I don't know if this is my fault or the book, but I was underwhelmed.

The writing and dialogue felt generally weak. Formula-standard cliffhangers at the end of every chapter, clunky and continuous exposition, bland character development. The banter was fine, but didn't do all that much for me.

The parts where Butcher goes to new places were by far the best: the Winter Courts, the influence of the Winter Knight mantle, fights involving Cait Sith and the walker, and the purpose of Deamonreach and the Faerie Courts. But the scenes with the old crew felt tired: same old Harry/Molly relationship, broing out with Thomas, the usual Toot. What used to feel like a rich and populated world now feels a bit cluttered.

Cold Days definitely had its moments, but most of it felt pretty bland to me.

 

Oberon did not survive the 1600s I thought, but maybe that can sorta be worked around to pull Oberon!Mac?

 

We know that Merlin stepped forwards through time to build the prison on Demonreach. We also know that he at some point simply disappeared without a trace. Think we'll get a chance to see him in action some time in the future, when he felt he was more needed? Or possibly, when he disappeared, was it actually to construct Demonreach, and the last (or more) part(s) of the n-dimensional prison hasn't actually happened yet in linear time?

 

I'm disappointed in Harry's reaction to Molly being made the Winter Lady. He now knows that the mantle changes people into near copies of each other, meaning Molly is going to, at least in some regards, become as malicious, twisted, and evil as Maeve. If this happened to my niece or whatever Harry considers Molly, putting a gun to Mab's head is the least stupid thing I would have done. Mab unmade Molly, doing something effective as killing her. Even if Molly doesn't get killed, her final place in life is to lose her soul, become the Queen Who Is and become as merciless and cold as Mab.

I can also see Molly, in the very near future abusing her hold over Harry to get him in bed. Butcher has made it very clear that Molly has a serious problem with not using her power to get what she wants, even stepping outside clear moral bounds.

Harry/Murphy grew not a whit, and I no longer care about it. I now ship Harry/Titania. "You killed my daughter and I shall never forgive you for it!! Unless you give me a new one." Pregnant queen shenanigans ensue.

I dislike that Mac is supernatural. His charm was in being a vanilla(ish) mortal that had seen it all, and still had the ability to settle down and survive after, with enough humanity left to care about things. He was Harry's hope for a calm life after years of strife.

Demonreach is the coolest kid in the candy store.

Fuck Maeve and Mab.

Killing Lily shocked me.

I really want to get deep into the structure of the outsiders, where the walkers fit in, where the Monarchs sit in power levels.

Frankly I want more interaction and growth for Harry than what was given; especially with faerie and demonreach.

 

If you read what mother summer said, it was implied that while really difficult, it is possible for a holder of mantle to resist its influence. The way Mother Summer spoke about it being both about Harry and not about Harry, and the way it was implied that she had atleast some ability to see the future, strongly implies to me that she was aware of the possibility of Molly becoming the next lady and basically told Harry that both Molly and him could remain themselves, if they were strong enough.

Bob did claim that the holder of the mantle would be turned, but shortly afterwards we learned that Bob had no clue about any of the magics in Demonreach. Bob does not know everything and could have just been plain wrong. Molly might well stil have her soul and potentially be able to resist the influence of the mantle.

Maybe, but I doubt it. Don't forget that Molly has been said to be a master at mind-magics, so she could already have mind whammied Harry into bed without any need for the powers of winter. Most likely she wants it to be consensual or something.

 

I do have to admit I'm not a fan of the Winter Summer roles thing, I preferred it when they were just divisions of the Nevernever, maybe even something more so long as they remained equal. This skewing just feels... I dunno, it just doesn't mesh with the way I'd have wanted them to be. That said, two things:

Both the Summer Lady and the Winter Lady are friends of Dresden now, so maybe some while down the line a temporary truce between the realms could be used to facilitate a push on the Gates in some form?

Also, the idea of Mother Winter and Mother Summer sharing one particular, powerful name... the first thought I had was that they might be something like split entities which together form the White God, or something like that given how they play a very significant role in protecting this verse from the Outside. Failing that, it's still something interesting.

As for Molly, while I doubt she'd use her power to force Dresden into bed, I could certainly see her pulling something like Maeve did at the party (though with more benign intentions) - some sort of seduction play. Alternatively, that could be something she starts doing as a sign of how badly she's losing the fight against the mantle.

 

Book was fucking awesome. Loved it to bit. One thing I don't think i saw here. What the fuck is up with the bottles in the Mother Winter's and Summer's house. Do the Mother's in their spare time cook up diseases and release them on to earth. I am guessing we will see Wormwood before the series gets over.

Edit: Winter Knight/Winter Lady OTP

 

Wait, so Lea somehow prepared Molly to be able to receive a mantle of Fae power...but Molly hasn't made a Choice in regards to anything, has she? Meaning she still has a soul, yes?

