I thought about the wear and tear thing, but the argument still holds. He's not being portrayed as a guy who's been beaten up a million times and is worn out, he being portrayed as someone who's getting older. The differences are subtle, but they're there.

And what I meant by his mother being a "secret", is that we've all been hanging around Dresden for a while now, and we've never gotten any straight answers about his mom, and I'm just dreading the moment where, once some of her past has been revealed, we find out that tons of people already knew about it, and Harry was the only one really in the dark.

Something about that idea just pisses me off.

 

He's being portrayed as a guy getting older, because, well, he's getting older. His body may be able to keep living until age 300 or whatever it is, but mentally, he's still 40 years old or whatever. He's had all that stress, and all of those fights with huge odds stacked against him. In my opinion, he's just mentally fucking worn out.

A couple examples. My grandpa, fought in WWII, lots of stress in his life from supporting his parents, blah blah, has an almost perfect body health-wise. Yet, he's tired all the time, he doesn't run, hardly ever does anything physically exerting. He just says he feels old.

Grandma, on the other hand, doesn't. She's the same age, but she grew up in a relatively comfy life, hasn't had a lot of stress, and she's very active. She gets up at like six every morning, swims a lot, and is always bustling around.

Not the best examples, but you get the point. Wear-and-tear mentally does affect how you feel.

Dunno if that's the case with Dresden, but judging from his experiences, I'd say it is.

 

Again, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about scenes like in one of the recent short stories (Day Off, I think) where Molly sees Harry dressed in a towel, and hardly notices, and Harry muses to himself about how he's getting old.

My point is that Dresden is still absurdly young for a wizard, and stuff like that detracts from the reality of his situation.

It's not bad writing or anything, it's just not how I would be handling it.

 

Ah. Sorry, thought you were referring to how Dresden always feels beat up and tired and shit.

 

In the shot of Dresden's life we are given in the books, there is usually a even better reason for him to feel beat up, tired, and shit than the fact that he is around 40 years old.

 

I thought he was in his late 20s?

 

I think he started in his late 20's, but is now getting to be in his late 30's/early 40's.

As for the book, completely epic. One of my favorite Dresden books so far.

 

In Butcher's forum there is a Time line thread,

So Harry is more or less 35 yrs old. Mental age or not, Harry is very young in Wizard standards. If he feels like worn out and tired of all the shit happening, how will he look/feel at the age of 100?. Compared to Merlin and Eb, Harry (300 Vs 35) is practically a baby.


On a unrelated note, Book 12 title was announced in the forum,

Jim at St. Paul Minneapolis last night told the gathered audience the title to Book 12 would be:

Spoiler

Changes

 

Strange, but interesting.

Enjoyed Turn Coat greatly. Nothing more to say than that, really.

 

This is strange.

Every single title so far as been two words, each with the same amount of letters.

Either way, definitely an excellent book. I am however going to have to go and reread it again soon, I think.

Highly enjoyable, either way.

 

Hmm, it seems there are going to be some

Spoiler

CHANGES

in both naming and content :awesom

 

Loved it. Jim's latest far, FAR exceeded my expectations. I can't wait for

Spoiler

Changes.

 

Somehow I am left less satisfied than I expected I would be, to me the short stories in between Small Favor and Turn Coat had more punch.

Maybe part of that is that the big reveal was spoiled in this thread earlier by some moron who didn't know how to use spoiler tags, and the second part is that during the Listens-to-Wind duel against Skinwalker all I could see in my head was this scene: Sword in the Stone

In other thoughts:

I was glad to see that I was right about being suspicious of Luccio's interest in Harry after reading Small Favor, I mentioned in a post here that it seemed too sudden, it makes sense now. Still I am glad she was gotten rid of before she turned into yet another "Independent!Woman but a freak in the bed" token character... well, she dodged that bullet by a hair.

Molly...*sighs* She had so much potential, but in the last three stories by Butcher either her bra has come off or her shirt or both, and nipples are a staple part of her description. It's like with Murphy, at least once it must be mentioned that she is short but tough, so it must be mentioned about Molly that she has tits and nipples! ...another female character falls to the doom of fan favors. At least the man can write Murphy well. I am so happy Kincaid wasn't in this book.

I had become a little used to my yearly dose of fae, so sorry they weren't in this, but TootToot rocked the house. Merlin and Listens-to-Wind were pretty cool too.

I especially liked Morgan.

...and Butcher came very, very close to spoiling Lara for me like he did with Bianca. Close but she's still lovely *whew*

Edit: nvm, it was the other thread that someone spoiled the ending in. Oh well I suppose I can take my spoiler tags off the text in here, since Jon's first post warns about spoilers.

 

I have to say that I really enjoyed it. I like that Molly's boobs are her most useful feature (perhaps rivaled by her ability with veils), I like that Murphy's defining characteristic is strength despite size, and I like that Lara's name can't be mentioned without at least one paragraph describing her incredible beauty (unless she's been burnt to a crisp).

I also noticed the resemblance to the "Sword in the Stone", but I liked that too.

The thing I liked most, though, was that Molly and Morgan were an inch from killing each other every single time Harry got back to the apartment.

The only disappointment was that Harry never even offered the occasional booty call to Luccio. I mean, I know that she would have refused, but a man would have made the attempt.

