack, I figure Butcher re-evaluated some of his characters after this first stint and decided they were no longer interesting/necessary.

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Some closing thoughts: Of the first three novels (if we consider them a pack), I think this one is the strongest, and it starts giving shape to what the series will become. At the same time, it still suffers a bit from some of the gripes I personally have problems with in the first couple Dresden Files. There’s a little too much going on most of the time, and some of the narrative can feel a little juvenile and hormonally-charged when it comes to female characters.

At the same time, it has a great instalment of the Dresden Files underneath that. We kick off the war between the Red Court and White Council, which carries us all the way to Changes and beyond with some permanent repercussions to Dresden and his loved ones. We meet Michael and Thomas, two great contrasting characters to Dresden that will show up again and again and help colour who Dresden is.

To top it off, I’ll admit I’m totally a sucker for love, and the tragic relationship between Harry and Susan is one of the highlights of the series to me.

“You are mad…You would flirt with chaos, destruction - with war. For the sake of this one wounded soul?” “For the sake of one soul. For one loved one. For one life…The way I see it, there’s nothing else worth fighting a war for.”