Winter Lady with a goddam soul?!?

 

First post on the boards, hi there *waves*

Mac is probably an angel - he was called a 'Watcher' by the outsider; this was probably a reference to the Book of Enoch, where the Watchers are the angels that came to Earth to watch over humans, distinct from Fallen Angels.

From Wikipedia:
In the Book of Enoch, the Watchers (Aramaic. עִירִין, iyrin), are angels dispatched to Earth to watch over the humans. They soon begin to lust for human women and, at the prodding of their leader Samyaza, defect en masse to illicitly instruct humanity and procreate among them. The offspring of these unions are the Nephilim, savage giants who pillage the earth and endanger humanity. Samyaza and his associates further taught their human charges arts and technologies such as weaponry, cosmetics, mirrors, sorcery, and other techniques that would otherwise be discovered gradually over time by humans, not foisted upon them all at once. Eventually God allows a Great Flood to rid the earth of the Nephilim, but first sends Uriel to warn Noah so as not to eradicate the human race. While Genesis says that the Nephilim remained "on the earth" even after the Great Flood, Jude says that the Watchers themselves are bound "in the valleys of the Earth" until Judgment Day. (See Genesis 6:4 and Jude 1:6, respectively)

My guess is that Mac is a 'retired' angel who no longer has a hand in mortal matters, which is why 'he's out'.

Uriel is one of the named Watchers if it matters.

Conspiracy overdrive - Out of the 200 watchers that descended to Earth, 20 are named. One of them is Ananel, which I couldn't find much about on the web. Ananel = Anally? :awesome

 

That's what I'm wondering about too. Surely both she and Lily cannot simply have LOST their frickin' souls just cause they happened to stick close by the mantle when the current Winter Lady died.

The Outsider called Mac "Watcher". I'm guessing he's a Venator like Thomas is?

It was pretty awesome to get to see Titania.

*Waves at Larken*

Welcome. Nice theory.

 

Mac is fucking dead to me. He was completely fine as the semi mysterious barkeep who served the drinks. And then like twenty billion spastics kept on asking Butcher 'WHO IS DA MAC?' nonstop, and now he's some retired Angel Outsider Shadowman bullshit who shrugs off getting shot in the stomach. >:|

 

After Ghost Story, I thought Cold Days was a nice return to the earlier style of the Dresden Files books.

Demonreach is one of the most awesome things that we have seen come out of the DF's since Sue.

Overall I enjoyed the book very much but there is one thing that confused me, and that was the whole transition of the Ladies.

In Summer Knight, when Aurora was killed Summers power went to the nearest vessel of Summers power, the Summer Knight at the time Lily, making her the Summer Lady. I don't have my copy in front of me but didn't the Mothers tell Harry that was how the mantle of power passed or was that strictly for the Knights?

Additionally in SK we learned about changelings for the first time, and again don't have my copy with me, but didn't we learn that changelings until their choice are under the domain of their parents court?

So what I don't understand is how the mantle of the Summer Lady went from Lily to Sarissa who is a half human half winter Fae, and not to Fix who was in the immediate area. Was it because Fix was male?

Then there was Molly inheriting the mantle of the Winter Lady. Why didn't the power return to Mab to choose a successor? Because didn't the Gatekeeper imply that it was the Queens who chose their successors when he was laying out reasoning for Harry to be Black Council?

Given that Mab said Molly was a option I suppose she did choose Molly in a round about way, but that doesn't explain why it went to a mortal automatically instead of the the Queen.

This. I mean a changeling I can understand since they have a half Fae side, but a straight purebred mortal wizard? Seems like its messing with a few things that are NOT to be messed with. Either free will or the very foundation of the Fae. So now we have a Winter Lady who had as far as we know the power thrust upon her with no choice in the matter, which will turn her from a mortal with a soul to a Fae, with no choice in the matter. Unless you count the choice to b changed by the mantle of power.

But if Molly chooses not to be changed then we have basically a Mortal with the power of the Winter Lady but who can lie and do whatever she wants. Maeve 2.0, which messes with the ground rules of the Fae, as Dresden keeps saying Fae cannot lie.

It just seems that Molly getting the mantle however that happened is going to be seriously unbalancing the universal scales.


P.S. Also hello from a long time lurker.

 

Harry should not be as unsophisticated as that (during his conversation with Mother Summer.) I realize that Mother is speaking in riddles, but Harry's accepted that by now and that neanderthal thing gets pretty old, pretty fast.

 

'I AM HARRY BLACKSTONE COPPERFIELD DRESDEN'

I really hope that doesn't come to bite him in the ass...

