Dresden Files Reread - Summer Knight Chapter 6

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The Red Court, according to LaFortier, claims that Harry is a criminal, and wants to extradite him for trial. That this is taken seriously by anyone on the Senior Council, even LaFortier, suggests to me that there are probably limits on what they can do to him at such a trial, but either Harry isn't thinking about that, or those limits are not sufficient to keep Harry alive. That the word "extradite" is used implies that the Reds are exercising some agreed upon arrangement, maybe some part of the Unseelie Accords, but it isn't really made clear. LaFortier says they should consider this, and several Wizards immediately start shouting. Several other wizards start shouting at them, and the entire room devolves into noisy chaos for a few minutes, until the Merlin uses some kind of mild but large scale flashbang spell to shut everybody up. The Merlin also thinks this is worth considering. McCoy objects, both because Harry was maneuvered by the Red Court into the actions they're now claiming are criminal (he doesn't use the word "entrapment" but that's the idea) and because handing one of their own to the vampires sets a bad precedent. LaFortier argues that if Harry was outmaneuvered politically, he should live with the consequences, which I think utterly overlooks the fact that Harry wasn't trying to do politics. Listens to Wind says that peace can't be bought, and that LaFortier should know this, referencing both what happened to Native Americans and various European states, in this case most notably France, trying to compromise with Hitler. LaFortier initially pretends not to know what he's talking about, which, y'know, speaking of playing politics and losing, would have made LaFortier look stupid more than it compromised Listens To Wind's credibility even if Harry hadn't explained for the rest of the class. 

The Merlin snaps at Harry for speaking out of turn. Harry says he thought they had a responsibility to protect people, and the Merlin says they can't protect anyone if they're all dead, which I cannot help but notice is sort of at odds with "even in victory they would pay too high a cost." In point of fact it's sort of at odds with framing the Red Court as the kind of enemy who would even consider the cost of victory. There are reasons that most wars don't end with one side wiped out in its entirety, and that wholesale slaughter is pretty much always more expensive than negotiated surrender is pretty high on that list. Although this sorta gets back to that whole "what does war even mean in this context" thing, because another reason that's way up there is that usually you want most of the occupants of your newly conquered territory to keep farming or going to work or whatever they were doing before you won the war, just with you running things and collecting taxes instead of whoever was in charge previously. Like most things, this picture gets a little fuzzy when you get to industrialized warfare, but the Red Court and the White Council aren't industrialized states either. I suppose an ideal victory for the Reds here might involve killing a couple of the people they particularly dislike, like Harry and Simon, and then negotiating a surrender from the Council on terms that enable them to turn a lot of the rest of them. I don't know what guarantees the Council could, or would have to, make for this to be like, viable, since half-turned vampires who don't want to be vampires have a tendency to take up with the Fellowship of St. Giles, and the Red Court's own internal politics would likely preclude their allowing their newly turned wizards to become full vampires right away. 

LaFortier goes on to explain that DuMorne was Simon Petrovich's apprentice, and that since Harry was DuMorne's apprentice, he could have learned about the defenses at Archangel from him. Okay so just how much of a role did Bob have in Justin going over to the dark side anyway? If Simon was aligned with the forces of evil, he was damned subtle about it, sufficiently so not only to hold a place on the Senior Council but to be liked and respected by McCoy. Whatever happened, it was almost certainly after Justin completed his apprenticeship, and the only thing we really know about the time between his becoming a full wizard and his adopting Harry is that he was a Warden, which is not something they let you do if they can tell you're evil. As it happens, of course, Justin deliberately isolated Harry from the Council, didn't even tell him that there were other Wizards, so he certainly didn't show Harry around Simon's fancy magical defenses. Also, we may talk about this more later, but Justin absolutely did not have to go to the restraint and enthrallment place to turn Harry evil. He didn't know anything about the normal boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable uses of magic. He loved Justin and was desperate for his approval. "Yeah so there's this body of old dudes who don't like me and might eventually come after us. They hate me because I'm stronger than them/willing to innovate/teach kids like you and Elaine rather than keeping all the power for myself/whatever. Anyway let's learn some mind control." It wouldn't have been hard to persuade him. 

Anyway, Harry laughs out loud at this suggestion. LaFortier says this shows his contempt for the Council, and that even if Harry didn't tell the vampires about Simon's defenses, he still bears personal responsibility for the deaths at Archangel and should face the consequences. Harry points out that he's a full Wizard, and hasn't broken any of the laws of magic, so he's entitled to a full investigation - the Council can't pass a summary judgement.  LaFortier, who may have been angling for exactly this, says Harry might not be a full Wizard, since he never passed a formal Trial, which is apparently a thing. Again I ask what exactly were the circumstances of Harry leaving McCoy's farm. It's not like he didn't know about facing a Trial, and from his lack of surprise I think Harry knew too. The Merlin grants LaFortier's motion, but McCoy gets the vote restricted to just the Senior Council, on the basis that there's a lot the White Council as a whole doesn't know about the situation, protecting Harry from the fear of a few hundred Wizards who are distressingly willing to believe that handing Harry to the vampires might mean this whole war thing will go away. While this was not explicated in what LaFortier proposed, the Merlin specifically called for a vote on whether to return Harry to the rank of apprentice. I find this more than a little troubling, because while I can sort of understand apprentices not having the right to a full investigation, this ought to be because they're not really legally independent, and can't be held entirely responsible for their actions. Honestly, while obviously frightened people might do almost anything, I would expect at least as many wizards to resist the precedent of being forced to hand their own apprentices over to such a fate as would oppose the proposition of having it done to one of their peers. 

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The Merlin votes for Harry's being reduced to an apprentice, in the best interests of the council and
humanity as a whole. LaFortier votes the same way, and for the same reasons. This makes me Extremely Curious how a vote of the full council actually works, and whether each member would have a similar opportunity to speak about their reasons for voting the way they did, or simply say that they agree with someone who spoke before. The Roman Senate worked like this, in the Republic, where each Senator, in descending order of age, with younger Senators typically aligning themselves with older ones rather than taking their own positions. Although, of course, the Senate had no formal powers, and only made "recommendations" to the actual voting bodies (that were nearly always followed). McCoy says that he knows Harry, that he's a Wizard, and Listens to Wind essentially seconds this, saying that Harry comports himself as a Wizard should. Martha votes with McCoy and Listens to Wind, but on the basis that stripping Harry of his stole and handing him over to the vampires won't really solve anything, it's just action for the sake of doing something. Ancient Mai votes against Harry, saying that he misuses his magic and his status as a member of the Council, which like, that first thing is at least arguable but I have no idea where she's getting the second thing. The Gatekeeper, who has not been mentioned up to this point because Harry didn't notice him, and who is briefly described here, sort of, votes that it rained frogs this morning. When pressed to elaborate, he says he needs to wait for the messenger. LaFortier claims not to know what he's talking about, which is apparently his signature move, but of course at that moment, two Wardens come in, basically dragging a 3/4 frozen apprentice, very obviously the courier sent to Winter. So I guess maybe apprentices really are just that disposable after all. He was dumped out of a moving car just outside, and the Wardens didn't get the license plate number, or even consider that they ought to, which Harry attributes to the license plate being too modern an invention for them to know about, but I think it's worth considering that glamour may have been involved. 

