Dresden Files Reread - Summer Knight Chapter 20

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The chlorofiend shakes Harry, preparing to throw him. Harry considers that he can't call it a plant monster, as this would apparently make him a laughingstock. To whom, I am not entirely sure, and I think this raises some questions about to what extent to story as it's presented to us is a written record constructed from Harry's notes and recollections after the fact. In many cases, the concealment of certain information from the reader until the point at which Harry realizes it is reasonably attributable to his having a decent instinct for storytelling, justified by his extensive consumption of paperback novels. This, however, is more difficult to explain as an inclusion in a written account of past events - if the concern is being a laughingstock, why include it at all? Although I suppose it's possible that he feels an honest account of his thoughts at the time, including his fear of judgement for what he calls a monster in the privacy of his own mind, may be instructive to his anticipated reader or readers. He gets a decent shield up in time to not just go splat when he collides with the chain link fence and subsequently lands on the concrete. This is where we get the description of "azure and argent" light flashing in a "vague sphere" around me, which I could have sworn was in Fool Moon. I believe I expressed some confusion at its absence at the time. I have complicated feelings about this description, because "azure and argent" is a bit... much. I kind of thought so even on a first read, when I was seventeen, and now I also have something of a reflexive annoyance with the word "azure", due to its overuse in translations of words and phrases involving 青 (ao in Japanese, qīng in Mandarin Chinese), but I actually quite like "vague sphere". It's evocative. In any event, the shield converts some of the impact into heat and light, and spreads the rest out over his body. It knocks the wind out of him, but that's a lot better than he could have hoped for without it. When it tries to hit him again, it connects with a metal shelving unit instead, and is burned by the steel, revealing that this thing, too, is a fairy, or constructed with fae magic. There's also an empty shelf advertising weedkiller on sale, which I think is a pretty tidy way of acknowledging and dismissing a possible solution here. Yes, weedkiller would work on the chlorofiend, but it's not available to Our Heroes at this time - it's sold out. We need not dwell on how I felt seeing weedkiller advertised, even on sale, for less than the current price of a box of off-brand Cheez-Its at Aldi. That or this is foreshadowing that doesn't pay off for another chapter or two and I've just forgotten. One of those. 

The thing with the shelves gives Harry the beginnings of a plan. He runs away, to give himself time, and then uses a ventas servitas whirlwind to knock over a bunch of shelving, directly onto the chlorofiend, which collapses, but clearly isn't dead or permanently incapacitated. We also get an explanation of the difference between thaumaturgy and evocation, and how Harry doesn't consider himself very good at the latter, even though this was already discussed a bit in Chapter 11. It's possible this is just meant to provide more detail, but I do wonder if the plant monster fight in the Walmart might not originally have been conceived as a short story or otherwise written out of the context of this book, and used here because it fit, without being entirely purpose-built for the novel around it. With the chlorofiend temporarily out of commission, Harry begins looking for a way out of the garden center. Grum did his twisting trick to every exterior gate, so that's not going to work, and the damage suggests that the ogre's fingernails were able to score the metal, despite its being steel.  He's making another attempt to climb the fence, when Murphy emerges out of the fog, pointing her gun at him. They get that taken care of pretty quickly, and she reiterates that when she tried to follow the Tigress outside (through what fucking exit, please?), someone shot at her. Harry asks if she got hit, because she's limping, but it's because she tripped on one of Harry's marbles. He suggests that she get a rake, for some purpose which is not really clear to me from the description, but she points out that they're right by the hardware department, and gets a set of bolt cutters instead. Then they start talking about how to get out, and honestly I'm a little confused. I guess she's letting him back into the main area of the Walmart, but if they have bolt cutters, they should be able to open a route back into the parking lot, or at least away from the damn Walmart, through the exterior fence, and not have to worry about the exits as such or if they're being covered by snipers. However, either this didn't occur to them or there's some undescribed reason why this wouldn't work. 

Harry runs Murphy through an ogre's capabilities, which I still have questions about given that "Grum" does display these abilities but is not, y'know, actually an ogre. Come to think of it, why was... I don't remember his name, the Sidhe lord, why was he in his ogre disguise at Reuel's apartment? Summer couldn't possibly have known exactly when Harry was gonna be there, unless they were keeping tabs on him in some way that either isn't established or I don't remember. Anyway, Harry leads them back into the store - apparently he has a new plan.