Dresden Files Reread- Fool Moon Chapter 31

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Lacking any more sensible way to make Denton point the gun somewhere else, Harry initiates a soul gaze. This takes effort, and it hurts, because his magic is still damaged. We never see anything along these lines happen again - nowhere else does a soul gaze require the kind of mental effort described here, which reinforces the idea that this isn't something a wizard can do to themself without the help of something like that meth super coffee. 

Denton's soul is, I think, the first one to be described in the landscape terms that become ubiquitous later in the series. This is yet another thing that points me towards there having been a major revision at some point, after which Jim Butcher did not tidy up properly, because the earlier soul gaze in this book, with Parker, didn't do this - it was like the ones in Storm Front, with description but no specific imagery. 

Dentons's soulscape looks like the Parthenon, or some other vast structure representative of order and civilization. Time isn't really a thing in a soul gaze, so we're simultaneously looking at how it started and how it's going. In the former, we've got a blue sky, grass and flowers, children playing. In the latter, the building itself is worn down by the passage of time, the grass and flowers are dead, leaving weeds and dry brambles. The children are aged, traumatized, and jaded. (I have excluded the troubling and needlessly judgemental language used to describe their adult selves). There are unsettling shadows. The whole thing kind of reminds me of the Town in Wheel of Time. Dresden explicitly attributes these changes to the "cares and trials and difficulties of the world a cop inhabits" in which context I suppose Shadar Logoth would be the more appropriate comparison. Over all this lies a layer of dark, sticky, unpleasant sludge, the magic of the wold best, literally, almost physically poisoning Denton's soul. Harry actually gets a flash of Denton on his knees, receiving the belts from...someone, but it's gone to quick for any details about who he might have gotten them from. 

In the way of soul gazes, it takes much longer to describe than it does to happen. Whatever Denton saw in Harry's soul, it has him spooked - pale, shaking, and sweating. He says "No, Wizard. I don't believe in Hell, I won't let you." Hey, Denton, what the fuck does this mean? I understand that "people freak out when they soul gaze Harry, but he has no idea what they see" thing is a thing - especially in the early series, when Harry is at maximum self-hatred, but I suspect any number of things might be clearer if we knew what Denton was on about here. 

Marcone knows, apparently. Or he's walking in with no context and capitalizing on the moment. Either thing would be well within his character. In any case, he materializes out of the shadows, pointing a laser sight at Denton, and says "Yes. You will." like he totally know what he's talking about. He chastises the hexenwulfen for having been about to shoot Harry when their instructions were to bring Dresden to him alive. I either don't know or don't remember what Marcone actually wanted with Dresden here - presumably to try to hire him again, but to what end, at this point? Maybe he's just cognizant that Harry has some powerful people who won't necessarily help him while he's alive, but would be pretty annoyed if he got killed. Harry makes a creditable effort to explain to Marcone that Denton is a) an insane person and b) planning a betrayal, but Marcone is not receptive. I don' think it's that he doesn't believe Harry, but his own sense of honor requires that he give Denton the maximum opportunity to not betray their agreement, even if it means passing up his best chance to kill a guy who he's 95% sure is planning to screw him over. This is, it occurs to me, exactly the kind of "too trusting" behavior for which Gard criticizes Marcone in Small Favor. Marcone almost dies in this book, because he was told straight out that Denton was planning to kill him, and refused to act on that information while the cop who is also a psychically corrupted werewolf still has a chance to think better of it. 

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Denton, however, has lost his basket, and something about either Marcone's wildly misplaced trust or his
peremptory manner just pushes him over the edge. When Marcone tells him to come attend to some details, he shoots Hendricks instead. Repeatedly. Hendricks goes down. Wilson and Harris jump Marcone. Been grabs Harry. Denton orders his people to take everyone to "the pit". 