Ancient Mai talks to him a little bit, until he collapses, and then relays that Mab has agreed to allow the White Council safe passage through her lands, provided one request is granted, and that she's already conveyed this request to a member of the Council. Harry, displaying his usual subtlety and discretion, starts banging his head gently on the table. The Gatekeeper puts his hand on Harry's arm, confirms that Harry knows what the frogs mean, then secures them against eavesdropping, and asks if Mab has chosen an Emissary. When Harry confirms that she has, he tells Harry that this is all about balance, and to restore the balance and "prove [his] worth beyond doubt". Then he returns to the stage, and spends a while validating everyone's feelings, except the Merlin's, which he says are understandable but not reasonable. McCoy gets impatient before he gets to Martha or Listens to Wind, and demands to know how he vote. The Gatekeeper says he will base his vote on whether Harry can fulfill Mab's request, which should also function as a proper Trial for him. McCoy fusses a little until Harry explains that he already knows what Mab wants, he just didn't plan on doing it, and says he'll do the thing. He's not happy about it, but some part of him feels like this is just comeuppance for the things he did last fall. I'm like 85% sure that's the trauma talking. 

This ought to have been part of the previous post, but I did want to note here that the stone lions from Chapter 5 are another instance of the series's difficult relationship with laws and law enforcement. That they have saved lives before suggests that the system whereby either of the Wardens on gate duty for an event can bring them out based on like, vibes, does at least sort of work, but that there have been accidents (implicitly ones involving the constructs violently attacking innocent wizards) does not speak well of the system as a whole. In light of the publication date, it's difficult not to see this as a commentary on the then newly formed TSA and other draconian (and largely performative) security measures implemented after 9/11, but I'm not sure what that comment is, unless it's "doing effective security without hurting people who didn't do anything wrong is hard and complicated". 

Anyway, that's what I got for now. Gonna try to have the next post ready within a week, but as usual, no promises. Also I noticed recently that the patreon button is all weird and hard to see, so I'm gonna try and fix that. I promise it still works, if you want to make it so I can spend more time on blog posts and less on any of my other half a dozen jobs. Until next time, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!  

Dresden Files Reread - Summer Knight Chapter 5

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With Simon dead, the Merlin is going to want "one of the Germans" to take his place on the senior council. McCoy points out that he has at least 50 years seniority on all of them, but Martha Liberty says it won't matter because the Merlin thinks there are already too many Americans on the Senior Council. By my count, there are two, Martha herself and Listens to Wind. We will revisit this in a little bit. 

On the way in, McCoy asks Harry how his Latin is, if he's going to need translation, and Harry says he's got it. I cannot readily determine whether it was previously established that Council meetings are conducted in Latin, although if it was, it wasn't in this book. It's an... interesting conceit. I believe we're told at some point, possibly in a later book, that they use Latin because with such a range of languages present among the White Council, it would be unreasonable to use anyone's native language, but it sure doesn't escape my notice that this is going to make full participation in the Council easiest for people whose native language is, or whose native or comfortable languages include, a Romance language like Spanish, French, and Italian, and to a lesser extent people whose native language or languages include English, which is a Germanic language but has a lot of Latin influence, and hardest for people whose native language or languages are off the Indo-European map entirely, like, oh, much of east Asia and a fair amount of Africa. (The latter is complicated - lots of people in lots of parts of Africa speak an Indo-European language as a first or fluent second language, largely, but not exclusively, because of colonialism and imperialism). Or, for that matter, older Wizards from Australia and the Americas. It does not escape my notice that five of the White Council's seven members definitely or probably have an Indo-European language as their first language, and that Ancient Mai is the only one who I would confidently say probably doesn't. (It's... really hard to say, with Listens to Wind. I'd need to know how old he was.)  Harry suggests that McCoy go in ahead of him, so they're not obviously arriving together, as this might cause problems for McCoy given Harry's reputation and the charges that are about to be leveled against him. 

When Harry does go in, it's dark and hot; with so many wizards in one place, the lights and air conditioning didn't stand a chance.  There's a security checkpoint with a pair of Wardens, both wearing red stoles. One of them, perhaps inevitably, is Morgan, whom we haven't seen since the end of Storm Front. The other Warden scans Harry with a crystal that lights up at each of his chakra points - no attempt is made to explain what or where these are - and detects nothing out of the ordinary. Morgan, of course, is not satisfied with this, and instructs the other Warden to get "the dogs", a pair of threat-detecting magical constructs modeled after Chinese guardian lions, and which Harry refers to as "wardhounds". They are, and I cannot stress this enough, not dogs. Like, I'm not wholly unsympathetic to the confusion here - their posture is often very canine, and if I'd seen like, a chow-chow or a Tibetan mastiff but had never been told that those statues are meant to be lions, I might guess that they were dogs, yeah? But it was not hard, in 2001, to find out that they're lions. Like, I readily buy Morgan not bothering to keep it straight, and that the term "wardhound" has too much traction to easily be replaced at this point, but either Harry or the other Warden could have told the reader that they're lions. Anyway, they circle Harry for a minute, and then one of them alerts on his hand. Morgan is very ready to take this as a reason to turn Harry away, but the other Warden points out that if Harry's bleeding, they could just be reacting to the magical power of his blood, especially if he's also upset. Morgan makes Harry unbandage his hand before he can go in, which hurts and makes it start bleeding again, after which the constructs lose interest. 

Once Harry's inside, we get a description of what the White Council, as a group, looks like. The emphasis here is meant to be on the diversity, but there's some truly unfortunate phrasing, most notably "canted Oriental eyes". Don't use "oriental" to describe people, please? If you're at all uncertain, maybe don't use it at all unless you're talking about like, oriental shorthair cats or something. The "variety of humanity" present is apparently "startling", which is a bit odd since Harry lives in Chicago, not exactly a bastion of heterogeneity. Chicago's population is almost 30% black and about 7% Asian. Not only has Harry seen black and Asian people before, he's seen both like, most times that he left the house, probably. More than 35% of Chicagoans speak a language other than English as their main language. This should not be a "startling" experience for Harry. Again, this could have pretty easily been addressed with a sentence to the effect of "I mean, I live in a city, seeing a lot of different kinds of people in the same place isn't exactly new territory, but this was on another level." if there was really a need to stress the diversity here. We also learn that there are gold stoles, in addition to the red, blue, and purple, although we still aren't told what this means, and that wizards are supposed to wear black robes, but apprentices wear brown, and apparently don't get to sit in chairs. The apprentices are also mostly around Harry's age, which by this point in the series approaches late 20s, which puts some context both on his own construction of himself as unusually advanced for his age and the tendency of older wizards to treat him like he's basically still a child. There's a roped-off section for representatives of the White Court's allies, but we get no details on who they actually represent, or even whether these are other groups of human practitioners or nonhuman powers within the supernatural world. 

