Son of a bitch. I highlighted without reading the warning and caught a glimpse. Well I'm off to drink and try to wipe this entire experience from my mind. I'm going to be so pissed off at myself if I ruined the ending for myself. Fuck.

 

No wai!!!111!

WR, the fact that I have to tell you that those spoilers are fake is a burden upon my soul.

Edit: Or, at the very least, nothing like that has been said on JB's forums.

Edit 2: Scratch that. It might be true. It seems there was a thrad yesterday that had a lot of spoilers, and was removed.

 

Actually, it turns out that Dresden is John Galt. I know. Surprised the hell out of me.

 

I saw the thread before it was removed. I can confirm that it claimed that. Though obviously we have no way of knowing if it was real. It could have been someone trolling and spreading false rumors.

 

Well, of course. He's the Main character.

It's the Winter Mantle part that bothers me.

 

10:1 odds y'all got trolled.

 

The thread was in the JB forums, I saw it before it was removed. The guy who made it claimed to have bought the book from some online retailer in Sweden. He also had a link to this site in his message but at the time I saw the thread, one of the moderators had censored the post and removed the link. That does imply that it might be true, as does the fact that the thread was completely deleted from the forum.

Anyone here from Sweden?

No spoiler tags for this spoiler? Ok then.

Not sure if that could be called a true death. His heart just stopped for a brief moment from over-exerting his magic and Michael got it running again with his faith-mojo.

Actually dying for real would be harder to come back from. Though Harry does have friends in high places (Archangel Uriel) who might be in a position to perform a resurrection. Can you imagine what THAT would do to Harry's reputation amongst the Wardens. He rode a zombie dinosaur and now returned from death itself.

Or maybe Cowl/Kumori will use necromancy on him. Or Eb! He can use necromancy legally as the Blackstaff.

 

Except from people's unspoiler-tagged replies, we now know what it says anyway - something about Dresden taking up the winter mantle and dying.

Thanks Jon and Ryuugi.

 

Okay, I'm going to be nitpicky, since we're spoiler-mad in here anyway - he died because Kravos choked him out in his nightmare, and came back because Susan did CPR.

I know, not relevant to Book 12 in any way, shape, or form, but when I see incorrect canon references, it drives me bat-shit.

 

Oh right. I was thinking of the earlier case where he does the mini-deathcurse to start the massive fire that burns the place down. I had forgotten that he "dies" again a second time at the end to create the ghost. But even there I don't think this is a true death. CPR would not have brought him back if he had been DEAD-dead.

Infact, I wonder why that did not create a ghost. I mean in the scene I was thinking of it is explicitly said that Harry's heart stops beating. Maybe there is a ghost version of Harry running around somewhere even now!

 

...

Now there's a plot bunny that would be fun to chase - Harry hunting down a ghost that turns out to be himself. Twisted.

 

Honestly what I'm seeing assuming the spoiler is true for a second is one of two situations, either A. Harry takes the mantle with stipulation of its his as long he lives then when he dies Uriel catches his spirit and tells him hes still needed and brings him back. or B. The far more simple and likely solution that they go kind of Buffyesque that he takes it with the same stipulation and then when he dies they bring him back with CPR or the paddles.

 

"If you strike me down, I'll become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." etc.


I'm still calling troll for 2 reasons:

1) Dresden has Plot Armor, and as such cannot die permanently (at least until the last book)

and 2) The whole "die and come back" thing to get out of the Winter Mantle is so ridiculously cliche and overused. I'd like to believe Butcher is a better author than to make such a completely unimaginative, uninteresting and outright dumb move.

 

The way I see it, Harry refuses to be a pawn. It seems to me that he has some issues taking orders (probably resulting from the way Justin used him), and that's the main reason he's avoided the Winter Mantle, and all similar promises of power, like the plague.

I, also, can see him taking up the Mantle short-term, but I doubt that he will. Every single time he's been in a similar situation, he's rejected any form of "free" power and forged ahead himself, all to avoid being subject to anyone else. It's certainly possible that he will take up the Mantle for his daughter, but I still doubt it, if for no other reason than he's not even sure she really exists.


Also, I shall be extremely disappointed if he does take the mantle and he then goes with the standard death + resurrection bit to get out of it. It's such a terrible literary device that I'd probably end up giving up on the books altogether.