Fool Moon Retrospective

Photo by Pedro Lastra on Unsplash

While Fool Moon has several amazingly bad sentences, the prose, as in the previous book, is better on average than the early Dresden books usually get credit for. The plot, however, is a trash can fire, especially on characterization and book-level consistency. The scene setting is effective, and I think there are more really evocative descriptions here than in Storm Front, scarlet-smeared wash of brown streaked with wet scarlet notwithstanding. But this book has the worst case of editing sickness I have ever seen. Let's review the issues I caught during the reread. 

• Harry apparently forgets, in Chapter 11, that he already ruled out the Streewolves' involvement. 
• In Chapter 12, Chauncy is mentioned but not named. He's referred to only as "the demon". 
• Harry's confusing at seeing Tera shift in Chapter 15, not being sure if he's hallucinating, even though he knows she's not human, and that this case is werewolves all the way down, may be an example of this, but it might also just be that Harry's kinda dense sometimes. 
• Chapter 17's "scarlet-smeared wash of brown streaked with wet scarlet". 
• In Chapter 18, several sentences are devoted to describing how Murphy isn't wearing any earrings, how that's unusual, clearly foreshadowing that she melted them down for ammo, but moments later, she makes a joke about telling her Aunt Edna that she'd never get any use out of them. Again, this is very much a "revised but needed smoothing" issue. The naked ears and the quip are both good artistic choices, but they don't go together. 
• Harry's nagging sense in Chapter 18 that he's "missing something" is never followed up on. 
• In Chapter 20, Harry and Inner Harry both think they kept things from Murphy, even though a) they literally did not, and b) he knew this, back in Chapter 13. 
• Mostly a timing issue, but the discussion of Tera and whether to trust her, in this same chapter, feels out of place in the trajectory of what we know about her and her actions so far. 
• When Harry is interrogating Denton in Chapter 30, he asks nearly all the same questions he already asked Harris, and they have a nearly identical exchange about power and responsibility. More damningly, Harry doesn't follow up on anything he learned from Harris, including and especially the part where Denton is the one who got them the belts, and therefore knows where they came from. 
• Not really a problem, but the soul gaze with Denton is like the ones in subsequent books, while the one with Parker is like the ones in Storm Front, and that has the same mismatched, not-smoothed-out feel. I think if this had gotten the additional round of edits it wanted, Parker's soul gaze would have been redone to match Denton's. 
• We're never told what reserve of emotion Harry taps into in Chapter 33. 

Photo by Dim Hou on Unsplash

Let this serve as a reminder that after you do a big, important, "break it open" rewrite, you need to go
through with a more delicate set of tools, clean up the dust, sand things down, make sure thee joins are all joined properly. Make sure you're not using yarn from two different dye lots. 

Almost everyone's motivations make sense this time. Marcone makes some bad decisions, like trying to hire Harry on a long term contract rather than just for this case, but they're in line with what we know about him as a person. Denton's plan is a little intricate, sure, but I get why all its parts are there. Harry actually only makes two bad decisions this book: refusing to help Kim Delaney, and burning all that magic blowing out the tires on Parker's truck, and he was high when he did that second thing. 

Murphy, though. Fuckin Muprhy. She's only slightly less weird and shitty, in absolute terms, than she was in the last book, and in relative terms this one is much worse, because she has no reason for it. Also, in the previous book, it was in service if the themes, at least, isolation and all that, and here it's actually at odds with them. Fool Moon is about trust, cooperation, closeness. Hence all the pack-hunting apex predators? It's not subtle. I think maybe Harry was supposed to keep something from Murphy, so we could play with the consequences of Our Hero failing to trust someone when he should have (and the difference between trusting someone's intent and trusting their competence), but since that's not actually here, and Harry's ability to play well with others develops pretty rapidly over the course of this book (compare him talking to Kim in the opening to talking to the Alphas in the second half), the effect is more "What to do when you're having character development and one of your closest friends isn't." 

In addition to all the words I used about Murphy in the previous retrospective: erratic, paranoid, and abusive, we can add "violent" and possibly "somewhat out of touch with reality". At one point she vaguely implies that there's a trauma thing, but it's never followed up on, and also why now?

The Loup Garou and Hexenwolf are both real folkloric monsters, although neither has quite the origin Bob asserts. "Loup Garou" is essentially just French for "werewolf", but Jim Butcher's version seems to owe more to to Cajun iteration (also known as the Rougarou), which is often the result of being cursed by a witch, although depending on depending on the version, you might also be able to become a Loup Garou on purpose (if you're a witch), having your blood drawn by one, or breaking the rules of Lent seven years in a row. Sometimes they can transform at will, sometimes it just happens, sometimes they need to eat human flesh to take wolf form. I could not find any reference to Loup Garou or Rougarou transforming at the full moon.  Rougarou are occasionally conflated with another mythological creature that eats human flesh, which I will not name here. The Hexenwolf, on the other hand, very much appears to have originated in Maryland. While online references are limited, and I was not prepared to spend several weeks tracking down the relevant library books, the hexenwolf is typically a part-wolf, part-human, standing about six feet tall. It is the mortal enemy of the marginally less obscure Snallygaster, which really feels like a missed opportunity. I can find no pre-Dresden references to Hexenwolves using a belt or other talisman to transform, although this concept certainly exists elsewhere in European werewolf lore. 

