I just have to point out that that doesn't actually necessitate that he's dead. Merely that Murphy believes that he's dead.

We won't know until at the earliest Aftermath, but my money is on him surviving, but his body disappearing, leading Murphy to assume he's dead because of all the blood.

 

The next book will totally be Harry, "Dante's Inferno/God of War style", smashing through the underworld and facing big baddies left and right to live again. Maybe Hellfire/Soulfire will play a larger role this time round.

 

Actually we have word of god that Dresden is dead. IIRC someone asked whether Harry was mostly dead or whether they should be rifling through his pockets for change. Butcher responded with how he wanted to name the next book "Dead".

 

I'd have to see the transcript again to be absolutely certain, but that also doesn't necessarily state unequivocally that Harry Dresden is now deceased.

The odds are good that he is, in fact, dead and that the next book will involve him "returning to life" in some meaning of the phrase. It doesn't necessitate it though. There's always the possibility that he actually survived it somehow and the book is actually about how he tries to reintegrate with a world that believes him dead. The only people who know are Butcher and his editors/betas.

 

Thats just the quote that I remembered off the top of my head. I'm fairly certain that it has been said that he is dead.

 

Read the first fucking post Agayek.

That is what this whole bloody thread is based on, Butcher said quite literally "Dresden set out to rescue his Daughter, even if it cost him his life- and it did".

 

Maybe I'm crazy, but the vibe I got from his answer to that was more of a "This is what it looks like, and I'm neither going to confirm nor deny what it actually is".

I actually happen to agree with you that Dresden is dead. The problem is, there's ambiguity, and everything Butcher has said on it so far has felt like it's a little too close to a "no comment" for it to be definitive to me.

From the Q&A:

The tone of his answer seems a bit too... tongue in cheek, for want of a better descriptor, to be a serious "yes, he's really dead" answer.

I could very well be crazy and reading things into it that simply aren't there, but that's just the way it struck me on my first read-through of the Q&A and I can't shake the feeling that something is still up with it.

TLDR: You're probably right, but the voices in my head say it's possible that he's still alive somehow.

 

Oh, he'll definitely live. For now, as of the end of changes, he is dead however.

 

He's dead. He'll be back, but yeah, he's dead. It's just a matter of what he'll have to do to come back.

Remember he read Kemmler's book, there was a fuckton of shit in there, outside of just the Darkhallow.

 

Was there? I remember the book being pretty small. Also, he missed out on Books 1-3, all he got was the last of K's knowledge.

 

The younger magical community worships Dresden now, imagine with the news of Dresdens death getting around, then when he (ineveitably) comes back to life how powerful everyone will believe he is then.

Harry Dresden, possesses the power of Soulfire, the mantel of the Winter Knight, bound to Demonreach, had (has?) the shadow of a Fallen in his head, has the knowledge of Kemmler, responsible for genocide of one of the most powerful factions on the mortal plane and guess what? He can bring himself back to life. Plus the unknown factor of Bob, Kremmler's assistant/research partner that the public doesn't know about. Powerful? I think not.

About the cliffhanger though, I think it's the black council making another move on Dresden. That's what the whole series has been about, the black council (as Dresden believes, could be someone else) targeting Dresden and arranging these major events. But really at this stage it could be anyone. As stated above Titania has pretty good motivation to knock him off herself, because theres no real way Fix will be able to match up to Harry.

Great work like usual Butcher.

 

Marcone seems like a good candidate as well for who shot Dresden. Tying up loose ends and all. And aside from Kincade it fits his M.O..

 

The only problem with that is that his bond with Demonreach, the existence of Lash, and that he read Kemmler's book are not common knowledge; far from it in fact. There's a grand total of maybe a dozen people that know about the bond with Demonreach, like 4 that know about Lash (not counting the Denarians), and the only person not Dresden that might know that he read Kemmler's book is Cowl.

The wizarding populace in general just doesn't know much about what he has done. Though what they do know would still make them worship him when he comes back from the dead.

 

Meh, I've always got the feeling Marcone has liked Dresden. Threatening to kill etc and everything is business, but I can't see him putting out a hit on Dresden without a main reason. His a bad ass to everyone else, but to me it feels like Marcone sees Dresdens as a comrade.

Then again, Dresden now knows about the little secret girl his trying to save, he might just put a hit on Dresden for the knowledge. Still, I couldn't see it being Marcone. Seems to be the bad guy that is really a good guy that most stories have.

 

Here's a funny thought. In the Dresdenverse, belief = power. What if Dresden ever managed to tap into all that belief/conspiracy theories about him? All those daring deeds that he pulled off via the skin of his teeth, but to others seemed...well...beyond the impossible?

Slightly off the thread's main topic I know, but the above posts got me thinking.

 

To be honest, I've always seen Marcone as cooperating with Dresden because Marcone is afraid of him. I'm not sure "afraid" is the right word, but he's known since Storm Front that Dresden would be a terrible enemy, so he tries to cooperate as best he can, without harming his own interests. That's my take on it anyway.

And the term for "bad guy that is really a good guy" is "Anti-Hero", though Marcone is fairly different from the archetype (that being Rorschach from Watchmen).

That is an interesting idea. I'm not sure enough people know of his exploits, and then believe in his powers enough, to actually grant him any substantial amount of power though. It just seems like you'd need hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of individuals believing in something (which all the gods and Lords of the Outer Night that we've seen have had) to grant power to something, and there's simply not enough wizards in such a short time frame to generate that kind of belief/power. It would be a kinda cool way to resurrect Dresden though.

 

Word could spread through people buying info from demons or fae, similarly to how Dresden bought info from Chauncey. Practitioner X wants to know about Dresden's fights with the skinwalker, trades B and C to some demon & learns about Demonreach. Then X tells his friend or something - not outside the realm of possibilities.

 

Not to mention he's destroyed the frickin' Red Court people! An organization that's been causing pain and loss and wars for millenia. The second the truth of that gets out he's being elevated to the level of a minor deity in the minds of those in the know.