Dresden Files Reread - Grave Peril Chapter 1

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 Grave Peril opens in the car, where Harry and the newly introduced Michael Carpenter are driving as fast as the Blue Beetle will carry them towards Cook County Hospital. Which isn't very fast. Michael says they'll get there in time "If God wills it," at Harry feels like, a pulse of energy. This is the first time in the series that we see the Power of Faith in a non-vampire context, which is good setup for all the extremely vampire context to come. There's a lot of good setup here, actually, and some great characterization through dialogue. 

Michael says he wants to ask Harry something. Harry tells Michael not to invite him to mass again. (Michael is Catholic, check.) Michael says he actually wanted to ask when Harry is planning to marry Susan. So now we know that Michael, despite the reader's never having seen him before, is close enough with Harry to be clued in about his love life. Harry kind of flails, and Michael asks if he loves her, which causes Harry to flail harder. Harry confirms that he does, but doesn't want to say it and, as they're speeding past some cops, insists that she already knows because he bought her a Hallmark card. He also points out that they've been running around the city for a month dealing with heightened ghost activity for which they have not yet found an explanation (exposition drop!) so maybe now isn't the best time. Michael pressures Harry until he says "I love her" out loud, and then he says he thought Harry might isolate himself too much, after Elaine. 

How? How does Michael know about Elaine? That was like ten years ago now, and Harry never talks about her. Given that Molly is eleven or so in this book, Michael was already married, had a young child, and was living in Chicago when Harry left DuMorne's house, but he talks about Elaine like he was there when it happened. This never gets any follow up. We know nothing about how Michael and Harry met, or when, except that Michael insisted on a soul gaze almost immediately, meaning Harry's magic had some in, and that it was almost certainly after DuMorne adopted him. My best guess is that Michael met Harry somewhere between blowing up He Who Walks Behind and the final confrontation with DuMorne, not sure which side of Harry's deal with Lea, although I'd tentatively guess at before. I don't know, obviously, what Michael was doing in Missouri, but I figure it's about 30/70 whether he was sent to do something for Harry or was there doing something completely else and just stopped to help out a slightly singed teenager walking the shoulder of I-70. Although I suppose there's also the possibility of said slightly singed teenager stopping in his panicked flight to help Michael with whatever supernatural evil he was sent there to face. 

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Michael tells Harry that if he loves Susan he should marry her, which doesn't really strike me as great advice, because I don't think love alone is sufficient reason to enter a bunch of legal and financial entanglement if it doesn't also make logistical sense, but I'm well aware that I'm the weird one here. Harry says "I'm a wizard, I don't have time to be married." and Michael responds that he's a Knight and he's married. (Michael is married, and also a knight of some kind, check). He says Harry spends too much time alone and could end up going down a dark path. Which, honestly, is fair. Humans get really weird when they don't spend enough time with other humans, although I think Michael is failing to acknowledge how much progress Harry has already made in this area. Harry takes it a little differently, though, and doesn't need to hear the conversion speech, or the "cast aside your evil powers before the consume you" speech, again. (Michael has tried to get Harry to convert, and to stop practicing magic, check. Although I note that he wasn't actually doing either thing here, and I can't think of a time when he does them in the books, unless you count when he told Harry that giving up his magic would cause Lasciel's shadow to fade, in Proven Guilty, but that doesn't strike me as quite the same thing). 

As an aside, it's established here that Michael has grey eyes, and I feel like he has brown eyes in later books, but I guess we'll see.

They get to the hospital and gear up. In Michael's case that includes a sword and a templar looking cloak fastened with a silver cross. Harry gives Michael a hard time about the cloak, because it looks silly. Michael responds by telling Harry that his coat belongs on the set of El Dorado, making him the third person in the series to do so. Harry is carrying his staff, his blasting rod, and a leather bag the contents of which we are not told. He only has two hands, so he ends up holding the bag in his teeth. They go on in, attracting a predicable amount of attention in the process, and Harry, talking around the bag, asks an extremely startled security guard for directions to the nursery. 

If I remember correctly, the plot in this book gets... weird. But it's immediately obvious that on a scene level, Jim Butcher's technical skills have leveled up substantially. We're gonna be paying more attention to technique as we go through this book. The next chapter is 22 minutes long, so it might be as much as a week before I post about it. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!