I finally got my copy yesterday. I was hoping to hold on to it a bit for referring back to scenes, but there are nine more people on the wait list behind me, with only three copies circulating, so I’m returning it tomorrow.
Agree with everyone that this is very definitely a Part 1. Also agree that Butters’ sex life really feels like immature wish-fulfilment fantasy, and that it was kind of cheap to never get Thomas’s take on what happened (we’re pretty sure that someone threatened Justine to blackmail him into doing it, but it would have been nice to have confirmation, as well as some information on who it was).
And I’m not a big fan of how Mab got Worfed. We’ve seen gods already in the series, and they all regard Mab as someone to be respected, as at least a near-equal. Vatterung, for instance, would certainly not be capable of doing that to her, especially not in a conference of her own Accords: She had Authority there, and among supernatural sorts, that counts for a lot.
One other point that I haven’t seen mentioned yet is Harry and Karrin’s relationship. For most of the series, they’ve been will-they-or-won’t-they. For the last couple book or so, they’ve moved on to they-probably-will-but-not-yet. Now all of a sudden, they’re they-have-and-are? I would have liked to see that transition. This book was probably right for them to get together, but not right at the start of the book (or, really, before the start).
On thinking about it a bit more, Butters’ home life might be significant. Despite many men’s daydreams, one man with multiple partners isn’t all that common a mating pattern… for humans. It is, however, a common pattern for wolves. For a bunch of nerd werewolves, a literal Jedi Knight would absolutely be the Alpha Male.
Which might mean that the werewolves are becoming more wolfish, psychologically. At the expense of becoming less human? Dun, dun, dun.
I’ve known some polyamourists in real life. Having multiple partners in reality does not match the common fantasies. It can be a LOT more work than a monogamous pair.
I don’t know if the “pack” aspects figures into this or not. We shall see.
OK, complete and utter speculation/what-iffing going on here, but…
We know Butcher likes to complicate Harry’s life more and more as Harry levels up. In this book, Harry has to deal with essentially losing his brother (at least for a while) amidst all the other chaos.
I think we can also assume that something will happen to get Karrin back in the game in a much more physically active way. She’s just too central a character to sideline for long. Given the extent of her injuries and what we were told about her prognosis, I don’t see any way for this to happen without supernatural intervention of some sort.
So…what if Fix dies in the coming mayhem and Karrin is the nearest suitable vessel for the mantle of the Summer Knight? That would mess with Harry, right? His former apprentice and possibly future lover is his boss (the Winter Lady) and his current love becomes his counterpart and potential adversary? Seems like exactly the kind of thing Butcher would beat Harry up with.
As long as we’re spinning out wild what-ifs, what if the Summer Knight’s mantle came to Karrin while she happened to be wielding Amoracchius? Could that even happen?
I dunno about the rest of it, but of late, I’ve been thinking a bunch of real-life folks could use a go-round with the Demonreach “feel the pain of everyone you’ve ever hurt”.
It’s probably just as well I do not have Great Power. I’d be very tempted to use it.
Butters’ relationship is a bit over the top but I think Butcher is just showing how far he has come over the course of the series. When we first meet him he is weak, mostly insignificant, bookish nerd working the night shift at the morgue while practicing his one man polka band because he had no friends and/or meaningful relationships. Fast forward to the present and we see that everything in his life (well mostly everything) has done a 180. He’s still a nerd and polka will never die but dude has put in a lot of effort turning his life around and I think Butcher just wanted to put a cherry on top before his world descends into chaos.
I predict that Butters will lose at least one of them before this part of the story is over.
Dresden is somehow going to gain the mantle of the Summer Knight. The addition of the summer mantle will balance out the psychological problems of the winter mantle so Harry can get a massive power up while being able to go back to the “normal” behavior he displayed before becoming the winter knight.
The Black Staff is really Old Lady Winters missing walking stick. She gifts it to those who have a lot of killing to do, Grandpa being the most recent.
Dresden will eventually become the new Black Staff. This is the point where I expect Dresden to cross over into OP territory.
Murphy is going to get a power up from the Vadderung. Butcher has likened her to a Valkyrie too many times
Vadderung has, in fact, extended that job offer to her before.
But I don’t think that Harry is going to end up as the Blackstaff nor as the Summer Knight, nor as the Watcher nor the Merlin. He’s already the Winter Knight and the Warden, and even that dual job is already stretching things metaphysically.
Now, Murphy ending up as the Summer Knight would certainly be interesting, in the Chinese curse sense of the term. But becoming a Fae Knight isn’t something that just happens, like becoming the Lady apparently is: You become Summer (or Winter) Knight by the Queen offering the job, and you accepting it. And things would have to get a lot crazier before Titania or Murphy either one would consider that (not that things getting a lot crazier is something that can be ruled out, of course).
And since you mention Grandmother Winter, the Grandmothers don’t usually take an active part in the World, but what we saw in this book sounds like exactly the sort of situation where they would.
Vadderung offered Murphy the job with the usual conditions and strings. I think somethings gonna happen to remove some of those conditions and she will accept (probably out of necessity). If not him, then maybe the dragon.