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The space the Council rented out for this meeting is a dinner theater, so most of the assembled wizards
are sitting around small tables, while the Senior Council does their thing from the stage. At the moment, the Merlin is saying, in Latin, that he moves to skip many of the usual formalities and go straight to talking about the war with the Red Court. I would very much like to know what those formalities usually are, but I don't think we ever find out. There's a general murmur of assent, and no direct call to see if anyone is opposed. This general assent with no request for opposing voices comes up repeatedly in this chapter, and I don't know if they've got something magical set up to actually count the "aye"s, or if they're just going off of "eh, sounds about right" and assuming someone would speak up if they were really opposed. When he sees Harry, the Merlin calls him out for being late and wearing a bathrobe. Harry resists the impulse to be snippy, and attempts to apologize and explain that he meant to have his other robe. When the Merlin doesn't understand, or pretends not to, he tries again to apologize for his lateness and appearance. I gotta note here that while Harry's Latin is in fact pretty bad, the Merlin is apparently fluent, and is definitely a native English speaker, so unless what Harry said was a lot less grammatical than McCoy's translation makes it sound, it shouldn't have been that confusing. Like, "a long, sad day held me" is an unusual way to express that it's been a long, stressful day, but not unclear, and while "I need me a new laundress" is grammatically incorrect and doesn't mean what Harry meant to say, if someone said that to me, especially in a language I knew they didn't speak very well, I would figure they meant there was a mistake at the dry cleaner, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to bring up in this situation. Which leads me to conclude that the Merlin's confusion here is at least partly feigned, in order to make Harry look stupid and give him a chance to say something even more embarrassing while trying to clarify. That's just mean. I'd also love to know more about how exactly the power dynamics of the Council actually work, that the Merlin gets to be as rude as he initially was to Harry here. This is not the only time he does that, and he pulls something similar with Ramirez in Proven Guilty, but we don't see any other wizard try it in a formal setting, even when they're talking to Harry, and the Merlin and McCoy both use English when they insult each other a little later in this chapter, so he's clearly not just like this with everyone. I also think it's worth observing here that Harry doesn't point out that he got needlessly held up at security. Maybe he just doesn't have the Latin for it, but he's being more professional than the Merlin here, bad Latin notwithstanding, and that's interesting. Harry finally accepts McCoy's offer to translate, and he apologizes on Harry's behalf, which calms everyone down.  

While the Merlin informs the Council as a whole about Simon's death, and how it's an escalation by the Red Court, McCoy explains that the Merlin will want to fill the open seat on the Senior Council with someone who will reliably vote with him, and that he'll have three plans for taking Harry down: a plan, a backup plan, and an ace in the hole. Moments later, the Merlin does in fact move to appoint Wizard Schneider to the Senior Council. Martha and Listens to Wind both object, Martha to the lack of debate, Listens to Wind to Scheider's age. McCoy moves that the appointment of a Senior Council member is too important to leave to consensus, and they begin going through the registry in descending order of age. This is also where we get out first sight of Wizard Peabody, here using magic to sort through his files to find the wizards who have first refusal on the newly opened seat. The first one called is Wizard Montjoy, who's apparently on a research trip in the Yucatan. That's... not a very safe place for a wizard of the White Council to be right now. Like, that's where Chichen Itza is. White Council intelligence on the Red Court is apparently piss poor right now, because it's established a little later that they believe the Reds' center of power to be "somewhere in South America" but have apparently not been able to narrow it down any further, but I sure did notice that Wizard Montjoy, who is never mentioned again in the series so far as I can tell, is on a "research trip" in Red Court territory during an important Council meeting about the war with the Reds. (In my efforts to confirm that he doesn't come up in a later book, I found a pretty compelling Reddit thread suggesting that Cowl is Wizard Montjoy). They spend 15 minutes going through senior wizards, most of whom are not in attendance, before getting to McCoy, and shortly thereafter, to Klaus Schneider, who declines the nomination, saying that McCoy will serve the Council more ably. This refusal suggests to me that the Merlin's preference for Scheider in this position is less a question of alliance or political agreement than of patronage. Prematurely elevated to a position he could not have hoped to reach on his own for decades at least, Wizard Schneider would have been forced by existing social norms to vote with the Merlin, and he doesn't much like the idea of being used that way. The Merlin asks if anyone else would like to put themselves forward, but no one does, and McCoy joins the rest of the senior council on the stage. 

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Morgan reports next on the status of the war, using a crystal to project an image of the earth marked with
the locations of attacks. They're clustered in Western Europe, where secrecy norms still carry a lot of weight. While no one says it explicitly, this means that in addition to the obvious concerns about loss of life, the Reds are threatening that secrecy, and that the wizards being targeted may be reluctant to use all available options to defend themselves. The attack on Archangel gets particular attention, not only for being recent and relatively largely scale, and involving the death of a Senior Council member, but because their ability to get through Simon's defenses indicate a greater understanding of magic than the Reds are believed to have possessed. Additionally, there have been attacks on or harassment of wizards using the Ways though the nevernever. Wizards can't easily use things like airplanes, or even cars, to travel quickly, but vampires can, putting the White Council at a serious disadvantage, so securing access to safe passage is a priority. Unfortunately, Titania intends to remain neutral, as is apparently usual for her, and the courier sent to Winter did not return, although history suggests that Mab will choose to involve herself eventually. The Merlin stresses the need to maintain good diplomatic relations with Winter until she does, or until the conflict is "resolved", which makes Harry all kinds of uncomfortable since he annoyed her like, this afternoon. Martha Liberty doesn't much like this either, but her issue is with the word "resolved". The Merlin seems to think this can be resolved without open aggression, and that the Reds will sue for peace without serious hostilities, because the cost of victory would be too high. Martha thinks they won't sue for peace as long as they're, y'know, winning. They're both wrong, but the Merlin is like, completely wrong, whereas Martha is only a little bit wrong. As long as the White Council basically isn't fighting back, it makes sense for the Reds to keep poking at them, strengthening the position from which they will eventually negotiate the Council's surrender, but they will want to negotiate eventually. The Merlin's "stand there and take it" strategy is not going to credibly establish that the cost of attacking the Council is too high to bear... kinda the opposite. Of course, they have already proposed a peace agreement, with an accompanying ceasefire, although as Harry points out they already broke it by attacking Harry like, maybe six whole hours ago. Wizard LaFortier, who received their missive, waves this off as like, of course they can't control everyone who works for them, which strikes me as rather thin when they can use like, cell phones.

There's some extended reiteration of what Harry did in the previous book, including some suggestion by LaFortier that "burn the building down" is like, Harry's signature move, and therefore indicates his culpability in starting the war, even though the last two times he's did that before Bianca's place, he was actively fighting an evil wizard, and those cases were deemed by the Council to be justified self-defense and sufficiently heroic to have the Doom of Damocles lifted, respectively. Not to say that "burn the building down" isn't Harry's signature move, but that just indicates his involvement, which is hardly a secret in any case, not his guilt. LaFortier says that they should consider giving the Reds what they want, and when Harry asks what exactly that is, after making some sarcastic suggestions, he reveals that what they want is Harry. 

I'm honestly intrigued by the amount that Jim Butcher isn't explaining or explicating here. This is our first look at the White Council and in some ways we haven't actually learned a lot. But Our Hero is properly in the soup now. If I keep up the current pace, I might be able to get you the next post in like, 5-7 days? Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read all the things!   

Dresden Files Reread - Summer Knight Chapter 4

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Harry stands in the doorway of his office for a minute, processing. He's scared, "a rational sort of fear that puts a lawn chair down in the front of your thoughts and brings a cooler of drinks along with it." which is too specific and clear an image not to just quote directly. He compares it to waiting for the results of a medical test, which is interesting inasmuch as it implies that Harry has at some point had the kind of access to healthcare necessary to get medical tests and experienced a health problem that warranted testing with potentially frightening results. He's entered a bargain with Mab, whom he initially describes as the queen of wicked faeries, although he almost immediately corrects himself - not all the unseelie, the winter court, are evil, any more than all the seelie summer court are good. Wizards can live a very long time, but Harry's pretty clear that this doesn't entirely apply to him, since he has a habit of starting fights with people and things way the heck outside his own weight class, and while that's gone okay so far, it's not, realistically, going to keep going okay indefinitely. He did have a choice, technically, in whether to accept Mab's bargain or not, although the consequences of refusal were unlikely to be pleasant, or survivable.  He considers the possibility that he took Mab's bargain because he needs to live long enough to help Susan, but Inner Harry, or some other voice in Harry's head, thinks it's more likely that he just wanted to live, full stop. He figures Mab wouldn't have offered him the Reuel case if it wouldn't somehow get him in deeper with her, and more entangled in fae politics generally, which isn't a bad thought, although it doesn't escape my notice that by this reasoning, he can't safely accept any task she offers him, which is going to prove something of a complication if he ever wants to get out of her debt. 