Harry lands face first in muddy water, and Murphy, of all people, pulls him out before he has a chance to die of "Oh but this is nice and cool on my face." They're in an extremely literal pit, with about forty feet deep. Harry, Murphy, Tera, and the alphas, who are starting to regain consciousness but not yet ambulatory, are all present and accounted for. Murphy is acting weirdly normal, like her last interaction with Harry didn't involve arresting him for almost no reason. So Harry fills her in, and around the time he finishes doing so, an unconscious Marcone is swung out over the pit on a rope, very literally strung up as bait for the incoming Loup Garou. According to Tera, the hope is that MacFinn will fall into the pit going after Marcone, kill everyone else whose down there, and then be stuck until morning, when he'll return to human form and can be killed or handed over to the White Council or whatever. 

Murphy announces, more or less apropos of nothing, that she's concluded that there's a "reasonable chance" that Harry isn't involved with the murders. Harry is very reasonably exasperated and points out that his role in this case (mostly getting beaten up) and the amount of time Murphy's known him, should earn him some trust. Murphy says that after "what she's seen", she's no longer capable of trust. She is, in other words, situating herself as damaged in the same way Denton is and, especially coming in the very same chapter as that soul gaze, similarly susceptible to to corruption. I know that in the most recent book, Murphy died without this ever really getting addressed, but this is the first in a chain of mounting evidence that at some point, maybe in Grave Peril, maybe in Dead Beat, certainly no later than between Proven Guilty and White Night, something got into Murphy's head. It hasn't yet happened here, obviously, but this exchange establishes the vulnerability. 

The Dresden Files seems to have a difficult relationship with law, police, and policing. I don't think Denton and Murphy are our only examples of burnout, trauma, and professionally cultivated mistrust of ones peers and fellow citizens creating vulnerability, both to the temptation of darker powers and to direct psychic attack. Look at Mickey Malone. Look at Morgan. Luccio needed a damn truth spell to believe the way he'd been persecuting Dresden. Morgan was her apprentice - she knows him. As far as we know, he had a normal apprenticeship, not like Harry had with Ebenezer or Molly had with Harry, meaning that they worked together for decades. Nothing this big should have been a surprise to her, unless it represented a substantial and unexpected change. Obviously, Morgan would have been exposed to Peabody's ink, but he's supposed to be too old for mind magic to cause big changes - unless the particular mixture of trauma and vocational paranoia inherent to the work of a Warden, or of any named law enforcement professional in an urban fantasy setting, creates an opening that otherwise wouldn't exist. With the exception of Rawlins, I think literally every cop or warden who appears as a living person in more than two books either definitely falls in with dark forces (Denton, Rudolf) or experiences either confirmed or implied magical corruption of some kind. Ramirez, out of nowhere in Peace Talks, displays the same kind of paranoia that Murphy demonstrates in the first three and last four books. (Although honestly, I think her not doing that for so long, the abrupt change between Grace Peril and Summer Knight, is the best evidence that she's being messed with). So, to a certain extent, does Fix, once he takes up the Summer Knight's mantle. (See: the parking lot confrontations in Small Favor and Cold Days). Micky Malone, like Morgan, took a kind of psychic damage that shouldn't have been possible, unless I'm missing something. It's established that his house has a strong threshold, so the torture spell, much less the ghost that cast it, shouldn't have been able to enter - unless there was another way in. 