It’s pretty obvious that right now Harry isn’t even close to strong enough to fight the big dogs much less stand against the outsiders. It’s also pretty obvious that Mab and several others have been power leveling him (mostly against his will) for several decades now. If he’s gonna stand any type of chance against the real powerhouses then he’s gonna need some magical steroids and lots of them. They way I figure it his steroid options are pretty limited: Blackstaff, Summer Mantle, or Lasciel. Grandpa is losing it so I expect the Blackstaff to become available after Eb goes out in blaze of glory saving Harry in a manner that will redeem his character and put him firmly on the side of right before he shuffles off the stage for good. And Fix has always felt like a place holder for the mantle of Summer Knight. I don’t know who gets it after him but I don’t expect him to be alive at the end of Battlegrounds.
Harry got the fancy knife from Hades’ vault but we don’t know what that does yet and I don’t expect it to come into play until much later in the series. Right now I assume it to be a hard counter to Nicky D’s Holy Grail but that’s just speculation.
Y’know, I never thought of it that way, but it makes sense: They know that he’s the Starborn, probably the only Starborn among all of the wizards in the world (there are probably others, but they’re mundanes). And in fact, Margaret specifically contrived things so that she would have a starborn child (and likely contrived some other sort of special status for Thomas, though we don’t know the details of that yet). They also know that, whenever there’s a Starborn, they’re needed, but the circumstances of his birth mean that he’s qualified for meeting that need, but not that he’s capable of it. So power-leveling is exactly what they’d need to be doing for him.
Factor in that Winter’s reason for existence is to fight the Outsiders, by any and all means necessary, and it explains neatly why Mab has always been so active in Harry’s life.
They make it known that not everyone can hold that type of power and not everyone who is powerful is capable of maximizing their use of it. After I saw how Fairy Godmother trained Molly and how that training made her capable of holding the mantle of The Winter Lady all I could think about was how Harry had received the same exact type of training for much, much longer (since right after he ran away from Justin at age ???).
I went back and looked at every fucked up situation Mab & Co put Harry through (kill the Summer Lady, kill the Winter Lady, match wits with Nicky D, etc.) and it seems obvious that they are still grooming him for more power. Mab has also made a concerted effort to deprive Harry of all of his toys and is actively preventing him from making more so that he can learn to wield his power directly instead of through an intermediary object.
In fact, there is now some evidence that a typical wolf pack is a mated pair with their young adult children who help raise their younger siblings before going off to establish their own family. In any case, the “alpha male” thing is probably a bit exaggerated in past literature, and normally it’s just an “alpha male” and “alpha female” producing offspring in a pack, not an alpha male with a harem.
Not that you don’t get an occasional wild wolf pack with perhaps two females and a dominant male because animal do what they want rather than following ridgid rules, and I’m sure you’d be able to find packs with more than one breeding male, too, for the same reason. You’ll also find the occasional unrelated adult that has joined a pack, too.
This actually makes a lot of sense - young adults gain more hunting experience and also some parenting experience before going off to form their own families. Breeding pairs get assistance with their puppies. The occasional unrelated adult joining can provide more assistance in hunting in return for protection/defense. It could also occur if one of the alphas dies and the remaining one takes a new mate (apparently, wolves are not inclined to incest).
Apparently these days some people favor matriarch and patriarch over “alpha” as a description of the primary breeding pair.
Of course, fictional werewolves can be all kinds of messed up/dysfunctional/unrealistic because, you know, fiction. See the Anita Blake series by Laurel K. Hamilton for some examples although in that series lycanthropy is an actual disease so maybe pathological behavior isn’t that mysterious.
In the Dresdenverse all good fans are aware of three types of wolf-based shapeshifters: the werewolves like the “Alphas”, hexenwolves, and loup-garou, none of which behave like real wolves. And for added fun a wolf that shapeshifts to human. Who, as Dresden points out, doesn’t act exactly like a human being.
I could see shapeshifter werewolves choosing to set up their own little society because that’s something humans do, but not as something they are compelled to do by their magic. If they Alphas are anything they are totally in control of their changes and, afterwards, themselves.
Still think it’s more likely the two girls are shacking up with Butters because he’s someone clued into the preternatural side of things.
The other thing is… I’ve known a surprising number of nebbishy, nerd guys who nonetheless had a lot of girlfriends. While some nerds definitely are socially dysfunctional there are a subset who are not. Butters is definitely a nerd, but as a highly functional one it could be that he really does have the social skills to land a hot babe or two by, you know, being a decent human being. Which trait you’d also expect a Jedi Knight of the Cross have.
Oh, I don’t mean to imply that it’s surprising that he’d end up with a hot girlfriend. It’s simple fact that he has a large number of traits that both of them happen to find appealing, including sharing the same hobbies as them, being a powerful fighter, being clued in about magic, being intelligent overall, and being a fundamentally good and decent person. With how much he was hanging out with the werewolves, it’d be kind of surprising if he didn’t end up dating one of them. But two of them at once, with the knowledge and consent of both of them, yeah, that’s surprising.
Also, don’t forget that Butters was not that bad for himself in the dating scene. When Dresden and Molly go to the morgue in White Night, I think, and Molly reacts to the energy around the corpse as if aroused, both men stare at her but Butters says something like, “It’s been six months since I have had that.” Or words to those effect. Harry was lamenting it had been a bit longer.
Now, that’s not to say I like all of the tropes/stereotypes of the recent books but I think Butters deserves a bit more credit.
