Spoiler

She might hold it for a little while, then die. Or it's a curveball refering to someone else.
No Ivy in this story, though.

I WANT THIS BOOK NOW

 

Was truly hoping it would be someone else.

 

Spoiler

I'm glad that, apparently, Molly has been still showing up to her family dinners, and is still human enough to fool them. I hadn't heard that before. The fact that she is means that she hasn't been doing what I feared Butcher would have done with her, which is have Mab keeping her in Arctis Tor and mentoring/manipulating the shit out of her until she's some unrecognizable half-Molly half-Maeve.

As a side note, I hate when interviewers make their questions longer than the answers. I'm sure it's nice interviewing your favorite author, but you don't have to show your work just to prove you know about the author's writing. I'm much more interested in what Butcher has to say than some interviewer.

Also, this sentence is unforgivable: "I root for Harry and Murphy because it just seems so right; you’ve written it in such a way that it makes sense."

 

The Murphy hate here is annoying.

 

Yeah. I mean, hell, why wouldn't he take Murphy? The only people I ever thought Harry might choose to have his back over Murphy were maybe Michael and Thomas, depending on the situation. And Michael got crippled years ago while Thomas was all over the place.

Also:

Who has Harry gone up against, much less brought Murphy along against, that was that much beyond 'plain vanilla humans'? The closest I can think of is the Skinwalker, who Murphy never fought and who had no interest in her.

It's important to remember that in the DF, mortals actually can hold there own pretty well, especially with the right knowledge. Circle, holy water, crosses, iron, etc. and enough training and you can do okay. Which is part of why Murphy hangs out with a professional wizard, one would assume, and why she constantly trains.

 

I hope Taure is right.... but considering how their relationship developed over the last few books it is clear that Butcher likes her and I don´t see anything that bad happening to her.
He clearly build her up power-wise, even if that destroyed a lot of her character in my opinion. She simply didn´t transform well from being a cop to leader of the DF Avengers.

And Aviary.. most of the hate comes from how she handled Dresden in the last few books. Her belittling of Harry when he joined Mab combined, especially her stealing his things, was simply unacceptable in my opinion especially considering with what guys she works together. (And the bike/Wild Hunt scenes are simply cringeworthy).

Ryuugi... She is leading the resistance against anything creepy in Chicago. I don´t believe that she has weeek where she doesn´t fight against something supernatural.

I will read the next book.. but I am very unsure if I like how the series develops.

 

Most of those fights were probably her ambushing them with a P-90 or sending other people in the group to take care of them.

 

Plus there's the fact that most supernatural beings really aren't that much more impressive than a mundane human, if you know what you're doing. Practically everything supernatural has some kind of weakness or limit or quirk that vastly mitigates their capabilities, and even if they are vastly more capable physically, it doesn't really matter when you can take proper advantage of those limits.

 

Spoiler

There is the still unsolved mystery of how Murphys Dad really died, since it is very heavily implied that he didn't kill himself like she thinks.

He was heavily into the Black-Cat/SI/Super Natural world stuff, just like Murphy is.

So I think that will come up this book, Nic or one of the baddies will go "Hey I knew your Dad, and murderer him Mwahahahaha"

She'd not gonna die.

I don't mind so much her position, although her treatment of Dresden was rather extreme, but i think that was a literary technique to give something for Harry to rage about, and then have to control himself to not give into the Mantle.

I doubt we will get another Molly/Winterl lady, centric short story so soon after Boomshell, but I would love to see this period of time for her fleshed out.

 

Um, what? No, seriously, let's look at this.

Harry is Mab's bitch. 'She can't force him--', yeah, whatever, he is her bitch. Completely and utterly. Sometimes she may have to wait, sometimes she may have to twist his arm, but if there's anything we've learned from Harry's interactions with Mab, it's that when she wants him to do something, he ends up doing it.

Murphy took Bob back from him*. This is something that was pretty obviously a good move given the above, because Bob...in the wrong hands, in anything close to the wrong hands, Bob could be utterly horrifying. And circa Cold Days? Even beyond being Mab's aforementioned bitch, Harry was popping a boner any time danger came up, having intense urges to rape anyone he thought was attractive, and wanted to kill all of the shit. Note what happened in that scene. Murphy cam in and told him that calmly and he pretty much attacked her in a fit of rage.

Murphy seeing that and going 'Yeah, so I'm taking the high-explosives away now. If we need Bob, I'll call Butters.' was not unreasonable, whatever some people have said. Nor was taking away the Swords of the Cross, for fairly similar reasons.

Beyond which, Murphy did not belittle Harry. She faced him and told him the facts and still backed him up when he needed it.

*Not away from him, because he sort stole Bob from Butters, but whatever.

1) She has a squad of dead soldiers, a Valkyrie, the mob, a pack of werewolves, Bob, a wide array of minor talents, backing from the cops, the Church, and the White Court, and more to aid her there.

2) It was mentioned that when things got rough, they'd call in a Warden and ask for back up.

3) She dealt primarily with stuff like the Fomor's minions, trolls, and relatively minor dangers.

See Aftermath for a good example. And that was before she had backup.

Emphasizing this. If you know their weaknesses and can prepare--which Murphy's arguably in a better position to do then Harry was--you can reduce the threat of most of the common dangers by a lot. Murphy's a Catholic, so she's got faith on a cross around her neck. She's got steel jacketed bullets to fuck of Fairies and Fomor. For everything else, she's got Bob's info, a squad of fighters, and probably the Ghosts of Chicago, post-GS.

