There's also the well established fact that the White Council as a whole believes it shits gold.

But that's a minor thing. Harry has some good connections, but the White Council has its Laws and knows that Harry is a major security risk to them as both Wizard and Winter Knight. They can't afford to assume that Mab isn't pulling his strings to relay any information he learns from them because there's no real way to know if she is or isn't. She's already established herself to be a powerful psychomancer and the Winter Lady is noted to be especially good at it. Harry could be a mole in the White Council and not even know it himself.

That's beside the point that he flagrantly broke the First Law of Magic on a massive scale in that battle. That alone would get him executed if he wasn't under Mab's protection.

 

As a side note, I've realised something about Harry going into the next book. He's essentially reverted back to the same situation he was at the start of the series, just on the next power level up.

In Storm Front he was under threat of execution for breaking the First Law by Morgan, didn't have a good relationship with the police, he had Bob the Skull as his adviser, and discovered a key note about Marcone that sets the tone for the rest of their relationship.

At the end of Battle Grounds he was under threat of execution by the Blackstaff, has lost his liaison with the police, has Bob the Skull back, and has discovered Marcone is now a Denarian.

It'll be interesting to see how that plays out since we're likely to see his goatee wearing opposite in the next book so it'll put those changes into the spotlight.

 

The only thing I want from Mirror Mirror is that Mirror Dresden is a spectacular villain, even if Butcher plans to have him only for one book. The rest is less important than getting Evil Harry right.

 

Plot twist! Mirror Harry is the good one, the White Council is correct and Winter Knight Harry has stepped right off the cliff without quite noticing.

 

He better have read the evil overlord list for sure. I'd love to the resolution to the conflict being evil harry just letting Harry go because it's the most expedient way of being rid of him, in a very pragmatic and intelligent decision rather than continuing to slug it out.

 

I'm just dreading Mirror Mirror being a complete waste of a book. The alternate universe story works well in a TV show where they need filler episodes to bulk out 20+ episode series, and they can take the time out of any overarching story in order to develop their characters a little bit.

For a book its a really weird choice of plot line. I don't really see how being summoned through to some alternate dimension by a Dresden who made a different decision 14 books ago, whether thats the decision to kill Bianca or something to do with Susan, will do anything for the over all plot or provide a vehicle for meaningful character development.

 

That would be pretty amazing ending instead of what I predict will be the fight where Harry will win against Evil Harry because he has more to fight for than just his own survival.

While it probably won't give us character development, it can give an unique character insight. What these characters would do if the situation was different? How would Harry's enemies react to him? Like maybe this Dresden is the best friends with Marcone who is willing to take a bullet for him, Lara is actually amazing girlfriend when you get past her vampire status and Nick is the best mentor he could get because he doesn't keep secrets from him. I doubt it's going to be like that, but the point is that it allows Harry to reconsider all his relationships and get surprising discoveries about other characters than he can't in the normal world that can be useful in the next books.

 

To be fair, the agents of God will chat with anyone and be friends with whoever will allow them in the name of redemption. Michael still tried to redeem Nicodemus at his worst. Their purposes and morality don't exactly align with the White Council.

 

It is an interesting choice, but I can see a bunch of ways it can move the story forward for the main universe too. I'm expecting a bit of a more reflective and introspective book similar to ghost story for this. Also considering some of the comments that Butcher has made on it about Mavra being an ally of Mirror!Dresden (who is coincidentally very relevant all of the sudden!) there could be some opportunities for intel gathering that he wouldn't necessarily be able to do in the normal world (doesn't have to worry about personally burning bridges and so on). And other characters that he might interact with don't know how little / how much he might know about some topics (eg. stars and stones) which might allow for some information to be bluffed out of them.