He also has the council meeting tonight, which is enough of a stressor for one day, honestly, and for which he still needs to get ready. And if that sounds like a blunt, awkward transition, I assure you it has nothing on the one in the text itself. He also has the sense that he's forgetting something, and after a moment realizes that he still needs money, and Mab didn't actually offer to pay him for any of this. It's confirmed in Blood Rites that he did not, in fact, get payed for the work he did in this book, and I don't actually remember how he gets out from under the money situation here. He stops by his apartment long enough to get the things he'll need for the meeting, or as close as he can manage, but doesn't have time to shower, and the only food left in the house is half a candy bar, which he puts in his pocket. There's bad traffic on the way to the meeting, and of course the air conditioning in the Blue Beetle doesn't work - we're given a refresher on the way technology tends to misbehave around wizards. 

Ebenezer McCoy arrives at the convention center where the Council is meeting at almost the same time Harry does, and we get descriptions of the truck, and the rack where he keeps his shotgun and his staff. This is foreshadowing of a sort. I don't remember how much of it is established in this book, but we're going to hear a lot between here and the end of Blood Rites about how McCoy taught Harry that magic is a creative force, that it's wrong, even blasphemous to turn it to destructive ends, and almost the first thing we learn about him is that he keeps his staff and his shotgun on the same rack, a staggeringly unsubtle indication that he thinks of magic as a weapon first, and whatever else it might be second. McCoy himself is described as well, and Harry asks why he's here, since he never comes to Council meetings if he can avoid it. McCoy says that the last time he missed a meeting, they saddled him with a teenage apprentice. This goes into their backstory together, which we'll get to in a second, but I did want to note here that this means he was at the council meeting Morgan called after the events of Storm Front. Which may help account for the council having decided to lift the Doom of Damocles. 

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We learn about how, after DuMorne's death, after Harry was tried and found guilty of breaking the First Law of magic, Harry, as he was still a minor, couldn't just be left to his own devices, and so he was sent to live with McCoy, on his farm in Hog Hollow, Missouri, to keep an eye on him and teach him how to control his power. He didn't teach Harry much actual magic, but he did make him do a lot of farm work, and taught him about patience, and about the importance of creating things, making something worthwhile. It was a good place for him. "A good place for me then," (my italics) it says, which I double checked to make sure it wasn't "at the time" or any more similarly loaded phrase, because this kinda drew my attention to the fact that we don't actually know exactly when or why Harry left. Harry says he wasn't that bad, and McCoy retorts that Harry burned down his barn, and alludes to a noodle incident involving the laundry that frightened McCoy's cat so badly it left and never returned. He asks about the toad blood stains covering Harry's car, and the bandage around his hand. He tells McCoy about the toads, but describes the hand injury as the result of an accident in the office. He says he's okay, but won't meet McCoy's eyes, fearing to see disappointment there, which... literally why? Like I understand why he doesn't want to disappoint his former mentor, the only person he regularly addresses as "sir", but it's not immediately clear why he thinks he would have, or might have, done so. It's possible this is about his having, from his own rather skewed perspective, put Susan in danger, but the evidence kinda points against his protectiveness being something he picked up from McCoy. I think here especially of how surprised Harry is by McCoy's insistence that Maggie must be sent away until she's old enough to show magical potential. Could just be a trauma thing, though. It's not like, unusual for people who've been through something awful and violating to feel like "Oh, I've failed everyone whose opinion I care about" even though nothing of the sort has actually happened. 

McCoy observes that the Senior Council is pretty annoyed with Harry, and that he's not going to make a stellar impression when he walks in wearing a blue flannel bathrobe. Harry points out that he's supposed to wear a robe, everyone is, and more seriously that Mister used his good robe as a litter box, so this is his only option. He's also got a blue silk stole, which does not go with the bathrobe. McCoy, who brought proper robes but isn't wearing them because it's too hot, has a red stole, although the significance of the colors is not explained, and I honestly don't remember what they all mean, except that blue is for regular wizards and purple is for members of the senior council. Red might be for wizards who have been part of the Council for more than a century? He tells Harry that a few members of the Senior Council want to talk to him, before they "close the circle", an extremely neopagan phrase which suggest that there may have been a time when the Council's meetings were primarily for the purposes of group workings, rather than governance. Harry is unenthusiastic about this idea, and goes all the way to angry when he realizes that McCoy is risking social capital to arrange this meeting. He goes on a bit about his unwillingness to suck up to the Senior Council, and expresses surprise that McCoy would suggest such a thing, considering he has in the past spoken about the Senior Council in vivid and disrespectful terms. McCoy denies this, and vaguely threatens Harry, to which Harry says to go ahead, threats don't impress him like they used to. This is not hugely surprising considering he told Mab essentially the same thing.

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McCoy starts laughing, and asks what appears to be an empty parking space if it's satisfied. From under the best veil Harry's ever seen, two members of the Senior Council emerge. The first is Martha Liberty, the second of the approximately five named black characters in this entire series. She says that Harry's arrogant, which he points out applies to every wizard ever, and that he's bitter, angry, and obsessive, which McCoy points out he has every reason to be. Martha says "You know what he was meant to be." which I think is the first hint we get in the series that Justin had some specific plan for Harry beyond "recruit a relatively powerful young wizard to the side of evil". She tells McCoy to look at the destruction Harry has caused in his conflict with Bianca, but McCoy's not having it, saying that Harry was right to stand up to her. I'm not like, wholly unsympathetic to the White Council's position here, but I do think McCoy has the right of it here, inasmuch as a policy of "let them do whatever they want so they don't get upset" is not gonna result in less shitty behavior from the vampires. Martha tries to bring up something the Merlin said, but McCoy cuts her off. She shifts gears pretty abruptly, asking Harry if he remembers her (he doesn't - the only time they've been in the same room previously was at his trial, and he had a bag over his head for that), and then kind of feels his aura, observing that he's hurt, emotionally. Apparently this is what she was looking for, because she agrees to support McCoy. She steps back to the side of the other Senior Council member, and we get our initial description of Wizard Listens to Wind. 

