Overall, an enjoyable, page-turning read. But in retrospect, basically 90% beginning, no middle, and 10% fake end. The book is almost entirely build-up, then just fizzles out.

And yeah, the book has lots of problems. But this is DF - nothing new there.

1. Almost all the conflict in the story is artificial, based on Harry choosing not to communicate things which would (or should) immediately resolve conflict. See: conflict with McCoy over Thomas, conflict with Ramirez and the Wardens, conflict with Lara at the end. For all of these things Butcher tries to come up with reasons why Harry doesn't just say the sensible thing earlier; for all of them, I ain't buying it.

2. Butcher has so many balls in the air that he's losing track of them, and he's still adding more. I'm beginning his doubt his ability to tie them together. It seems more likely at this that his plan is to just ignore dangling plot threads in favour of establishing new ones.

3. The Titan is the perfect example of that. A couple of books ago, Butcher introduced a world-ending level threat - Nemesis. Since he introduced it, Nemesis has been largely ignored. And now in this book, he introduces an entirely separate world-ending threat in the form of the Titan. It's just messy, in terms of plot.

4. Power levels are all over the place. Butcher seems to primarily be interested in making his new shiny bauble badass, whichever shiny bauble that may be in any given book. Titan is clearly OP, and will no doubt be nerfed once Butcher's attention passes to some other entity-of-the-week.

[I am expecting it to be revealed that Titan could only do that to Mab because she knows Mab's Name.]

5. Clearly, the Titan beating Mab so easily was intended to grant instant badass status to said Titan. I don't think it worked, because it lacks legitimacy in the reader's view. Instead of making the Titan look badass, it just makes the worldbuilding seem confused. It's like in LotR when Faramir picks up the ring, entirely able to resist its temptation, after Tolkien had spent 3 books building up the power of its temptation. Butcher spent a whole series building up a system of supernatural power and then shat all over it for a gotcha moment.

5. McCoy was meh. Butcher has made him an idiot just to produce artificial conflict. Extinction level event and he's still choosing to chase down Harry for a spat? Character assassination right there.

6. Unlike others, I did not find the Outsider action sequence interesting. It came out of nowhere and had no plot connection - just a gratuitous action sequence for action's sake. It was far too long. The Outsiders themselves were difficult to visualise, despite the many words spent on their description. And the logistics of the action were confused.

7. I wanted far, far more supernatural politics. Instead the event was basically cancelled while still in its prologue.

8. Butters/lightsaber is shit, but there's no new sin there. He's been shit since Ghost Story.

9. Maggie does not come across as a real child, but she's a minor feature, so whatever.

10. Still no "Harry wiped out the Red Court" fallout, except a slight recognition from Lara.

11. Far too many subplots that go nowhere: conjuritis, the FBI thing, the attempt to kick Harry out of the White Council.

On the plus side:

A. I thought Molly was actually handled pretty well.

B. Lara grew on me a lot over the course of this story.

C. The question of why Thomas did what he did is engaging.

D. Aspects of the Peace Talks were well set-up, even if they failed to live up to their promise.

E. Ferrovax ++

My favourite line from the whole book was probably the part where Harry asks Mab to trust that he's acting on her behalf. That was a cool interaction and an interesting dynamic. Pity it could not be explored more.

 

I hear a lot of your complaints which are similar to some which I posted.

However, I think that Nemesis is a player here behind the titan. We just didn't get that payoff because of the split.

On the kicking Mab thing: knowing more about Mab's background from the Merlin reveal and from what we know regarding Harry and Molly's mantles, Winter seems to be a very feral and predatory power tied to anger in many ways. I think that when King Puppet insulted Mab, he was doing so to lower her guard and provoke her to lean into more of those aspects of the mantle so that the last Titan could come in for the suckerpunch before she could defend herself.

 

I was thinking on this some, about why Mab might be so weak here (hopefully besides just to provide a ham-fisted Warf effect). It is July, so Winter is near its weakest. Additionally, the provoking and needling King Corb did was very calculated. He brings up her previous mortal life. As you put, this stroked the Winter mantle something fierce, and probably led to a sort of tunnel vision that let the Titan (more easily) punt her through a couple walls. However, the killing of a prominent Summer Fae and all the servers/guards (or 'chattel' as Corb put it) probably played an even bigger role; neither of these parties were Mab's to protect. The Fae belonged to Summer, and therefore was not a direct insult to Mab. The literal redshirts (who were not protected under guest/host-rights)belonged to Marcone, and he was immediatelygiven a weregild, 'satisfying' any direct insult to the Accords in general.

So if Mab is getting pissed, like really pissed (turning into her black clad 'Destoryer' mode), she is seriously considering annihilating usurper on the spot. However, by the rules of the Accords and by Winter Law, she has been given no direct enough insult to warrant such an action. We now have the mother of all powder kegs, and Corb then throws the needling of her previous mortal life (and sounds like failed love/relationship with Merlin) on top.

It's entirely likely that she was very much in a state of mind to pull a Kiaba and "screw the rules" and take this ugly frog motherfucker out. But as we've seen with Dresden, doing so and going against Winter Law leads to the Mantle starting to abandon its wielder. And we can only image this effect is exponentially worse for someone as powerful as a Faerie Queen as opposed to a mortal mantle like the Knight.

So perhaps the entire drama was calculated to give the Titan that tiny window to 'demonstrate' her power (and hopefully break the Accords defensive pact with little to no bloodshed).