Does anyone know of another book series that has had an alternate reality story? I can't think of any off the top of my head that I remember reading. (Discounting star trek or similar novels where its just another story of the week)

 

This is an excellent observation. On the note about parallels, I don't know if it was mentioned in this thread, but Harry is in a situation and has made choices remarkably similar to this mother at this point. He's estranged from the White Council, he's estranged from McCoy in a lot of ways, he's become a major and connected player in the supernatural world, he has deep ties to Faerie and has inherited her knowledge of the various Ways, and he's got an irrevocable tie to the Raiths, possibly even with marriage to one in the cards in the near future like his mother. And he's recently declared that he's seeking his own path separate from the White Council in his declaration to Ramirez. It's fascinating, but this book is helping to really shape up that Harry is walking a similar path to Margaret LeFay Dresden in a lot of ways, and proving to be his mother's son.

 

The White Council was created to use their power to protect people from the abuse of magic, but somewhere along the line they got the importance of carrying out that goal and the importance of their own power confused. So "people must be protected from black magic" became "the white council must be protected." I've always wondered if the catholic church was any inspiration, personally.

I suppose the next order of business now that he's split with the council and is opening up shop in Chicago again will be to print up some fliers for the paranet and go nail them to the doors in Edinburgh.

 

Do you have a link to this? I've been looking and can't find it.

 

Copied from a thread on reddit:

• Q: Can a wizard's Sight see monsters which normally can only be seen by children?

A: Not unless the wizard had a childlike mind, if he was not in contact with his inner kid/had a good relationship with his own imagination. Not many wizards have enough connection to that sort of childlike mischief/adventure, it's rare.

• Q: How many people on the White Council are even aware of monsters like this?

A: Maybe a dozen or so? And the ones that are aware have probably talked about it and been considered wackadoos by everybody else.

• Q: Are the children of wizards shielded in any way from soulgazing their parents? Also, what would happen if you soulgazed an infant?

A: The kid would probably not react to a soulgaze until some sort of moment where their personality really coalesced, sometime around the age of responsibility/maturity. Souls are very tied up with free will, but it's different for everyone. He says parents tend to recognize it, sort of the point where the kid becomes their own person and not just an amalgamation of whatever he's run into or seen on TV/classroom/here at home.

• Q: Did Molly ever soulgaze her parents?

A: She probably did with her dad at some point, which would be why she's so worried about disappointing him.

• Q: Anything you can tell us about Elaine's parents?

A: I haven't thought about it too much.

• Q: What's Kincaid been up to since Changes?

A: After Kincaid and Ivy had a falling-out (Microfictions), he's been drinking a lot and kinda stalking Ivy/trying to protect her from the shadows, because he's bad at boundaries and so is she, it's a very broken relationship. [Oof.]

• Q: Who was the Warden of Demonreach before Harry?

A: I know who it is, and who the guy before that was, but the guy before that [three Wardens back?] was Kemmler. [WTF] So, yeah, half of that entire thing was just the White Council trying to keep Kemmler from getting back to the island and cracking it open, which is why they had Wardens chasing him all through the Wild West. Kemmler is sort of, in the Dresden universe, sort of the equivalent of WWI where it was the biggest and most epic conflict the world has ever known, but we're all used to WWII because they got some of it on film even though WWI was so much larger.

• Q: In terms of how long someone is a Warden [presumably of Demonreach], how long does that job last?

A: Kinda depends on how long it takes to get you killed. (Is that the only way out?) I would say that's the only way out. You can walk away from it or be driven away from it, and if someone comes along and challenges Demonreach they can take it, but by the time Harry got there nobody who was "in the know" was crazy enough to do it. Butcher says that if someone on the Senior Council claimed the Warden post, everyone else on the Senior Council would be pointing at them saying they'd gone over to evil, but when Harry did it they were too busy trying to figure out if he was evil or dumb, and kinda settling on dumb.

• Q: Did Kemmler's Wardenship end when they killed him in WWII?

A: It ended one of those times. They killed him a bunch of times.

• Q: Will we meet the actual Merlin from King Arthur?