This next part is really goddamned racist. The "Injun Joe" thing is weird and gross and I don't know why it's presented as funny. The "How" thing I actually had to look up - I knew it was a Thing in racist, stereotypical depictions of indigenous Americans, but not the particulars; per the first paragraph on Wikipedia, it's a "pop culture Anglicization" of the Lakota word "hau", but the source link leads to a 404 error, and the paragraphs below give two different linguistic origins and three different meanings, all provided by old dead white people. I think most people who could reasonably be expected to be reading Dresden Files probably mostly know this one as a stereotype, so I think the joke here is supposed to be "Harry accidentally said something that could be misinterpreted as racist" but like, it's not funny? I'm also pretty sure you're not supposed to describe people of color as "inscrutable". Harry getting the shit startled out of him by a baby racoon is funny, obviously, but I'm not sure "Here's the first native American character introduced in the series (one of like, one to four depending on whether you want to count Tera, who isn't human, and whether you want to count Anna Ash and Fitz, both of whom are described as looking like they might have native ancestry), and here's his animal friend that he can talk to" is a good look either, although I'd probably be more forgiving if it weren't in, y'know, this context. Anyway, we're told here that he's an Illinois "medicine man" (this term is also racist, but I will grant some leeway here on account of that was harder to find out in 2002 than it is now, and would have been harder for McCoy, who can't use a computer, to find out in 2002 than it would have been for me in 2002, notwithstanding that this entire area of cultural practice is super private and even asking directly might not have gotten McCoy, much less Jim Butcher, the correct term to use - I probably would have settled on "traditional healer" or "ritual specialist", but I'm not like, confident those are good choices). Anyway, the Illinois Confederation was an organization of 12 or 13 different mostly Miami-Illinois language-speaking peoples in the Mississippi River Valley, most of the surviving descendants of whom are now part of the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, although some of the Mitchigamea merged with the Quapaw Nation. I should note that trying to get even this much detail nailed took about the maximum time and effort it's reasonably possible for me to put in for a blog post. Kept running into walls of "Yeah we don't know, because genocide" and "Yeah someone probably knows but we don't care enough to put it on the internet, because racism". If I have avoided dangerous oversimplification and outright inaccuracy, I will take that as a win. The baby racoon is cute though. 

McCoy asks where Simon Peitrovich is, which brings the others around to the news that he's dead, along with everyone else at his compound in Archangel. That's presumably Arkhangelsk (Архангельск, Russian for Archangel), a city in Russia and the administrative center (I believe this is comparable to a state capital in the US) of the oblast of the same name. Arkhangelsk, the city, is a modern port city, if rather closer in scale to St. Louis than to Chicago, and I'm not really sure where you could put a "tower" and an associated compound that could reasonably be described as a "fortress" without its attracting some notice. This suggests to me that Simon's compound may have been somewhere else in the oblast, maybe in the border security zone, where restricted access kind of inherently makes things harder to notice because fewer people have the opportunity to see them. McCoy is visibly distressed by Simon's death in and of itself, but the Red Court's attack on his compound presents another, more immediate difficulty. Someone let the vampires in, past a substantial portion of Simon's formidable defenses, and some in the White Council, including the Merlin, are going to think that Harry either did this or orchestrated it. Martha says "master to student" - I think it's established later that the master in question who was familiar with Simon's defenses was Justin, but I'm not 100% sure. Bottom line, the Merlin is going to accuse Harry of starting this war, and try to have him held responsible for "a number of deaths", and without Simon, they don't have enough people in the Senior Council on Harry's side to stop it from going to a general vote, which is unlikely to go Harry's way. 

Hey, look, I actually got one of these done basically within the timeframe I was hoping for. We'll see if I can keep that up as we head into the summer, yeah? Until next time, be Gay, do Crimes, and read All The Things!  

Dresden Files Reread - Summer Knight Chapter 3

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 Harry is thoroughly freaked out by the realization that Mab is a fairy queen. He repeats, in narration, that she's a Fairy Queen four times. (I have nothing on the numerological significance of this one.) He describes fear like ice water, how it can spread down your body, chilling and weakening you, even as your mind screams at you to run away. Mab acknowledges Harry's unmistakable terror as a sign of wisdom on his part, and asks how it feels. He compares her to Godzilla, and isn't sure what she thinks about it. In case the reader isn't sure whether Harry's exaggerating in comparing her to a Kaiju, we are told that short of summoning up a god or fighting the White Council directly, he's unlikely to come up against anything with as much raw power as she has. Notably, of course, at the present writing, Harry has dealt with a number of old gods, including summoning the Erlking, who's supposed to be on a level with Mab, and may be gearing up to face off against the White Council, based on the events of the end of Battle Ground. Which, if this power scaling is accurate, rather suggests that he could take Mab, if he had to, give or take that he's currently her Knight and dependent on the Winter Mantle for his ability to do things like walking and using the bathroom unassisted. 

Harry hates being afraid, and he hates being bullied - it makes him angry, maybe too angry to make good choices, because he tells her to just blast him and get it over with. It's not like he can stop her, not when his debt gives her enough leverage to make him put a letter opener through his hand. She approves of his defiance, reiterating that he is what she needs. He says he won't be her emissary unless she forces him, and that he's unlikely to meet her needs under those conditions. Obviously this is setup for the longer version of this same exchange that they have at the end of Ghost Story, but I think it also reflects Harry's ability to think and perceive under pressure. It actually took some attention to extrapolate from Mab's assertion that Harry's "fire" is what makes him what she needs for an emissary, and that by extension he wouldn't be much use if he's compelled. 

Mab says she's offering him a chance to win free of his obligations. Harry doesn't think she's much into freedom (indeed, she clarifies that she largely values it as a source of leverage), but can almost physically sense her sincerity when she says that she'll let him go if he meets her terms, so he agrees to hear her out. The basic terms are as follows: she will periodically make requests, and he's free when he fulfills three of them. Harry clarifies that he gets to choose which requests to fulfill, which Mab implies was already her intent, although I'm sure she wouldn't have held herself to it if Harry hadn't brought it up. Harry then adds that she can't punish him or otherwise retaliate if he refuses a request, get others to harass him, or transfer his debt to anyone else. Mab agrees to all three terms, and Harry confirms that they have a bargain. He can physically feel the new agreement coming into effect. The experience is not unlike that of Wile E. Coyote when he realizes that he's gone off the edge of a cliff, but Harry hopes that as long as he doesn't look down, he can just keep running. 

Photo by Heather Green on Unsplash

Mab gives him a manila envelope containing the details of her first request, that he investigate the murder of one Ronald Reuel, find something that was stolen from him (Mab says he'll know it when he sees it), return it to the rightful owners, and prove she wasn't involved. Yeah, so, Ronald Reuel - that would be Tolkien's middle names. In real life, at the time Summer Knight was published, Tolkein had been dead for close to 30 years, so I suppose we are meant to understand, once we have more details about who and what Reuel was, that at the time of his apparent death, he instead became the Summer Knight, and has remained in that position since. That would make him about 110 years old, but we know from Cold Days that the Mantles allow humans to reach, if not exceed, the limits of human physical capability, so this is not wholly impossible, even if we discount the possibility that Summer may have had some additional means of unnaturally prolonging his life, or of Tolkien himself having been a wizard or something else supernatural. I do note here that Tolkien was we really don't have a tidy, non-pejorative word for this, but he was very attached to his wife, Edith, and survived her by less than two years. It seems unlikely that he would choose to continue so long without her. However, given Tolkien's own identification of Edith with Luthien, it is reasonably possible that we are meant to understand Edith to have been a changeling, so she may in this setting have Chosen very late in life and also still be somewhere in Summer, although in that case I am mildly surprised she isn't more involved with the gaggle of changelings Reuel was looking after. Reuel is also known as a painter, not an author. Now, Tolkien could and did paint and draw, but I find it drastically unlikely that he would have stopped writing. It may be that whatever new writing he did was simply accumulating, unpublished, somewhere, or that we are meant to understand that he was passing work along to Christopher Tolkien, at that time still the manager of his works and estate, and that these comprise some or all of Tolkien's myriad posthumously published works. 

