My best guess is that she wanted to protect her daughter.

As for book, up to the sword shattering it wasn't anything special, but afterwards it was much better. I really liked Uriel's actions and it was great to have Michael back in action, even if only for a little while.

Butters as a Knight was unexpected to me, but I like that. A lightsaber may be a little too much, but that's just Butcher for you.

While Nicodemus had it coming, there is difference between destroying guy and destroying him. And there is the question about his ultimate motivations. If he's trying to save the world, even if only to damn it himself, then the only true winners of this book are the Black Council. I suspect that 20th book will have an answer to that.

I'm unsure about Dresden and Lash's daughter. I'm quite disappointed that it's not Lash, but I will wait with my final opinion till we get to know her better. And now that we discovered how her kind is made, any predictions about possible Bob's parents? An usual suspect is Merlin, of course.

As for Dresden and Murphy getting together. With all this teasing we better get their sex scene in the next book.

Molly is an unknown now. She's a lot more normal than I expected her to be which may say something about how crazy was Maeve, even for the Winter Lady. Or she will get worse latter on. Whatever the case, I'm waiting for her parents' reaction. Though them suspecting she's sleeping with Harry is very amusing and Michael was quite cool, if awkward, with it.

 

Just finished. Initial reactions -

Good book. All in all, 7.5/10. Like Nuhuh, it wasn't my favourite book either. It felt like Butcher was trying a little too hard. Angels, gods, Star Wars etc, betrayal by someone on the team, and of course, the token Carpenter family action. We've seen pretty much all of this before in various books. Not that it wasn't good, mind you, but it has gotten really really predictable at this point. There were a couple of really good moments but overall, the story felt weak.

I mean, the only real new thing that we learn in this book is that Harry now apparently has a Spiritual child, who'll possibly be Bob 2.0. Harry is getting closer to his kid, which we all knew was gonna happen, Michael who was supposed to be fucking retired is brought out to fight again, which really annoyed me. (Tbh, the scene where he offers to sacrifice himself for Harry and Murphy would've been the perfect death for him!)

Random Angels trading away their graces ala Supernatural. For a primordial being who was waging wars when this planet was just gas, his juice sure runs out easily.

Oh, and herp derp big enemy now has a big bad weapon which we know nothing about. Harry now is on speaking terms with Both Odin/Santa and Hades - which as we've come to know means jack shit, given he's also been on good terms with Uriel, with negligible benefits. All I get the sense from this is that Butcher is setting up Harry's possible allies for the Big Apocalyptic trilogy, when the shit hits the fan.

Btw, Harry was supposed to have a broken back (I remember something about it being able to heal in 5 to 10 years based on his wizard juice) without his mantle, from his injuries in Changes right? Seems like he could feel all other injuries except that one. Convenient.

I dunno. Good book, Maggie and Mouse were super cute. Butters was meh. Murphy was cool. Doesn't even compare to the excitement I felt at the end of Changes, or Ghost Story, or Cold Days.

:/

 

Yeah I am with Nuhuh on the religion front. I really don´t like this heavy focus on Christianity and that for example all four Dooms Day weapons/items are connected to it. There clearly seem to be a massive power difference between Christianity and every other religion and this is something I neither understand nor like.

The Butters/Batman scenes were cringe-worthy, probably because I didn´t read the short stories and thus missed out on a lot of character development. And I am not sure how I feel about the whole Jedi Knight scene.. simply seems to geeky to me.

Murphy... I still can´t bring myself to like her even if her performance in this books was vastly better than in the previous ones. And I really don´t like the whole relationship idea because it simply can´t work in my eyes. The same problem is with Harry being a real parent... I am really wondering how Butcher will spin this one, especially with the Apocalypse coming near. It will have a huge affect on his behaviour and this could be hard to do in the few books that are remaining, especially considering how the time jumps between each book. (And I really don´t get what is so sob worthy in the interaction between Harry and Maggie)

And poor Molly, she still hasn´t got anywhere near enough screen time but her character seems to have changed so much that I wonder how much of her I will recognize when/if Butcher spends some time with her. (And on a more personal note... it seems like my dream of a Harry/Molly romance/strong friendship is doomed to never happen)

But even with this critique I liked this book a lot more than the previous 2. The scenes between Harry and Hades or Harry/Harry-, Harry/Molly in the dream scape were great. I also thought that the whole parasite thing was very well done even if the actual Lasciel was a bit of a let-down. (Poor girl, got outplayed by her own shadow^^).
It was better than the last two books but the sad truth is that with every book I get a little less hyped about the series. 7/10

 

I feel the same way as Nuhuh.

It was an okay book in my opinion. The biggest saving points to me being Nicodemus and the interaction between Hades and Harry.