A: Are those public domain now? Maybe so if I won't have to pay anyone to use them! (bit of chatter) I have to say that's one of my favorite crack theories I've heard, that Harry Dresden is the original Merlin and that the Dresden Files is essentially Merlin's origin, and that just gives me way too much credit.

• Q: Any other crack theories you enjoy?

A: Always a lot of them, but when I get asked that question I can never remember any.

• Q: Which Hogwarts house for Dresden?

A: (Thinks about it a bit) He seems to figure that the Sorting Hat would have a lot of trouble with that one. Jokes that Harry would wind up Sorted into House Janitor's Closet.

• Q: What's Harry's D&D class and level?

A: At this point Harry's not doing teleportation stuff, so that's gonna put him around 10th-11th-12th level wizard, somewhere in that. Middling-high-level wizard. He also says this is thinking more along the lines of OD&D standards.

• Q: Why Jim? Why? WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

A: You all love it, don't act like you don't. I do what I do and if y'all didn't respond to it in the most sincere way possible, with your dollars, I wouldn't do this. I'm a mirror for the audience, that's all.

• Q: What is the Summer Mantle like for Fix?

A: Much different experience. Fundamentally a force dedicated to creation, but unlike the winter knight mantle where that urge is focused purely on reproduction--go make more soldiers--the Summer Mantle's output is much more attached to art and beauty. Fix finds himself desperately painting things or fixing up cars, not just fixing them up but making them beautiful. Those are the sorts of pressures he has to deal with while Dresden is on the beach with the 225lb weight vest, like having a day where he's like "SORRY I JUST HAVE TO CREATE TODAY".

• Q: Can Harry's new blasting rod channel Winter ice in addition to fire?

A: No reason it couldn't, the reason it hasn't is because it's alien to his thinking. He does fire and ice is completely separate. It's just never occurred to him to whip out an ice blasting rod. If it did, he'd probably make a device that'd get him in all sorts of trouble and probably just flood places, since he could switch between fire and ice and the middle's just... wet... So much havoc in that, I have to do it now, damn you sir.

• Q: How much time did the Merlin spend swearing when he learned Harry had returned?

A: Not gonna answer that, you'll see later.

• Q: Do you ever lurk on the Dresden Files sub and pose as someone else, stir things up?

A: I'll read and lurk sometimes, and that's where I see the occasional crack theory, but I don't go stir things up. So Far. Now that you're talking about it... I dunno, that could be fun...

• [Anecdote from Priscilla about how Jim had specifically stayed up late watching for her to come online before he sent out the last chapter of Changes to the beta readers so he could get her live reaction. The evil bastard. Priscilla says her exact words were "WHAT THE EVERLOVING CRAP WAS THAT"]
  
  
• Q: Favorite Spencer novel?
  

A: Maybe Looking For Rachel Wallace? [rambles for a bit, names a bunch of books] "Anything Robert Parker has done is worth reading."

• Q: Other authors that kinda have that Dresden influence?

A: Zelazny's Amber series, Fritz Leiber, Naomi Novik, Larry Correia's Monster Hunter International books, David Weber's Honor Harrington books... all folks who either had an influence on or were influenced by the Dresden Files.

• Q: If Uriel became mortal when he gave up his Grace, how did the Fallen retain their immortality?

A: Uriel's Grace was not something that was taken from him. He elected to give it up, and what was left behind was essentially this pure human who hadn't done anything. He could still act as a mortal. The Fallen, their Grace was taken from them, and all that was left was a sort of shadow of the angel that had been, they didn't have their own body or free will that they could lose. The hard part of being a Fallen is being this creature that's sorta writen in indelible ink and really can't recover in many ways. that's sorta the great tragedy, they have to be who they are or the balance falls apart.

• Q: Can you explain why Maeve kept trying to seduce Harry, with the limits of the Lady mantle? Was it an assassination attempt?