Mab won't tell Harry how she knows Reuel's death wasn't an accident, what was stolen, or what her interest in any of this even is, although she does heavily imply that it's not the mortal police she's worried about, but that she is worried about someone. Harry says he'll think about it, although Mab insists that he will take the case. She also insists that he walk her to the door, and then zaps his hand with cold, claiming when he complains that this is a violation of their bargain that she did it purely for spite, not in retaliation for his refusing the Reuel case. She tells him to expect to meet his Summer counterpart that evening, and when he reminds her that he's not her emissary yet, he hasn't taken the job, she tells him the story of the fox and the scorpion (the better known version is the frog and the scorpion, but it's the same story either way), and says that she knows he'll take the case because it's his nature. Harry, still making up for lost misogyny time from the previous book, checks out her ass as she leaves. 

Sorry this one took longer than we thought it would. It's not even that long a chapter, but I've been dealing with overlapping Automotive Situations for the past two weeks, and while I'm a heck of a multitasker, I have not quite got the trick of simultaneously blogging and installing a starter, at least not without getting car grease all over my phone. The part of this situation that requires physical work is very nearly resolved, though, so hopefully I'll be a bit quicker on the next one. Remember as always that if you want the functionality of the car to interrupt my blogging less, you can always support me on Patreon. Until next time, be Gay, do Crimes, and read All The Things!

Dresden Files Reread - Summer Knight Chapter 2

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Harry drops Billy off at the apartment he shares with Georgia, who looks more mature and confident than
she did when Harry first met her. She tells Billy she'll get the first aid kit for the scratches on his face, and Harry flees before someone tries to get him to socialize. 

In the car, Harry takes a proper look at himself in the rear-view mirror, the first time he's done so in weeks, as he doesn't keep mirrors of any kind in his house. This is brought up, using almost exactly the same wording, all the way back in Storm Front, but isn't mentioned in Fool Moon and is only referenced, not explained, in Grave Peril, when Harry brings up his lack of mirrors while expressing his confusion over how the Nightmare got to him. This recurring thing with the mirrors is, of course, mostly a justification for Harry not to have mirrors in the house, and therefore not always know what he looks like (and to avoid what I suspect would otherwise be a succession of rather tiresome scenes of him talking to himself - he seems like the type), but I have a fondness for characters being diligent about issues that never come up, like in October Daye when Toby checks to make sure she can read Walter's handwriting. It's not foreshadowing, his handwriting or her ability to read it are never plot points, it's just an offhand sentence establishing that Our Hero is thinking ahead and taking steps to prevent problems. I suspect this is a product of many UF writers coming up through tabletop roleplaying games. Games of the old school tradition often rely on this kind of thinking. Anyway, Harry is surprised to discover that he looks awful. He's unhealthily pale, with dark circles under his eyes, and his hair and beard have both grown out without any kind of maintenance, leaving them not only longer than he'd like but scraggly and uneven, especially his hair, part of which was burned off by the pizza bomb he received at the end of Grave Peril. He's been working constantly, down in the lab where there are no windows, no sunlight, and his circadian rhythm has become somewhat unmoored from things like the actual passage of day and night. 

The events of the end of the previous book, what happened to Susan, are summarized in detail. If you're reading this, you've been following me through Grave Peril for the past year and more, even if you weren't reading along in the actual book, so we don't need to go over this except to note that he says "The monster's got her." which we'll come back to in a moment. He's been looking for a treatment, some way to remove the infection of the Red Court. "There had to be a way. Had to be. There had to be." As he spirals into self-recrimination, this three times repetition is matched by a string of seven "should have"s. Very tidy, and even a kind of foreshadowing, given that threes and sevens are generally significant in fairy lore, and that this book specifically will be dealing substantially with the seven laws of magic and the triads of Queens for each fairy court. Come to think of it, there are seven fairy queens in this book, too because there are two Summer Ladies, and there are generally seven fae monarchs because of the Erlking. I don't know if this was at all intentional - it may be that the rhythm just sounded good, but the wonderful thing about literary analysis is that not everything we notice has to be intended by the author. Eventually Harry realizes that sitting pulled over on the side of the road and crying is not a very safe position to be in if the vampires decide to make another attempt on his life, and that he does actually need this potential job Billy set up for him if he wants to remain housed, and pulls himself together enough to head over to his office.

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Harry's building is apparently in midtown. I need you to understand that there are 178 neighborhoods in  Chicago, belonging to 77 different "community areas" which in turn each belong to one of eight regions, and not a one of any of those things is called "midtown". I also want to be clear that I did not like, set out to fact-check this, I was just trying to get a sense of the general look of the neighborhood so I could find a photo to go with this paragraph. I would tentatively place Harry's office somewhere in New City, which is pretty well smack in the middle of Chicago, and which has historically had a substantial population of Irish immigrants, consistent with the presence of Mac's pub across the street. An actual picture of the area can be found here - note the stairs leading to an entrance below street level. There don't seem to be many buildings as tall as Harry's in this area, but I suppose you only need one. (Obligatory reminder, as well, that I am not personally familiar with Chicago geography). The security guard glares at him, on account of how worn out and scraggly he looks, and Harry suspected that if he hadn't recognized Harry he wouldn't have let him in. One hopes that there's some kind of process by which someone who rents space in this building could, if necessary, demonstrate that they belong there. The scorpion incident from all the way back in Storm Front is also given detailed summary here, as it was not in Fool Moon or Grave Peril, although it is mentioned in the latter. Harry says here that anyone could have thrown the elevator to the top of the shaft and then dropped it all the way to the bottom, leading into an extended bit about all the other occupants of the building who probably didn't do it, which gives us a decent list of who actually works there.

• First floor: Security desk, unclear if there are offices. 
• Second floor: ???
• Third floor: ???
• Fourth floor: orthodontist
• Fifth floor: Harry
• Sixth floor: psychiatrist
• Seventh floor: insurance office
• Eighth floor: ???
• Ninth floor: accountant
• Top (tenth?) floor: law firm

We are told here that the scorpion incident raised everyone's rent, which is mildly interesting inasmuch as it may mean the Red Court have bought the building at this point. Changes establishes the purchase to have been made "eight years ago" and I'm not entirely sure how much time passes between this book and that one. Currently we are two and a half years out from start of series, but I can never remember what time of year Death Masks, Blood Rights, or White Night are set, which makes the total passage of time a little difficult to figure from here. But we do know from Changes that the vampires raised the rent. It's also established there that the building is twelve stories, implying the existence of a tenth and eleventh floor between the accountant and the lawyers, although there are inconsistencies between the description of the building there and the one here that we'll get to when we get to Changes. 

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The doorknob of his office zaps him, which is odd since this is the first of our summer books and the weather isn't exactly conducive to static buildup, even inside an air conditioned building. So Harry gets out his shield bracelet before going in. The office is a mess. Papers are scattered on basically every flat surface, he left the coffee machine on until it burned, at some point, so I sincerely hope it wasn't an antique of the sort I proposed at the beginning of Grave Peril, and his flyers are in disarray. Also, I know we didn't talk about it when they're described in the previous book, and the detail isn't repeated here, but Harry apparently makes the flyers himself, and I would very much like to know how. If I needed to make flyers (notably something you tend to want more than one copy of) in the late '90s or early 2000's, I would have made something in Microsoft word, printed out a single copy on a home inkjet printer, and then either given it to someone with access to a copier at work or taken it to Kinko's for photocopying, photocopies on a laser printer being considerably less expensive than inkjet printing at any real scale. Harry obviously can't do like, any of that. He could work up the originals on a typewriter, I suppose, although I don't think there's any reference to his having one, but typing up multiples of the same flyer sounds dead boring and likely to lead to mistakes and inconsistencies. I don't think he can physically enter a copy shop without breaking something, even if he was exaggerating a little about being able to "kill a copier at 50 paces". Did he work up the originals on a typewriter and then get someone to take them to Kinko's for him? If so, who? Did he take the originals to a library, which you can often enter without getting too close to the printers, and ask for help making copies? Did he make the flyers on a letterpress machine? If so, where does he access one of those? I know this is like, the least significant mystery in the entire series, but it is a mystery nonetheless. 

