This thread is dedicated to you motherfuckers who have finished Cold Days, have at it, cunts.

 

Fun times!

Going to re-read later this week probably, but a few things stood out:

• The word "fuck" was used more often than normal. Doesn't bother me but I did notice it. Also fewer instances of Harry saying things like "Hell's Bells" or "Stars and Stones"
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• I thought the bit with the Wild Hunt was a little contrived. I can buy that Harry could take control of it in that manner and that the Erlking and Kringle might set him up to manage it -- but what I'm not sure about is what it was doing in Chicago to begin with. Who called it there? If Erl/Kris had anything to do with it being there, then what made them care about this conflict enough to bother? And so on. I liked the scenes and the idea, but it felt a little bit too shoe-horned in for me. I'd have preferred that Harry had called it up specifically to take advantage of it rather than it just being a lucky chance it was there to save the day.
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• Murphy did seem a little too easily onboard with Harry being alive and running around. To me it felt like someone had already told her about it beforehand. I like Murphy a lot, and I do ship Harry/Murphy if I ship anything in this series, but her role this time just felt off.
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• Rashid is freaking awesome.
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• Disappointed that we didn't see any of the Council or their reactions to Harry being alive and/or the Winter Knight. Sort of surprised we didn't see Lea at all, given how much Winter-y stuff was going on here. Didn't much like the little Captain Hook girl fae, but eh.
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• Demonreach ended up being about as cool as expected, and I liked the purpose it ended up serving. But now I'm doubly curious as to what Rashid did to make it carry a grudge against him.
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• Blatant hints that there is something special about Mac. About Harry's birth (starborn). About various other things. I'd picked up on most of that before though so this mostly just emphasized it.

 

Thought about it a bit more, and I think I feel like it was... sloppy. Or something. In several places.

I'm totally on board with the whole Nemesis thing. I had actually wondered if something like that could be possible back when we got the Black Council moniker since I'd read Mistborn around the same time. I.e. a "big, bad force of some kind is exerting influence over people."

But the part with Cat Sith especially struck me as being a bit off. I had been reading the adversary as being a sort of infection that gets into your thoughts and changes them, shapes you to its will, and so on.

But Adversary!CatSith didn't have the memories of Cat Sith fetching a coke for Harry. Apparently he didn't even know that he was supposed to be following Dresden's orders. So if that's the SOP for the adversary taking control of a being then how the hell has it been so effective? You'd think that sort of forgetfulness would be noticed a bit more often with wizards and minions of various kinds.

Not to mention that Lea didn't seem to be all that forgetful when it was infecting her, though I'm willing to write that off as her actively fighting it still when Mab caught it and cured her. Cat Sith lost that particular battle apparently.

Maybe it'll be explained as it having access to the memories of the one it infects but it has to actually sit down and go through them and it didn't have time with Sith. I dunno, but it felt sloppy.

The bit with the Wild Hunt so conveniently showing up also felt sloppy. Way too damned convenient. And sure, it was implied that Vadderung had a hand in it somehow. It seemed that the Erlking and Kringle set it up somehow specifically for Harry to use it to his advantage. The Red Cap obviously knew it was coming, but if I was supposed to assume that he summoned it then that seems sloppy too. The whole thing was just a little too contrived. Sloppy. I felt like a little more development around it, so that Harry seemed to have "made his own luck" more like he has in the past, would have helped.

Harry had plenty of opportunities to ask Molly about the parasite. Sure they were busy, and I completely understand that everyone had far more pressing matters to attend to, but simply mentioning it and asking her what she knew about it would have taken two minutes. For this book I'd have fully expected the result of that conversation to be along the lines of "I don't know / there isn't time right now, but..." or something. It's obviously material to deal with in the next installment. But again, it just felt sloppy that it never came up when there were chances for it to do so.

Murphy taking Harry's return in stride could have been explained better so as not to feel like it was sloppy writing. I'm not saying Butcher was wrong to portray it this way, even if it's a bit odd, but the setup for it didn't make it as believable as I'd like.