A: That would have been fun, yes! Or it might have also forced Mab into grabbing Dresden sooner. She also felt enough toward Lloyd Slate that she wanted to get him killed sooner rather than later, because she knew he was being tortured and eventually he might go crazy and turn into a real monster that Mab might turn loose on her. She wanted that taken care of. [Goes on a bit about how broken Maeve was, how little of that we actually got to see beyond the really big acting-out, and how different it is showing Molly easing into that role.]

• Q: So Maeve wasn't brought along for the Disneyland visits?

A: No, no, no, no, no, Maeve was not allowed around Sarissa. That would not have been a good idea. That was one of those things where Mab was, like, no, you know what, even if walls of ice have to appear to make it happen, we're going to keep those two apart.

• Q:If someone with multiple personalities or mantles, like Kringle, were imprisoned on Demonreach, could only one part of those be released and the others left imprisoned?

A: That's a good question! Theoretically that'd work, especially that'd work really really well if the Warden was using that to get specific services out of somebody. If Harry captured Kringle he might want to send him out as Kringle or as anything but Kringle. He could, for example, set Odin free while keeping Kringle imprisoned [apparently Kringle is the source of Odin's immortality at this point, from what Jim says, which makes a certain sense], and tell him he can come pick him up for Christmas Eve and then bring him back. Meanwhile you can be free but I've still got you. That's the kind of thing you can get away with as the Warden of Demonreach. To do it, you've got to go fight him and win, though. You don'twant to be the guy who tries to trap Odin and misses.

• Q: Could Harry use that to shed the Winter Knight mantle?

A: That's a potential way. Now walk off the island and leave that part of you here, what does that do to a person? That's some delicate surgery there, I dunno if you want Harry Dresden performing that.

• Q: Is killing the Winter Knight the only way to withdraw the mantle?

A: I don't know if she could do it without hurting him. Maybe? It's one of those things, power is one of those gifts, once you gift it away, you don't get it back. It belongs to somebody. Maybe Mab could go get it back, but it's really messy, maybe she has to send the Mantle off to the spiritual dry cleaners.

• Q: Did Butters ever get into the ring with an Einherjar?

A: Give it time, I've gotta set it up. I've gotta do that.

• Q: Bit of backstory that won't make it into the books?

A: There are gods and stuff around, still functioning in our world, posing as mortals because they're getting way more play as rockstars and pro wrestlers than they ever did as deities. Not really allowed to do anything but hang on and watch and observe. They tend to be a lot of smoke and mirrors and thunder and not a lot of things happening, unlike Odin who's actually involved in the world. [Boiled down, at some point basically all these old gods came to a point where in order to keep being involved in the affairs of humanity they had to accept mortality. Most didn't, Odin was one of the only ones who did. He had to take on extra Mantles to keep immortality.]

• Q: How much of you is in Harry?

A: Harry is the guy I like to think I would be if I was handed his power, though I think I might be one of the giggling villains. The guy who genuinely cares and who is genuinely good. (Priscilla picks up and points out the Slytherin mug Butcher's been drinking from this entire time) In real life, perhaps not...

• Q: How much time do you spend choosing names?

A: Some names just come to me, some names, there's research that goes into it. Most are puns on some level about what their function in the story is.

• Q: As Harry grows, he starts to use magic as a conduit to manipulate energy with respect to conventional physics. How would magic interact with quantum mechanics?

A: I'd have to know more about quantum mechanics to give an answer that makes sense. That said, it'd interact first and foremost on the level of human emotion that gets involved going into it. [Goes on a bit, didn't want to transcribe]

• Q: Is there a key difference between how air and water magic work in the Dresden Files?

A: Yes! Water magic is, of the four major elements, water magic is very different. Much more Eastern understanding of water, water magic is involved in healing, emotional connection, empathy. Your interaction with the natural physical world. Wizards who are water mages tend to be very different from Dresden, who's a very linear guy. Water mages are guys like River Shoulders/Listens to Wind, and they're very different in how they solve their problems, and tend to be more empathetic of misunderstood types. This is also why Carlos Ramirez, among the Wardens, is closest to Harry, as a water mage. All about connections. And taking those connections apart when you need to, which is where Carlos's disintegration magic comes from. Ramirez is a much more spiritually alert guy than most Wardens. Lot of pain, too.