In the midst of all this untidiness stands Mab, Queen of Air and Darkness, although of course Harry doesn't know that yet. She's got white hair, the whiteness of which is emphasized enough to make me wonder if Harry, or perhaps Jim Butcher, forgot that regular humans can have white hair. Usually that's older humans, but lots of perfectly ordinary things can make someone's hair lose color prematurely. Her skin somehow manages to look pale next to the hair, and her lips are the color of frozen mulberries, which I must admit does not summon up any particularly clear mental image for me. She's wearing a charcoal gray suit with enough of a slit up the side to make someone notice, although since I don't wear skirt suits, I don't know whether this is likely to be primarily for sexiness purposes or if it's more of a mobility thing. Her jewelry is all opals, and her nails have "somehow" (I suspect nail polish?) been lacquered to match. Her eyes are described as "oblique", but I don't know if that means like, she looks obscure and difficult to figure out, that she has epicanthic folds, or if her eyes are more literally at some kinda angle on account of how she isn't human. She's also described as having "the kind of beauty that makes men murder friends and start wars", so we're not starting out well on the misogyny front. To be clear, I would be less upset with almost any verb that isn't "makes". "The kind of beauty that inspires men to murder friends and start wars" would be acceptable, and so would "The kind of beauty for which men murder friends and start wars." It's reasonable to acknowledge that a lot of men murder friends and start wars because of beautiful women, but let's not deny their agency in this process or suggest that women, or their looks, are somehow directly responsible for men's actions. 

Photo via Smithsonian Open Access

Everything about her appearance suggests to Harry that she has money, and that if he can get her to hire
him, she might pay him money which he can use to pay bills and eat food. He worries briefly that it's somehow unwizardlike to be concerned about money. Obviously this is something of an ongoing neurosis on Harry's part - Nicodemus calls him out on it at least in Small Favor and I think in Death Masks as well - but he wasn't quite as broke in Storm Front as he is now, and he was a lot more comfortable openly considering that he needed money in that book than he is here. He's also late, although only by a couple minutes, and he looks like shit, neither of which is likely to impress "Ms. Sommerset". Indeed, she pretty much opens by telling him that she doesn't like to be kept waiting, and confirming that the condition of his office and personal grooming do not exactly have the feel of professionalism. He offers her a cup of coffee, which she declines, citing unwillingness to take the risk of something unsanitary. He asks if she's the "kind who takes chances", which is sort of an odd thing to say under the circumstances. She says she likes to hedge her bets (true of Mab's behavior generally, I think, although not always where Harry is concerned), and that she's deciding whether to gamble on Harry. He doesn't look like a good bet so far. She goes on to call him out pretty comprehensively, for being desperate, preoccupied, and apparently unable to manage his daily life, which does not bode well for his ability to do what she wants him for. He asks her to at least tell him what she needs, and she responds by asking him to soulgaze her. This serves to remind the reader what a soulgaze is and how it works, which is odd because I don't think we actually get a soulgaze in this book, but I also don't know what Mab was hoping this would accomplish. She has no soul to gaze upon, not the way a human does, she's got as much leverage as she needs over Harry here and so doesn't stand to gain much from, idk, mesmerizing him, and I don't think Harry's noticing that meeting her eyes doesn't initiate a soulgaze would be sufficient to establish his qualifications here, which seems to be her primary objective. 

In any event, Harry refuses, and she gets up to leave again, but Harry says he thinks she's underestimated his abilities, points out that she seems too good to be true, and points a gun at her. He tells her to put her hands on the desk, and Mab doesn't drop the Ms. Sommerset act, playing 'frightened but imperious' for all it's worth by swallowing delicately and widening her eyes as she demands to know what he thinks he's doing. I think it's possible that the reader is meant to wonder if Harry has actually misread this and is holding a gun on an innocent rich lady here, but mostly it's just that this is how Mab has chosen to test Harry's perceptive abilities, and she's not going to give him anything more to work with than she already has. He pulls a box of nails out of his desk (I honestly have no guesses about whether he keeps steel nails in his desk specifically so he can fae-test prospective clients or if they were ready to hand for some more mundane purpose), and rolls it at her, until at the last second she not only pulls her hand away but takes several steps back. Some of that may be the sidhe's normal aversion to cold iron, but I do wonder if her outfit mightn't be illusory, if she wasn't concerned that it would land on her shoe or something and reveal that she's not wearing real clothes. Harry says out loud that she's a faerie, and she visibly drops the act. He also reminds her that there are months left on his bargain with Lea. Mab smiles; he passed her test, and may be what she's looking for after all, although she wants to know how he figured it out. He cites the static on the doorknob, which is another idea borrowed from spiritualism, that she danced around his questions rather than answering them, which upon review I don't really think she did - he didn't ask many questions, and her answers to the ones he did were all within human parameters - but I suppose it's important to establish that the fae generally do this, that the door was unlocked when it shouldn't have been, and that she's not carrying a purse. She says again that he'll do nicely, and he starts to get a bad feeling, telling her that if she leaves now they can both forget this ever happened. She's not having it though - he passed her little test, so now he's gonna do what she came here to hire him for. There's a little bit of back and forth on this point, during which she tells him what she wants him to do: recover something that's been stolen, catch the thief, return it to its rightful owners, and vindicate her in the process. Harry refuses, unwilling to make another deal with a faerie, especially when he doesn't even know who she is. She tells him the bargain has already been made, and explains that she purchased his debt from Lea. 

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Harry insists that Lea wouldn't do that, which honestly strike me as a pretty reasonable read. She's got a
responsibility to Harry that would be a lot easier to fulfill if he could be turned into a hellhound until whatever apocalyptic event he's destined to avert was on the immediate horizon, and even if she can't do that his debt to her makes it easier to stay involved and keep an eye on him. Even if he doesn't understand her motivations, he's correct in thinking that her interest in him is sufficiently personal that she wouldn't ordinarily give it up. If we'd had more time with Lea before this, it would actually have been a pretty decent clue that there's something up with her, which might prompt the astute reader to go looking for information about what it was. Unfortunately, we've seen very little of her, she was acting kind of weird for most of it, and Harry was deeply incurious about her motivations, which was understandable (drugged, concussed, exhausted, traumatized) but means that if this is meant to tip us off that something's up, it's not really successful. Then he pulls out a letter opener, presumably intending to use it to defend himself, and Mab makes him stab himself in the hand with it. Just like, the webbing between the thumb and forefinger, nothing load bearing, but still, ow. I'm... not sure Lea could have done that. I feel like if she could exert that kind of direct bodily control, she would have done so in the previous book, so either more has changed about the deal than just Mab buying the debt, or this is just an indication of Mab's much greater power. Harry asks who she is, and she tells him. 

Sorry this one took a little longer than planned. Mostly just a consequence of the 27 minute chapter. Chapter 3 is only 14 minutes, so you shouldn't be waiting quite as long. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!