MacFinn's familial curse is a reference to the werewolves of Clan Allta, cursed by St. Natalis of Ulster so that every seven years, two members of the family turn into wolves, and have to go live in the woods. At the send of seven years, they return to human form and another pair take their place. Apparently this curse is sometimes attributed to St. Patrick instead, and it's understandable that Jim Butcher chose the guy people have like, heard of. Interestingly, the story has some additional parallels to Tera and MacFinn. The wolf approaching a potentially hostile stranger who may be able to help his (or in this case her) mate, The choice to trust the wolf in order to deliver that help. Strictly speaking, Harry doesn't bless MacFinn or perform Last Rites, but there's something similarly shaped in the way he uses his pentacle, the symbol of his faith, such as it is, to end MacFinn's suffering. The surviving wolf returns long enough to thank the priest and then vanishes into the woods, never to be seen again. 

Photo by Birgit Loit on Unsplash

In the werewolf witch trials of Livonia, we see some of Butcher's basis for the Hexenwulfen and, to a lesser extent, the Alphas. People accused of being werewolves often confessed to using wolf skins to transform, sometimes given to them by a demon, but sometimes by another person. Others used rituals, or special berries, or specially prepared drinks. It was during these trials that a man escaped execution for...werewolfism by insisting that he, and other werewolves, traveled to Hell several times a year to fight witches, and the Devil. The comparison to the Alphas should be obvious, although it would also have been cool of this came up during the conversation with Chauncy. 

Susan breaking Harry out if the haze of the wolf belt by calling his name is, of course, a reference to that idea that if someone the werewolf loves and trusts (hey look, themes) calls its name (sometimes its full name), it will turn human again. 

Lycanthropy is not currently recognized as a discreet psychological disorder, but has been described as part of other conditions involving psychosis, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. It is generally considered a culture-bound syndrome, although more for its having distinct manifestations in different cultures than for only appearing at all in a few. A young woman of my acquaintance some 15 years ago, a furry, nearly lost her kids when her ex-husband attempted to convince the court that she had clinical lycanthropy. (Come to think of it, why don't any of the Streetwolves seem to have children?)

One werewolf story Jim Butcher chose not to use, that I rather wish he had, is the Wulver, a largely benevolent werewolf that catches fish. They are furry, roughly human-shaped, and have a wolf's head. They are supposed to have originated in Shetland, but debate exists about whether they are folkloric or fictional in origin. Wulver are also like, maybe fae, and it would have been interesting to throw a properly fae wolf creature in here. there is, however, something of the Wulver's tendency to look after locals (by leaving fish on their windowsills) in the Alphas' dedicated protection of the area around the university. We just don't see much of that in this book because they're still so new. 

I have been unable to narrow down Tera West's origins with any precision. Animals that take human form, including and especially for romantic purposes, are, of course, all of the place, but the only wolf I could ding in a wolf half hour of research is a Croatian story along similar lines as the Selkie. The hunter pins a she-wolf's skin to a millwheel while she's in human form, and marries her. Eventually, their children ask him where the skin is, and when they tell her, she uses it to resume her human form and vanishes, never to return. I think Tera was intended to be more along the lines of the Salish Fish Man, who takes his new wife to live with him under the sea (she's fine - they have houses and all), but she's pretty noticeably not a fish, although she very well might be Salish. I have no way of knowing if this is an "Evan isn't good enough at research" problem or a "Jim Butcher making things up" problem. If you know a story that's a closer match for Tera, please let me know in the comments. 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

And this seems like an excellent time to segue into the problematic shit roundup. In as close as I can get to chronological order without spending forever looking things up. 

• Harry feeling "weak" for asking a woman for help when he calls Susan for a ride. 
• "Like some sort of Latin goddess". Ew. 
• The first black character of the series exists only to get eaten by MacFinn. 
• Susan and Tera enjoy being the objects of sexual desire, and use their sexuality to get things they want, and the text celebrates them for it, and that's fine as far as it goes, but Benn and Lana, by contrast, openly an unabashedly want sex, and the text villainizes them, uses them as case examples for the dangers of the wolf belts and lycanthropy respectively, and then kills them. Both women also actively and deliberately interfere with their respective partner/leader's ability ti think clearly and behave reasonably at crucial moments. Benn being referred to almost exclusively by her surname, which is a conventionally masculine name with an extra letter, also feels kind of transmisogynistic, what with how she's hypersexual and an extremely literal predator and all. I also like, noticed that Tera and Susan are both women of color, while Benn and Lana are both while, but I'm unsure of how to fir that in with the rest of it. 
• Tera goddamn West. Shes the first of like, four Native characters in the whole series. She is also literally an animal and spends most of the book naked. I hope I don't need to elaborate on this. 

And now, as promised, our final set of bullet points, the list of things on which we are keeping an eye. 

• The series' difficult relationship with the law and law enforcement. 
• Susceptibility of those who serve the law to psychic trauma and manipulation. 
• Harry has a major vulnerability to things that make stuff hurt less, because he is always in serious physical and emotional discomfort. What is this doing thematically?
• The parallel development of the text's attitude towards women and Harry's attitude towards women. 
• The inadequacy of systems compared to individual judgement and action. 
• Sometimes ingredients for different potions are weirdly similar. Why?
• They "have nots" of the magical community are largely of lower socioeconomic status. Why? It makes sense that powerful magic users can make money if they want, but shouldn't there be minor practitioners who come from money? Where are they?

Photo by Simon Berger on Unsplash

We're starting to see the beginnings of series plot here. Billy and the Alphas are, of course, recurring characters going forward, and Harry has started to notice a pattern in the spoopy stuff happening around him, even if he doesn't yet have enough information to make sense of it. Susan is getting more competent, but also less careful, gearing up for her transformation in the next book and her reappearance in book 5. 

And that's what I've got for this one. We will very probably start talking about Grave Peril later this week, like maybe Thursday. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!