 

Murphy kinda of is a bitch. Just like Morgan, in a way. But at the end of the day, she is one of the good guys. That said, she'll be 44 or something in this book. They have a lot of history, but she is getting old.

 

Good point, at most she would have 1 or 2 more books after this one before she just literally got to old.

 

She had no idea how great the influence of being the WK would be... it is not like the whole mantle influence thing is common knowledge. And considering that, like you said, she now works with Marcone and Vampires I find a bit two faced that she rages, as I didn´t read those scenes as her calmly informing Harry of changed circumstances, about him working for the Winter Court to save his daughter.

And what exactly gave her the power to say what happened to the swords, who god more or less personally gave into Dresden's care, and Bob? From my point of view she assumes command of a situation that doesn´t really involve her. For me it doesn´t matter as much that the decision was the "right" or "smart" one but that she felt she had the right to make it when I don´t believe she had it.

 

Besides. She's already shacked up with confirmed murderer and monster Kincaid. Harry's neither, yet, and a friend to boot. I feel that she overstepped the boundaries of their friendship. Maybe it was what she had to do and maybe it was the correct decision. It still pissed me off and I really hate alpha-male bullshit.

 

I think Murph's just more of a cop than we like to think. She likes consistency, and she likes knowing what she's getting into.

She knew what Kincaid was going in. She knew what cooperating with the White Court and Marcone meant. She knew what accompanying Harry to Arctis Tor might mean, and she knew what going to Mexico could cost her.

And until that point, she knew who Harry was. She knew what kind of a person he was, she knew what he was capable of, and she knew what his limits were, even if he'd occasionally spook her by accidentally blowing up her car.

Thing is, she also knew what dying and coming back can do to a person - ie, vampires, ghouls, ghosts, etc. The results are never, ever, ever positive. She also knows - from Harry, no less - that making deals with the Fae is also a very, very Bad Idea.

And now, she sees a man who has died - or as close to it as you can get, and entered a deal with the Fae - the biggest, baddest of the Fae to boot - and sees that he is suddenly having more self-control issues, seems stronger than before, more willing to go off on his own and ignore his friends than before... and her detective senses started tingling. She's seen good people go bad before, and knows directly from Harry himself what happens when a wizard goes bad, ie execution is the merciful option.

And thinks to herself that maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't be a bad idea to take a rich depository of knowledge - knowledge quite literally being power in this case - away from a man who is no longer consistent with what she knows of him. She decides that maybe it would be a good idea to take a loaded fucking weapon away from a guy who seems a little less stable than he used to be.

In other words, she does what she feels to be the right thing, the safest thing, the thing that all her years of training and honed instincts tell her is the best thing, at least in the immediate term.

Was it the best thing for Harry? Debatable. Was it the best course of action she could take, based on what she knew and what her instincts were screaming at her? Less debatable.

 

Um. No. In case you forgot, Murphy has Bob to tell her what's what when she needed to know, and in fact has for about two years now, IIRC. She's had time to talk to him about it and if she hasn't, she would have had time after Harry gave him back.

She knows.

You may wish to read them again then. Like, seriously, take the Murphy-hate-goggles off and read that scene again. I'll even paste the important bits.

You know, I've heard a lot of people describe this scene and talk about Murphy being a bitch in it--and I mean loads of people--but seriously guys. Everyone. Please reread that scene again.

Also, on this note, Murphy had zero problems with what Harry did to save his daughter. In fact, she gave up her life's work to go help him save his daughter, risking her life repeatedly to do so. That was never an issue.

Harry's status as Mab's bitch really doesn't have a lot to do with his daughter anymore.

Well, given that she found the Swords, which are generally hidden from notice, it would seem God gave her the power in the first case. Comman sense gave her to power in the latter. And she absolutely had the right. See that seen up there? Nearly attacking someone who's saved your life a dozen times the moment you get made means you are not in the right state of mind to handle heavy explosives.

Um, it seems like you haven't been paying attention to...well, a lot of stuff. I pasted the scene up there, which will hopefully help you erase the hateful fog of your memories of the scene, but since you brought up Kincaid and he brought up the White Court and Mob:

1) What does that have to do with anything? I can't imagine her trusting him with this stuff, either, even if they obviously work well together.

2) Technically speaking, Harry is a murderer, several times over. Monster is arguable, depending on how you consider the Winter Knight.

3) It's not about Harry, it's about Mab, and how Harry is her bitch.

4) Please pull your memories together and remember what happened. There was no alpha bullshit:

 

Reread it. She still says that she's taking the swords. What makes her morally superior to Dresden? If she said she'd give the swords to someone like Father Forthill, or Michael... That I'd buy. But she is no better than Harry.

And yes, Mab's got him, but he's always able to draw the line if he's motivated enough. I don't like it. I think Murphy is a great character and I generally like her in the books, but I still think she crossed some lines.

Especially in thinking that she sees further or clearer than Uriel.

 

You mean like, say, not telling people about certain dangers because you're trying to protect them? Like, the White Council, or a Skinwalker?

Or not telling a certain wizard that he had a child, to protect them both?

Or that you're his brother, for similar reasons?

Or not telling your entire family that you've been turned into a supernatural entity to spare their feelings, or simply because you're afraid of what they'll say?

Or dragging a young sensitive into a war zone without thought to how it will affect her to save someone else?

Murph might be guilty of doing something jerk-ish just because she believes it is the right thing to do, but she's just one of many.

 

Nobody ever said any different, Little Chicago. The point still remains that it really wasn't her place to take Bob or the swords, even less so to keep them for herself. Her intentions were good, but so was everyone elses on that list and we've seen where some of that ended up.