 

I think this is almost a certainty. Its likely also why the winter lady mantle went to Molly, rather than Harry who was the winter knight and far more entangled with the sidhe than Molly. I have read many remark that the whole lady/queen/mother thing mirrors the maiden/mother/crone thing. I think this means that a male cannot get one of the queen mantles, not even for temporary storage.

This is a good point. It could be a retcon, or maybe the Gatekeeper was simply not up to date on the rules involved. I mean there is little question the guy is smart, but no one knows everything.

Unless that really is the plan. Its hard to really say, since we don't yet know what the duties of a winter lady are, but apparenly they are important given that Maeve felt that without her, Mab would be screwed against the invading outsiders. We know from Butcher that an apocalypse is coming (the big three book epic apocalyptic trilogy that will end the series), and there was a word of god a while back where Butcher said that most truly powerfull entities know its coming.

I really could see Mab deciding that having a human and mortal winter lady who still has her soul supporting the good guys in this would have some massive advantage. Molly, thanks to her humanity, might be able to do things that Maeve never could have. Including lie yes, but possibly even more significant things. Just for example, the corrupted Cat Sith did not even try to corrupt Harry, so maybe its harder and more time consuming for the adversary to corrupt free willed and souled mortals, than it is to corrupt soulless fae. That, or something similar might be a very good reason for Mab to want a mortal winter lady.

We don't know if that would mess with any universal laws, but even if they would, Mab might feel its the lesser of two evils. I mean I doubt any unbalancing would end up with the utter destruction of everything, but if the outsiders win, it truly is a total game over.

Almost certain it will, imho. On the other hand, he apparently did force the other guy to give his full name aswell. What I wonder is this. We know outsiders can me summoned, and we know Harry now knows the full name of that outsider. Why could he not just summon the guy inside a circle on the island with Demonreach ready and waiting, and then have Demonreach jump the guy and put him with all the other prisoners the moment the summon is complete. (I am assuming here that the outsider was just banished rather than killed, since He Who Walks Behind was not truly killed but merely banished when its "body" was destroyed). Demonreach could apparently have imprisoned Mab herself with little difficulty, so I don't see the outsider being a problem either. Especially if he is summoned and trapped inside a circle.

This would be a perfect way to remove a major enemy player from the field would it not, and would fit perfectly with Harrys new role as the Warden of a major prison designed to contain Eldritch Abomination. On the same note, I wonder if the naagloshi Harry fought with will end up becoming prisoner number 7 on the minimum security wards eventually. And what about the denarian coins? One of the big problems with them is that they corrupt their guards in the church and break free. Could Harry perhaps decide that its a bad idea to give coins to the church, and from now on give any coins he captures to Demonreach, who I presume could not be corrupted by the coins. That might actualy be a way of truly defeating the denarians permanently.

 

On a side note, we know that Molly never had the option of choice, she's as fully human as a Wizard could be. Unless... Charity was an undecided changeling?

Anyways I think the point is that Molly while effectively immortal (Wizard's age + power of a Queen) still has her soul because now she's an extra special Human.

As for demonreach prison was it ever said that it could contain outsiders? They are also something extra special. Could demonreach hold something antithetical to the existence of reality?

The name the Mothers share... Gaia anyone?

Oh and a particularly scary thought: He-Who-Walks-Behind is actually something of a 'good guy' in training Harry to stand against all other Outsiders? Black sheep of the outsiders being one of the big ones?

Mac being a Watcher does make sense as to why he rarely talks, he's bound similar to Uriel in interfering in what he can say.

 

While I enjoyed the book immensely, I hope the next dozen or so book's don't always have to involve the possibility of the world ending. It seem's to me that JB feel's like he has to out do himself every new book and is constantly escalating the danger Harry has to get into and how many pop culture references and shout outs he has to sneak in.

I'm also getting a bit of a David Eddings-esque vibe from the last 3 books, with the protag and his mates all being wise cracking bad assess all the time. I know it's part of their characters to be cracking jokes etc, but it's getting a bit same-ey with how they're all doing it all the time now. Can't.. really articulate what I'm trying to say here

Out of the last 5 Books, I'd rate them: Small Favor/Turn Coat > Changes > Cold Days >>> Ghost Story

 

I think the next book will be more complicated. After all, it'll be the nickleheads.

 

It's time for the Nickelheads to meet the Warden and find out what solitary confinement is all about.

 

This. This is the time when Harry should make a beeline for the nearest Knight and say, 'hey, you know all those coins that you keep collecting that keep disappearing because human wills are weak and blah de blah blah? Want that to never happen again?'

Harry could singlehandedly cripple the Denarians by just putting the coins the Church currently possesses inside Demonreach, since from the sounds of things, it's contained bigger baddies (it mentions dark gods explicitly) than the Fallen for longer without trouble. The coins go in there, they become coins the Fallen probably aren't going to get back until Judgement Day (which will, of course, also be on Harry's birthday.)