Even with this theory though, I'm still unsure how Battle Ground will play out. Even if the Titan is closer to Mab's level in power than the suckerpunch would show, this still doesn't fix the fact that beings like Mab, Ferrovax, and presumably the Titan cannot throw down in the mortal world without breaking it. Possible, I suppose we just see Mab and the Titan providing "buffs" for their sides (ala Naruto during the war arc) or that they're busy during the entire battle countering each other's power (ala the Queens during the battle in Summer Knight).

Edit: Something screwed up with the coding/font, hopefully fixed now

 

I think Mab exaggerated her reactions to King Corb's needling. Her words to Dresden when he asks her to trust him "This is a public pantomime. You play for high stakes." can apply to her as much as him. Jim mentioned Mab is settling all her debts so the whole thing might be staged to set up the Fomor in some way.

Maybe its because I don't expect Mab to react that way to an insult, I would have thought she would be cold and calculating with her reactions and this kind of behaviour is how I expect Titania to react but then again Winter Mother said Mab was too much of a romantic so I'm probably wrong.

 

Honestly, I hope that's the case, cause it falls in line with how I picture Mab, an unknowable glacier of alien power, a force of nature. However, I think people in the other thread pointed out that for Mab to be that way, she's much more of a plot device than an actual character, as there would be no development. I suppose if Butcher has said there is still some mortal in there (I had forgotten about Mother Winter's quote), then perhaps he did set the groundwork for her to be manipulated.

 

I don't know if it was just my copy, but Butcher couldn't decide if it was the Better Future Society or the Brighter Future Society.

As with Psychotic Cat, I also raised my eyebrows during this line.

Just another thing that slipped through the editing process?

 

Wait what? Tunguska was explicitly McCoy doing Blackstaff things, and Michael killed Siriothrax long after that had happened. Did Butcher just forget that shit?

 

Either a continuity error or Michael killed Siriothrax in the NeverNever.

I would hope that if Mab was going to be manipulated it would not be done this cheaply and her buttons so easily pushed.

 

It could be that McCoy killed dragon and Michael killed his in Nevernever, but I suspect it's just a mistake.

 

One other thing: as with all OP characters who come out of nowhere, the question arises: if they're so powerful, why didn't they do this ages ago?

In particular, I feel like the power of TitanLady doesn't really fit with the previously established lore regarding the Fomor. The Fomor were said to specifically be stepping into the power vacuum left by the Red Court, and we had never heard of them before the Red Court went bye-bye. By implication, without that power vacuum, the Fomor would not have amounted to anything as they would not have had the opportunity to rise. The war with the Red Court is what set all this in motion.

But if the Fomor have a sponsor/ally who is so powerful that she can take on all the signatories to the accords at once, then all that becomes causally disconnected. Several books' worth of story become nonsense. With such a powerful sponsor, the Fomor shouldn't have needed a power vacuum to rise: they have power in spades, far more than the Red Court ever had. And yet... they didn't. They remained nobodies until the Red Court died, and gained power only slowly after that. None of it really makes any sense.

 

I'm willing to defer judgement on that aspect till Battlegrounds where we will get more explanation as to the origin of the Titan and Fomor. It might be the Titan was imprisoned till recently maybe by the Red court or something similar. Mab looked surprised at her presence so she couldn't have been active for a long time.

 

Given the simultaneous assault on the outer gates and the titans move on Chicago I don't think we are looking at two different enemies here. Either Ethniu is an agent of Nemisis directly, or has been maneuvered by them.

 

Given that Mab is powerful enough to fight Nemesis, and given that Ethniu is more powerful than Mab, I doubt Nemesis can puppet Ethniu.

 

Yeah. Basically the same as when the Red Court attacked the White Council with Outsiders in... Dead Beat I want to say.

 

Weren't the Fomor swiping up a whole bunch of low level practitioners? Perhaps they were food/sacrifice for awakening/releasing the Titan?

 

What the actual fuck was up with that ending? I literally just put it down, about five hours after picking it up, and I had to immediately come here to complain. Since when does Butcher end books on a cliff-hanger?

I suppose it might be why he waited until he was ready to release the next book a few months later to put it out, but come on, man.

 

@DarthBill, Sounds like you hadn't heard, but the next book was originally part of Peace Talks, his publishers insisted on splitting it into two books because it was too long.

 

@Taure

Your point about Ethniu just arriving now - rather than any time preciously - clearly needs explaining. The same is true in regards to her power. I guess she just is more powerful than Mab, which makes sense, but what are her limits, then?

As for Ebenezar. There were weak justifications for why Harry didn’t tell him, but the conflict felt a bit forced. Unless he has one hell of a reason he’s just being a cunt.

I don’t know about you guys, but I need more Lara and Dresden fics.

 

I feel like Butcher just needed a next level power to pit Harry against and just grabbed an obscure old myth. To be clear, this sets a bad precedent within the series. If beings like Odin are afraid of her when by all accounts Ethiu is really not a big deal at all (Her biggest deal is getting locked in a tower by her dad and having Lugh) how much power is he going to attribute to the likes of The Dagda or The Morrighan?

 

My way of rationalising that away was that when Mab enters the real world she loses a lot of her power - she is still terrifyingly powerful, but not the same level of being able to directly combat Nemesis as she is in the NeverNever.