• (Priscilla requests a Ramirez PoV story, Butcher says maybe)
  
  
• Q: What would Thomas look like if he became the backup Knight? Can the White Court feed off Fae?
  

A: Oh my god they CAN, and it would be such a nightmare. Here's the thing about being in Fae. You are what you eat, that's one of those lines in the Dresden Files. When you're in Fae, the reason you don't accept food from faeries is because the food you're getting isn't actually food, it's the stuff of the Nevernever, but your body will take it in, but when you leave Faerie, it turns back into ectoplasm and goes away. So if you've been in Faerie for a month eating food, you're gonna have a month's worth of your body just slough off because even though you ate the food, it wasn't ever actual material, just Nevernever material. They had to import real mortal food for Harry during his rehab. That's why you don't eat food in Fae. If thomas did that, he'd be devouring essentially false emotions, so when he went back to the mortal world, and that stuff "peeled off," that'd just leave him bonkers insane when he got back. He'd be a monster if that happened. Mab'd be in favor of that, so she'd be into that. She essentially gets the Winter Soldier, as soon as he leaves he turned into the Terminator, then when he gets back she can fill him up with whatever he needs.

• Q: Why didn't the Archive interact more with Dresden?

A: Character reasons, might find out more later. For one thing, the Archive doesn't want to interact real hard with anyone, it's there for everyone so she's not really supposed to be heavily involved with any one being or one cause. She's got to have a big cause before she'll pitch in on it.

• Q: How does it feel knowing that Mandalorians follow the Way from Cinder Spires?

A: The Mandalorians would be welcome. [Sorry, I haven't read Cinder Spires so I don't know what they're talking about]

• Q: Are there any beings that Demonreach is incapable of holding?

A: Demonreach is incapable of holding, at least forever, any being with a free will. (Does the Brit have Free Will?) That's a fair question.

 

I’d say the biggest reveal is Kemmler.

But also Jim had always said he was going to do a wrestling book that focuses on former gods ect. But now he speaks of it in terms of backstory he won’t expand on.

Maybe we are seeing the stories he is cutting to stay with in 20 books?

 

I wouldn't be surprised if he parred some books back, but it's not going to be at 20 imo. Not when next book is 18.

 

18 is supposedly Mirror Mirrror

19 ???? Wrestling gods? Seems like this does need back story.

And not sure if the Trilogy starts at 20 or 21.

So two or three more books, with one known and one hinted at.

 

Quoting myself on the Mirror Mirror and derailing slightly because I was thinking about this some more... One of the most impactful events that has occurred in DF happens in Grave Peril, Biancas party. Bianca hands out at least one Nemesis laden goodie that infects Lea and later Maeve. There may be others, like the one given to Ferrovax, but that is complete speculation at this point still. Regardless, Bianca had Cowl and some (maybe one?) of his associates on stage with her iirc, so she had some clue of who she is dealing with potentially.

In Mirror Mirror, she may very well be alive as we have been told the divergence point is at the end of Grave Peril. The amount of info that could be traded / forcibly extracted from her about the Circle / Black Council who gave her the Athame that was traded there could be pretty damned useful. Maybe I'm reaching a lot with this, but there are a ton of things that could be answered by her or directions for future plot to emerge from with leads that she provides - everything (probably) that she knew as of that time is the same for both of the universes.

Of course, this is Dresden, even if I'm right he's likely to see her alive again and burn her alive again just to be sure she doesn't annoy him again. Still, I'm excited for the possibilities that this could bring.

Edit:

There's supposed to also be a dragon book and then I saw a reference on reddit to a Q&A where he talked about the Drakul revenge plot line, which I can't imagine NOT happening at this point either. Maybe those will be two others?

 

The trilogy will answer plots as well. That’s where I expect Drakul to pop up again.