Just sayin'.

 

There were a lot of things that seemed like he forgot about, and either quickly rushed them or just didn't bother. Who else was on the island? What about the headaches? One of the best books yet, but wasn't perfect and had a few aggravating parts.

STOP explaining shit over, and over. Yes you have a Foo dog who's big. Yes, Murphy is small and looks like an aunt, but you want to fill her full of jizz, yeah Molly went dark for a bit, yeah there's a black council, etc, etc. It's annoying as hell and screams filler.

And stop beating the hell out of the guy nonstop. Seriously, what is the point of beating him to near death if he gets up, whines about it, then 15 pages later it's like it never happened? Or he just gets bandaged up and goes out to kill/fight super baddie.

I still think the skinwalker was fail, and the soulfire usage was weak as well. But hey, at least it's not a giant fucking hand of god again.

Still no info on the swords. Thomas =( Lara =) Murphy was just as annoying as usual. Too much humor. Every time he comes home they're all in the same basic positions.

The island was pimp.

The Disney changing shape shit was fail. Dresden's universe magic didn't have stuff like that before, a monster doing it, fine, a human... eh I don't like it.

Peabody.. with ink... and he had a mordite inkwell bomb thing. Fail.

I figured he'd lose Luccio soon after he got started with her, she was basically there just to get rid of his protection from the White Court I'd think.

Grey Council. Nice, but please rename it.

The P.I. eh. Nonmagic Harry. Get rid of him and just make Molly act more mature. She slips back into black magic attempts, I'm betting she goes dark towards the end after finishing her apprenticeship.

Thomas being tortured bit was awesome, but it should of been a whole chapter with his torment or something, not a few sentences.

Wtf is Lash? Wtf with the headaches?

Morgan. In Nevada. With a nuke. Epic.

I'm tired of the wizard "I know something you don't shit" Obviously the island is fucked. But they won't tell him why. Fail. Suspense building is one thing, but talk about it.. what? Rashid, Eb, Eb's journal, so at least 3 times about the island and how fucked Harry is for taking it, and then don't explain shit.

TELL US ABOUT HIS MOTHER DAMNIT! Yes this gives the most backstory, but again, if you're going to talk about it, flesh it out.

This

He left Ebenezar at age 19, and spent a year or two wandering the country before arriving in Chicago though this is not revealed until Summer Knight. Two years later, he began working under a P.I. named Nicholas Christian, for a detective agency called Ragged Angel Investigations. These events are partially chronicled in "Restoration of Faith." He spent three years with Nick before opening his own business, which had been open for two years at the time of the first book, Storm Front.

Nah do the math on it, he's in his mid 30s. 19+1, returns to chicago +2 start working Ragged Angel, +3 years with Nick, +2 years before SF. 27 at start of SF, he's 38 now. +/-

But yeah, he should stop acting like an old man and get to having some fun.

 

@Mid
One reason we had never seen ANYTHING even remotely like the changing into animals stuff, is because we had never really seen anything of the Senior Council as far as actually using magic is concerned. These guys have centuries of knowledge and experience to go along with a shitload of power. Its not suprising that we will start to see just how far magic in Butcher's universe can go as McCoy and the others start to really become more of a factor.

 

I suspect that turning into animals like that is something that only Injun Joe can do out of the senior council. It's probably his speciality or something. Very Native American, shaman-like, magic.

 

Here we go again. I know that he's in his mid to late thirties, but what we know about the aging process of wizards tells us that his physical appearance should probably be that of a younger man. What Butcher's been writing lately suggests highly that Dresden's appearance matches his real age, which doesn't sound right to me.

In particular, the line where he mentions that he's "not a man in his twenties anymore" struck me as strange. As wizards go, he's still an infant.

My personal opinion is that Butcher is projecting his own experiences with growing older onto his character, and I just don't think it fits in the story.

 

We don't actually know that for certain. I mean if we go by the 3-4 century max then Dresden at 40 should almost be a teenager. I don't think the specific mechanism for Wizard aging has been told yet so for all we know, Wizards age completely normally until they reach the age of say 50 and then begin to slow from there.

We know that it is magic that causes this slowing. We also know that Wizards tend to fully come to their abilities once they are older. So in a way it might make sense that as a young inexperienced wizard without full control of his magical power, Dresden ages quickly(for a wizard). But once he starts becoming more skilled&efficient at wielding magic, the rate of his aging slows down aswell.

 

Well, we do know a likely mechanism for the long lifespan, actually - its probably the same as the mechanism for how Harry's arm isn't totally fucking melted, and how his brain is probably repairing the damage done to it when Lash sped up his thought processes.

Butters explained it as Harry's cells constantly repairing themselves to improve function, unlike a normal human's where it stops at "good enough" and a cut leaves a scar of fibrous tissue, for example.

So with that conjecture as the basis for the argument, I'm not sure that his physical appearance would be much affected as a man of 38, so much as the usual problems that crop up wouldn't be affecting him that much.

After all, we haven't heard about Harry's chronic back problems from being tossed around like a rag doll. We haven't heard about his acid reflux when he eats one of Mac's steak sandwiches. We haven't heard about his receding hair line.

So maybe its just the little things like that, that are corrected for now.

All conjecture, of course, but I think it follows some logic.