I don't like the big Christian aspect, and I'm going to take a guess and assume Nicodemus is going to try and summon Lucifer?

I also didn't like how Jim handled the parasite/Lasciel.

6.5-7/10

 

This is something that bothered me too somewhat. Though to be fair, this was a denarian book, which pretty much automatically makes it a Christianity oriented to some degree, given the origin of the denarians (silver coins/fallen angels).

You are right about it being disappointing that the major super artifacts Harry got are all from Christianity though. Hopefully Harry will manage to acquire some other items of equal power that come from other sources in the coming books that focus on subjects other than denarians to balance it out.

If the final apocalyptic trilogy is caused by nothing but christian artifacts, then I will really be disappointed. So far, Butcher has kept it pretty vague whether or not the Christian god is the true creator god, or whether or not he is simply the most powerfull because he currently has the most worshippers.

Even in this book, Hades for example made a reference to a time when dead souls went to him, but no longer do. Which might be taken to mean that if everyone started worshipping Hades again in Dresdenverse, the Christian God would be out of a job, and souls would start going to Hades for judgement again.

But yeah, I hope when the finale arrives, the artifacts Harry got here will be just one of several he can bring in to the fight. And I hope it will be outsider caused apocalypse, rather than anything from some specific religion. Jesus damn well better not return and there better not be a rapture in book 2 of the final ending trilogy.

Not sure there really is much Butters action in the short stories. We did see in Ghost Story that Butters has learned to somewhat use magic by using Bob as a power source, so this originates from that book.

Hopefully we will see more of Molly next book. If not, then you are correct that she should be very different by then. The title of the next book is (minor spoiler really)

Spoiler

Peace Talks

If Mab arranges those talks or hosts them (which might make sense since they are HER accords), then that would make the next book very sidhe oriented, giving us a lot of Molly and Harry interaction. Not to mention interaction between Harry and the White Council. Its been two books since Harry returned from the dead, and we have heard nothing from the White Council at all. No reactions to Harrys return from the dead.


EDIT:

This seems unlikely. It seems that in Dresdenverse, Lucifer is not imprisoned or anything. He was able to easily give the denarians massive boost in power during the book where they kidnapped Ivy (Small Favor I think?). Its just that then Uriel&co can also act totally freely to counter him.

It was also implied that Nicodemus did not actually want the grail as his primary goal, but rather the knife. Maybe the knife can do some strange stuff like kill immortals outside of halloween or somesuch.

 

I think it was better than Cold Days even if it was much smaller in scale. The stuff ahead of Hades was a bit underwhelming, but overall I think it was a nice ride.

Can't really rate it before I re-read it, but despite not having Molly around much and despite some pretty silly stuff with Butters, it was still good.

As for Butters... I think a lot of his stuff was a bit annoying, including his hero antics and attitude, but the moment he picked up the coat was fucking awesome. I still don't buy Nicodemus bailing just cause he lost his sword.

Sometimes I think he gets his ass kicked a little bit too easily. I mean, he's got 2000 years of experience with a sword on Butters. Even with a broken blade against a lightsabre, he should win.

 

This actually made sense to me. The reason Nicodemus is dangerous is because he is smart.

Something just happened that he does not understand. A broken sword suddenly came back to life twice as strong as before and he has no idea how or why it happened.

Whats smarter in that situation? Run away, observe Butters from a distance, study the new sword, prepare and then attack from a position of strength.

Or try to attack Butters and the "light saber" with a broken sword, despite not knowing if the thing has any other new powers or abilities and potentially risk death and damnation if it turns out the thing can do something totally unexpected.

It was afterall established that Anduriel can spy on any shadow and that Nicodemus is basically the spymaster of the Denarians. He can eavesdrop on Butters from a distance, learn all he can about this new sword, discover every weakness Butters has and then strike. Thats Nicodemus.

What did he really have to lose by fleeing at that point? The squires? He can always find more thugs like that. Revenge at Harry? Dish best served cold and all that.

Though I was a bit annoyed at Butters too. Especially the fact that he basically got Murphy nearly killed and the sword destroyed by bugging Harry. Or rather, the fact that it was basically ignored. He should have been showing more guilt at what was essentially a betrayal of Harry, and that it landed Murphy in a hospital with permanent injuries.

 

I'm sure I have read that you need five things for a summoning. All five objects are related to Jesus. Key to summon Jesus perhaps?

Edit: Also I'm pretty sure the christian stuff came up one, because it's a denarian book. Two because Christianity is the leading or one of the religions at this time. (Look at hades comment about new souls to the underworld.) Three because the book takes place in Chicago, USA which is a Christian country and I'm sure if we had a book in India for example there would be a different theme.

 

Get blood/weird magic memory of blood from cup -> bloodline curse Jesus -> kill God

 

Finished. Sad that Harry lost his fallen angel hoe but then again, he mentally had sex with her and had a kid.

