Yeah. And Eb is generally considered one of the most skilled and powerfull wizards alive. With time enough to draw extra power from leylines and perform rituals and study necromancy and so on, I would expect Eb could do it.

Unless maybe the death curse interfered? Maybe if a wizard throws a death curse, there is nothing left, no "spark of life" to kindle back to life. We know that Harry's mom used her death curse to castrate Raith.

Like Tehan said, there is a big difference in doing meaningless black magic just for the fun of it, and doing black magic to bring back his own flesh and blood. I mean Eb already used it to kill Ortega and also several innocent bystanders in order to try and discourage anyone from going after his grandson. Using necromancy to bring Harry back would be just a continuation of that theme. Heck, it would be even easier since this time no innocents would be hurt.

I wonder if Maggie had died, would Harry have been willing to seek Cowl/Kumori in order to bring her back. Or maybe researched necromancy in order to do it himself.

 

My guess is that Fix is the one who shot Harry on the boat. That or someone hired Kincaid to do the deed.

 

I blazed through Changes yesterday, and suffice it to say it was awesome.

First off I have to give kudos to Jim Butcher for actually having the balls to,y'know,change stuff, I mean how many times to we see authors get complacent and rehash shit all over again. The basic formula of Dresden was there...but damn. The Red Court has -or had- been around since Storm Front. So had Susan. Come to speak of it, so had Harry's kinda stupid gentlemanly tendencies.

What I enjoyed most was the character interactions. Harry has become far too good at fighting to maintain quite the same level of tension as there was earlier on in the series.

jim Butcher seems to have a gift for getting you to like -or atleast respect- characters that Harry dislikes. In Dead Beat and Turn Coat it was Morgan. In this book it was Martin... and The Merlin. That one scene is perhaps the coolest the Merlin has ever been.

And Uriel... somehow I just can't get over the fact that he's not a dick.

I hope that no matter what happens Harry remains as the Winter Knight. One thing I've always liked about the series was it's sense of consequence. How many time has Harry done things that come back to bite him in the ass? Somehow I don't like the idea of Harry weaseling out of his WK position. I don't particularly know how it would work out but if Butcher didn't have enough faith in his ability to write it he shouldn't have done it.

The only thing that's certain is that if Harry remains WK he's going to go against Mab's wishes at some point and have his balls turned into crushed ice.

And I'm surprised no one has suggested Fix for the shooting. After all the whole NeverNever saw Harry's *ahem* "knighting", and Fix wouldn't stand a chance against Harry, he's even admitted it, so logically he's the one to point the finger at right now.

 

Didn't Harry pack up a bag and drop it in the nevernever. I'm sure that he included more than the swords in it.

 

It did. Bob's skull and any vaguely illegal miscellanea the FBI could have blasted him with.

 

Here is a question. How exactly does Harry know the Darkhallow? He claimed to Mab that he knew how to perform it, and I don't see any particular reason for him to lie about it.

The thing is, it was Lash who knew the ritual. Lash was the one who memorized the book. Lash was the one who translated it from german. But Lash is gone. So how the heck does Harry know how to perform it?

He could ask Bob true, but that would mean bringing up necro!Bob, who likely wants to kill Harry more than help him.

 

What was little chicago made of, Pewter? It was somesort of rock anyway. I doubt it's beyond repair.

Anyway it was a cool toy but one that wasn't used an awful lot.

 

I thought it was made of wood.

 

I thought it was made of all materials. I mean the point was that it was a small "copy" of Chigago. Presumably that means that the little buildings contained stone and steel, the little trees were made of wood and so on. Many of those actually made from the real versions.

Really, I don't think the loss of Little Chigaco is a big deal. Harry built it once, he can do so again and probably better and faster this time with the greater experience and resources that he now has.

 

No, pretty sure it was made mostly out of one material, although with miniscule traces of different areas of chicago in it.

 

Little Chicago was more a behind-the-scenes tool. When someone came to his office crying about their poor lost dog with a scruff of hair from his little doggy brush, he just popped home, chucked a scrying spell at it, headed to the place where it pointed, found the dog, bam. Easy money, well earned. Ditto goes for any other lost X - spouse, child, someone who jumped their bail, whatever. It probably paid for the time, money and effort that went into it ten times over.