Dresden Files Reread - Summer Knight Chapter 1

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Harry meets Billy at Lake Meadow Park to investigate a rain of toads. It's very hot, and Harry's not in a great mood even before one of said toads lands directly on his head. Harry tells Billy to collect some of them, because he needs to check if they're real - if they're not, it's probably just a fairy playing a prank, but if they are, that means reality itself is somehow out of whack, which could be very serious indeed. This handily serves to remind us that fairies are a thing in this setting, which is important since they haven't been mentioned since Harry summoned Toot Toot in the middle of Storm Front, and they're gonna be kind of a big deal this book. Billy has questions about the 'The toads might not be real' thing, but Harry shuts him down hard, saying that he hasn't slept or eaten a hot meal any time recently and he's not in the mood to teach. There's also an old lady with a shopping cart, but we'll get to that in a minute. 

Billy invites Harry to come play Arcanos with him and the other Alphas. Based on his description, I'm guessing this is along the same basic lines as Pathfinder, but as far as I can tell, Arcanos itself is not a real game. He describes how they're working against a Council of some kind in the current campaign, and how there's spells and demons and dragons, which Harry almost reasonably says sounds too much like work. Billy doesn't seem terribly surprised, and uses this as an entry point to express that he's concerned about how much time Harry's spending lurking in the basement, even allowing as it's valid to be stressed about the vampire war and the white council coming to town. Harry denies knowledge of either the war or the Council, and I can't figure out if we're still doing the "The White Council has a whole thing about secrecy" thing or if Harry's just cranky and doesn't think Billy, specifically, whom he perceives as basically a regular civilian, werewolfism notwithstanding,  should know about it. Harry also insists he's gone out and socialized plenty of times, like when he went to a football game with the Alphas. Unfortunately that was six months ago, so this kinda undercuts his argument. Billy lays out, over the course of some back and forth, that Harry doesn't answer the phone or the door anymore, isn't at his office, and apparently hasn't shaved, showered, gotten a haircut, or done laundry in longer than is generally considered socially acceptable. Come to think of it, how does Harry do laundry? Billy says "gone out to do laundry", and if we take that as accurate, he's not handwashing clothes in his sink or using a copper boiler on his hearth and then line drying them in the back yard, which would have been my first thought, but I don't think he can go to a laundromat without risking messing up the machines - even if the washers and dryers, which have relatively few electronic parts, would cooperate, there are other things in there that he'd probably break, and he tends to try to avoid that kind of thing. 

Billy also swung by Harry's office, and informs him that he's a week out from getting evicted if he doesn't pay the rent on it, and that he took the (admittedly fairly extreme) liberty of scheduling Harry a 3pm appointment that day with one Ms. Sommerset. Harry's a normal amount of upset that Billy like, went through his mail, checked his answering machine, and returned phone calls on his behalf, and insists that he's fine, that the last thing he needs is to worry about other people getting hurt for associating with him, and that he doesn't need help. 

Photo by Alfred Kenneally on Unsplash

So the old lady with the shopping cart. As they're having this back and forth, and dropping a few other pieces of information, like that the Reds - wait, they keep calling them the "reds", and most of the conflict between them and the White Council is repeatedly described as a "cold war", we should revisit that - are moving more "muscle" into town, we're periodically reminded of this old lady with a shopping cart who's the only other person at the park just now. It's worth reviewing the passage yourself to see how it's interspersed, but we're updated on this old lady and her cart three times before someone tries to kill Harry. A pair of black-clad humans in the bed of a pickup truck open fire on him with what are described as  automatics "in the mini-Uzi tradition", which is a really excellent way to give the reader a good idea of what they should be picturing and what the threat level is without locking yourself into a set of technical specifications which will distract and irritate the gun nerds if you accidentally violate them. Harry gets his shield up, and deflects all the bullets, although it stresses his bracelet, and he's concerned that something might ricochet and hit a bystander. After a few seconds, his attackers have to reload, and he takes the opportunity to use his force ring (we get a reminder of how it works) to strike back at them, although he does it at an angle, because catching them full on could kill them, which would violate the first Law of Magic (of which we are also reminded). One of the gunmen is disarmed and thrown from the truck, the other isn't, but loses the sunglasses and ski mask that are hiding his face, revealing him to be in his mid-teens at the oldest. He takes the magical assault remarkably in stride (indicating that either he's fought wizards before or he's high, although neither possibility is raised explicitly), finishes reloading, and starts shooting at Harry again. At which point, of course, the old lady with the shopping cart reveals herself to be no such thing and produces a sawed off shotgun. With her on one side and the gunman on the other, Harry's shield bracelet can't protect him from both, and he figures he's pretty much dead, and likely Billy along with him, indicating, I note here, that he remembered Billy was there but apparently completely forgot that he has powers of his own. Billy did not forget that he has powers - he strips out of his sweatpants and t-shirt, shifts, and bites the shotgun lady's hand, causing her to drop the gun. Unfortunately, she's a ghoul, so she promptly sprouts claws and teeth of her own, and slashes Billy's face. He backs off a little and circles, timing it so her back is to Harry at the same time the gunman runs empty again. Harry seizes the moment, picks up the shotgun, and tells Billy to move, which prompts the ghoul to turn around, allowing Harry to fire the shotgun into her stomach. Not a fatal injury for a ghoul, but enough to get her to flee to the pickup truck, from whence all of their attackers flee. 

Billy observes that he didn't see the claws coming, which is a sharp and deliberate contrast to Harry's "I don't need help, I won't tell you what's going on" routine. Billy is used to working with a group, and not used to putting up any kind of front. The first thing he did, actually, after this fight (well, and after putting his clothes back on), was ask what the shotgun lady was, and the second thing was to do this error analysis, out loud, without making any kind of big deal about it. What went wrong in this fight? He didn't see the claws coming. This is a reminder to everyone he's working with, even though in this case that's just Harry, to be mindful of the claws the next time they fight a ghoul, and not to assume everything they're fighting that looks human is. It also indicates that this was not a problem of judgement, timing, coordination, or anything else that might need further work or discussion between now and the next patrol. Notably, there's no "I should have seen that", "I'm so stupid", anything like that. Billy doesn't see any shame, or anything to apologize for, in being caught off-guard by an unfamiliar threat, he's just noting it out loud for his own and other's future reference. The Alphas probably make such observations to each other all the time, it's part of what makes them an effective team and Billy and effective leader, and it stands out next to Harry's refusal to even acknowledge that he needs friends. 

Photo by Richie Bettencourt on Unsplash

Harry also tells Billy that the ghoul was probably from the LaChaise clan, which I am never, ever going to spell correctly without looking it up. They work for the Red Court, and Harry has caused them some unspecified headaches in the past. I'd have to check, but I don't think any prior conflict with ghouls is in the short stories, so these headaches may remain a proper noodle incident, if not a terribly mysterious one. And that Billy can let the toads go, because the one Harry was just kind of holding during that entire fight pooped in his hand. Poor toad. That means something is seriously Up in the magical world, a conclusion which is graphically reinforced as they get back in the car, and the light rain of toads becomes an absolute (if highly localized) toad storm, accompanied by a nauseating disruption in the normal flow of magic. 

So there we are, Summer Knight is underway. The other post I'm working on is still in progress, and I haven't spontaneously summoned up the energy to talk about Wheel of Time in the last *checks notes* four days. I still can't usefully commit to any kind of posting schedule, but expect to see something from me within a week, unless something else Happens. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read all the things!