A few of the revelations about the roles of Winter and Summer felt... strange. Winter was created to protect everyone from the looming threat of Outsiders and Summer is there to protect us from Winter? Okay, that's a neat idea, but technically that makes Winter stronger doesn't it? If Winter can hold off both an assault from the Outsiders and still stay even with a Summer who only has to worry about Winter? I think that was even mentioned in the book. Can explain it by saying that Winter fiercely protects it's territory in all directions, including fighting Outsiders and Summer and the mortal world, and that Summer is just a barrier between Winter and the mortals that it would enroach onto otherwise, but... again, just, sloppy feeling. It no longer feels like Winter and Summer are perfect counters to each other and now it's just Titania being a perfect counter to Mab. And that's fine, but it felt sloppy the way it was done.

And why Winter anyway? I had the impression from the book (which I read too fast, I'll admit -- I'll have to read it again soon and see what I catch on the re-read that I missed the first time) that it wasn't always Winter. That in other times it was someone else who defended against the Outside.

There's other stuff I could go into that I liked, or didn't like, or wanted to see, or was happy to see, and so on. But I guess I'm trying to focus more on what I considered to be sloppy writing in this post? Dunno.

What else?

Oh, Mac. I felt like Mac was just conveniently tacked into everything so Butcher could have a chance to highlight that he wasn't quite normal. He didn't seem to fit in the story like he was supposed to be there. Sloppy again? But he'd been just fine until this story, despite people like Maeve apparently knowing his past, and it seems oddly plot convenient for him to suddenly be vulnerable to things like kidnapping.

And what happened to Murphy's band of city protectors? Billy and Georgia and Daniel Carpenter and whatnot? In Ghost Story she had this whole thing going, and apparently they were big on working together to get stuff done when it came to protecting the city, and if that was the case then I'd expect to have a seen a little of their operation. As it was Murphy just kind of waltzed into the middle of things and all the infrastructure surrounding her that we saw in Ghost Story was a footnote.

Granted I didn't really want to see them, because I didn't like that part all that much, but I expected to feel like it existed.

Molly also went from crazy Rag Lady to... extremely functional rather quickly. Given that at the end of Ghost Story she'd just had another mental whammy smacked down on her via Corpsetaker I'm surprised that she managed to get her shit together so quickly and effectively. I liked it though. I liked that she'd gotten a nice apartment out of something she'd done for some magical beings and I liked that she'd become more competent and less crazy -- but it didn't feel like it fit, given how recent and messed up the events of Ghost Story were.

Also seems like Dresden would at least have had a bit of internal monologue to wonder just why people kept calling "starborn" even if he didn't bring it up to anyone to ask what it was.

Okay, I need to get back to doing other stuff, and this is getting really long. I'm not gonna edit it either, so yes... that means my post is likely sloppy as hell. Irony.

TL;DR: I felt like the writing in Cold Days was sloppy in a lot of areas. Things often felt shoe-horned into the plot instead of written in naturally and that bothered me. I did quite enjoy the read though, and I expect I'll get around to a re-read a lot sooner than I did with Ghost Story.

 

My guess as to why the "island holds a grudge" against the Gatekeeper: He tried to do what Dresden managed to, become The Warden, except he pissed it off instead of convincing it to let him. Perhaps he tried to enforce some kind of control of what he thought should go on instead of forming more of a true partnership? Dunno, but that's my current guess.

 

I'd just like to say. I'm delighted we have an official name because I was so fucking sick of you punks calling him 'Outsiderbane'.

 

Yeah, yeah, but we've known for ages that something was significant about the time/place/whatever of Harry's birth.

This book just gave us a bit more to work with in terms of theorizing what exactly is special about him, between the new significance of Halloween and the term "starborn" and whatnot.

Speaking of... I always had the impression that Justin knew about whatever it is that makes Harry special, but after reading Ghost Story again a week or so ago I'm not so sure anymore. In early books I also thought Elaine was special in the same way, but there hasn't been much evidence that she's anything more than a wizard with power/skill similar to that of Harry (or similar to what Harry had before all his powerups).

 

I'd count "how to become a god via Darkhallow" to have been a pretty major secret as well. Granted he doesn't have that knowledge anymore, but yeah. Makes you wonder what else he knows that he's keeping mum about knowing.