You don't really see Dresden on a typical day, you always see him when the sewage processing plant hits the industrial turbines.

 

Going back to the Necromancy + Blackstaff thing, I don't think that he has the go to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. He'll still be constrained by various rules and so on set down by the White Council.

Also, Harry knows about the darkhallow through Kemmlers book, that Lasciel's shadow memorized for him.

 

As to the materials used in the construction of Little Chicago Dresden used pewter miniatures of local buildings as well as miniatures of some trees with little pieces of the real things imbued in them (chipped pieces of bricks from buildings, bark and leaves from trees, pieces of asphalt from roads etc).

Pewter melts in 170-230 C, so no more LC...

As to the money Dresden spent on LC, he did mention trhat lamost all of warden pay went into that. Custom made high detailed miniatures aren't cheap it seems.

 

We have no reason to believe this. Eb was free to whack Ortega. And constraining their "operative" with laws and rules would just prevent him from doing his job. I figure if the job can be done while still following various rules, then its a job that the Wardens can do and not something requiring the Blackstaff. Sure, if Eb started using the blackstaff to commit mass murders for no reason the SC would probably have him "retired". But I doubt they would go berserk over raising Harry from the dead. If they even knew. Eb could do it in secret and deny all knowledge about how Harry returned, not like they could prove it.

Not that it matters anyway, Eb is openly defying White Council with his whole Grey Council thing. He also seems to have lied about his relationship with his daughter&Harry, and done other things without the knowledge of the council. Even if there are laws, I see no reason that they would stop him from rescuing his family from death.

Basically, if Merlin had ordered Harry to ignore Maggie, do you think Harry would have obeyed the council. I think we both know what Harry would have done in that case. Why would Eb be any different.

You are probably correct. I recalled that it was Lash who had the knowledge, not Harry, in which case the knowledge about Darkhallow would have died with her. But I checked and while it is not made clear, the text does suggest that Lash actually shared the content of the book with Harry, in which case he would still know it even after her dead.


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It was suggested in Small Favor that the Knights get a very nice salary in addition to the other perks. Harry atleast thinks that accepting the position would make him pretty rich. Presumably that means that he could easily acquire the materials to build a new LC.

 

It's also more that the council wouldn't give the black staff to someone who would use it for their own gain.

I just can't see him doing it, if Necromancy were so easy, why not resurrect Simon Petrovich, and so on.

If resurrecting was so easy, why not resurrect all the people whom were vaguely useful, who died.

It would be a major plot point. It's not, so I doubt it'd happen.

 

Lash shared the nuts and bolts of the ritual with Dresden, its how he knew how everything was going to go down. Additionally he's one of he few WC wizards with practical necromancy experience and the Darkhallow is described to be very simple by Grevane.

 

Also remember that the Darkhallow was less a method of gaining godhood and more a method of gathering the power into one place in order to absorb it. It wasn't a rite of ascension, it was just a spell. I'd imagine that since Harry has a shit load of experience dealing with spells in general he'd know how to perform the Darkhallow, even with just the nuts and bolts explained to him. Cross-trade skills and all that.

 

The only problem I have with that is that if it is really that simple and easy to do then why is it that no one has tried to do it before. Kemmler was apparently the first one to discover it and he was described as a mad but also a brilliant genius. I got the impression that Kemmler was basically unique, an Einstein of necromancy so to speak, which is why he was able to figure it out.

If it is that easy, why is it for example that Cowl has not performed it again in some other city than Chigago. He would surely know how to perform it without Bob's advice if it really was that easy.

If it is that simple, why has no other necromancer figured it out. Hmm, maybe it is simple once you actually _know_ how to do it, but figuring it out without Kemmlers notes/instructions would be impossible. But I also suspect that the rite would be dangerous enough that if you make any mistakes, you are dead. Maybe that is why Cowl has not tried it. Without Bobs advice, he does not want to risk it.

 

On top of it making someone super-powered, it kills everyone within a fairly large radius. If it was easy to figure out, it would have been broken out all over the place throughout history, and would probably be specifically banned by the Accords. I think it's fairly safe to say that it's never been successfully performed.