I'm still shipping Molly!Harry. Sorry for all the Murphy lovers but Harry's a wizard and he's gonna live for centuries.

 

I don't really find the Abrahamic elements to be particularly irritating, and I'm quite atheist. Butcher is on the record saying that he avoids religions which he either doesn't understand or doesn't believe he will offend by misinterpreting them in a positive light. He ostensibly could add some Muslim elements to the Aramaic cosmology without a lot of effort, he already included Djinn, but he runs the risk of accidentally being racist.

And let's be honest, the linear good/evil thing is Dresden's shtick.

I was somewhat disappointed by this book, after the last three it felt anticlimactic. A lot of the plot solutions felt Ex Machina. I'm not really sure why Mab didn't just outright tell Harry her plan from step 1. It seems pointlessly obtuse as none of her obligations to The Fallen required that Harry be unaware of what was coming. For fuck's sake, this is Harry. Tell him that he is pregnant, offer to protect his newborn spirit baby, and he'll gladly commit genocide to protect his young. You can just skip the "pointless recalcitrante jerk" phase and get to "productive Harry."

I give it a 6.5/10 fun but not enough Zombie T-Rex.

 

Finished it about ten minutes ago. Still need to process a little before a more coherent critical analysis, but it was a hell of a lot of fun. Some serious awesome, some high drama, some good character stuff...at the moment, I'm rating it pretty highly.

 

Duplicity and plotting are in her nature but when she plots she aims for a person's greatest weakness. Harry's biggest weakness is his family and Mab knows it. Offering to stop Harry from dying gets his attention, offering to save the life of his unborn child gets his unwavering loyalty to the cause. And it isn't like that fact is a secret to her.

Plus he's under her Geas. She can just give him an order not to reveal her plans and he physically can't disobey - not that he'd actually want it. It just reeks of obtuse inefficiency.

 

Oh, he's able to refuse. It'll cost him his ability to walk, but he's able to do it. She knows he has limits that she needs to stay clear from.

Considering she spent months exclusively on him, I assume she has way more important stuff lined up for him in the future.

 

I think the religion stuff makes a lot sense, given that the Denarians are fallen angels. Clearly they would seek Christian items. But I have another theory as well. In Cold Days, Kringle/Vadderung said something about mantles relating them to masks. Hades said that it was his duty to keep those weapons for mankind. Of the items only one was an actual weapon. I think, that there is some sort of mantled power to the items. Maybe they're like Kringle, and used to be something else but were changed and molded by the faith of the people?


I'd also like to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. My only complaint was that it ended.

 

Really liked the pacing in this one - it kept the tension climbing steadily, no OMGWTFBBQ moments thrown at you in the last page like he has relatively recently (Changes/Ghost Story, looking at you here).

I was a little bit pissed the situation with Molly wasn't addressed while Michael had Uriel's Grace - imagine if his faith was shaken then? I was waiting the entire face off scene for Nicodemus to snipe back at Michael about how Michael's daughter turned out to try to shake his faith- it would have been a really awesome curve ball for the entire series. And of course, then Butcher has to scrap the whole Harry/Molly ship (at least until Murphy is sacrificed for the plot, inevitably, just like the last two love interests) right when I was finally thinking it might be in a good place...

...but that's not nearly as big of a deal as Dresden seems to finally be wising up and becoming more like a wizard and less like a cowboy. I really loved the whole Michael/Harry scene. The whole planning ahead thing, outsmarting his enemies was a really nice change from the knee-jerk reaction that he has relied upon so often in recent books. I know he's planned stuff out ahead of time before, but I really enjoy seeing this side of Harry come out to play again.

Overall, not my favorite, but definitely in the top five in my book. Well worth taking a day off of work to plow through today.

 

Just finished powering through this. Great book, not in my top three (which, for the record, are Dead Beat, Turn Coat, and Proven Guilty in that order), but damn close.

Loved having Binder back. And Goodman Grey was just phenomenal. I'm going to do a reread later now that I know about the code and see what was said. I didn't really like Ascher at first, though. I thought her attractiveness was being pushed way too hard. But I liked her character later, and when the reveal came it made perfect sense.

Though now all I want to read is a fic where Harry's assigned to mentor Ascher. Maybe around the same time he gets Molly as an apprentice.

Not sure how much I liked Butters here. There were times I wanted to punch him, but the ending scene was awesome. And lightsaber!Sword? Awesome.

While I'm on the topic of awesome, Denarian Bigfoot. That was great.

My big emotional moments were the first talk with Michael, the first talk with Maggie, and the final vault scene.

How long till the next one?

 

I think it's important to note that we finally have confirmation of non-humans being able to host Denarians.