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Obviously the psychic vulnerability thing is to some extent just wild theorizing on my part, but the series's complex relationship with law enforcement is more tangible. Harry works with cops - quite a lot, and even more if you count Wardens. But even the ones who consistently mean well seem to be obstructive as often as they're helpful. The series validates, but doesn't generally valorize, revenge as a motivation, and the only time I can think of that incarceration is portrayed in a positive light is the opportunity for personal grown, and even redemption, which it apparently provided for Helen Beckett - and in her case that growth consisted of turning away from her previous fixation on revenge. Right here in this very book, putting people in jail gets them needlessly dead. Harry spends most of the first book trying to avoid a similar outcome, and in Grave Peril, putting a bad guy, an unambiguous villain, in prison still left him free to do even more harm. The text generally argues against punishment, at least in the practical outcomes we see, while also recognizing the desire to punish as a normal human experience, and that some opponents are too dangerous to be left alive. (I entirely forgot about demonreach when I was drafting this post, and it would take too long to work something about it in now - we'll talk about that later.) Law is acknowledged for its value in softening the sharp edges of human behaviour and factionalism, and victories via legalistic logic are treated as triumphs, but for the most part, laws - city laws, the Laws of Magic, Winter Law, are things that get in the way. And yet, and yet. the commitment to upholding the law displayed by Murphy, by Luccio, by Mab, even by Morgan, is something that Harry, at least, sees as positive and admirable. On the theme of missed conversational opportunities, Luccio makes a compelling case, in Turn Coat, for the Laws of Magic, but I wish they'd talked about why it has to be the damn death penalty. I don't know. If there's any singular textural argument happening, it's too nuanced for me to see all of it from here, but it's something to keep an eye on as the story progresses. 

Harry, meanwhile, starts guilt spiraling about how everyone's going to die and it's all his fault. We don't need to revisit the reasons this isn't an accurate assessment. Yes, Harry could have handled Kim Delaney better, but it wouldn't have changed the basic shape of things. Kim might still be alive, and obviously that's preferable, but most of the deaths predate Harry's involvement, and nothing he could have done would have stopped Murphy from arresting MacFinn, so the deaths at the police station, including Carmichael's, were pretty much going to happen. But Harry is now firmly in "I have to do something" mode, and asks Murphy to help him climb out of the pit. He doesn't have much of a plan, but the as-yet unnamed "ace in the hole" is reinforced. 

Murphy agrees, despite her apparent mistrust of Harry, but they haven't done much more than verbally explore the options before MacFinn appears at the edge of the bit, looking straight at Harry and snarling. 

Glad we finally have a chapter with a little more to chew on here It's hard to do interesting analysis on like, half an action scene. I've reworked a few things, which should allow me to pick up the pace a little, but I can't promise anything specific. Until next time, be gay, do crimes, and read all the things!

I was really kind of hoping to never have to do this

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Longtime readers are doubtless already aware of my tendency to be wildly overambitious in setting my annual goals. This is intentional - failure doesn't really bother me, and feeling like I'm behind does motivate me. I also have this tendency to go "But what if...more productive?" so I'm more likely to make time to, say, play video games, if I have an unreasonably high goal for reading and writing, but a more reasonable one for video games, than I am if I just set a reasonable goal for reading and writing, meet it, and then play video games at my own discretion. 

But I have officially out-overambitioused myself on one of my goals this year: fanfiction chapters. In August and September, I was starting several new fics, and first chapters are just inherently faster than subsequent chapters. As someone who has started and abandoned a lot of novels over the years, I'm very good at writing the first chapters of things, and the first chapters of fanfiction, at least the way I do it, tend to be driven by sudden inspiration or a similarly urgent impetus, and short enough that they're done and posted before that initial spark runs out. In any project, you eventually reach a place where going farther takes you into the realm of things you don't already know how to do. The work gets harder, and therefore slower, and if some of the story is already out in the world, you're doing it while carrying the weight of continuity and reader expectations. Winds of Winter syndrome comes for us all eventually, is what I'm saying. 

 

Anyway, as it turns out, when I'm not mostly writing first chapters, putting out one chapter approximately every two weeks is not just unrealistic but laughably unrealistic. Trying to get even close is interfering with my other work, far more than my too-high blog post goal last year ever did. So we're not going to do that. It may take a couple days for everything to be updated in all the places, but this is the official announcement that we are reducing the Fanfiction goal from 25 chapters this year to 12. This is not expected to have any meaningful impact on the rate of release for The Dragon's Peace, New Life Has Lumps In It, or the Stepin Gaidin series. 

 

Until next time, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!