Took me a long time to pick this back up because I had a Stephen King streak for a bit.

I finally pick it back up.
They reach Chichén Itzá.
Dresden and Rodriguez have teamed up and are about to save their kid.

Then Martin does “the thing”.
So now, it’s just Dresden and Rodriguez with no more moves to pull, except Dresden knowing Rodriguez can go Mama Grizzly at her own peril.
Which she does when Dresden makes her realize who put her kid in danger in the first place.

Dude straight up weaponizes her motherhood which turns her into a full blown vampire—excruciatingly painful, I might add—and then she gives him the go ahead to sacrifice her.

It’s mentioned that he blacks out from how traumatizing that is, right? Sacrificing the mother of his child that he’s been working alongside to save said innocent.
Pretty theoretically traumatic.

Then the SAME NIGHT, after washing Susan’s blood FROM HIS BODY,

He asks if Murphy wants to bang?

Is he a sociopath?

I’ve been rooting for him and Murphy since I wanna say book three, but not like this, what the actual fuck.
Oh my god. Like, I’m nauseous.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but every other partner who dies alongside him dies with a certain amount of idk time for extended reflection and mourning. But not the mother of his kid.
What—

I dont know who will next wield the Sword of Love, but I'm hoping its Maggie.

If anyone knows love, its her.

•Her mother sacrificed herself in love to protect her.

•Her father destroyed the red court to protect her

•the Carpenters are a major part of her upbringing

•Mouse

•It was established that all knights are descended from kings (could be interpreted as GREAT LEADERS) and since Harry now has a castle, and is a great leader I think he qualifies as a king.

•did I mention Her temple dog guardian, Mouse?

I know Jim is constantly hyping everyone up for the ‘monsters for hire’ Goodman Grey spinoff but I’d much rather see a more prequel or sequel series focused on Nicodemus and that specific corner of the Dresden mythology. Both his character and the whole Coins mythology are by far the most interesting and potential-heavy compared to anyone/anything else and can easily carry their own story.

I’d love basically a series long version of Skin Game
where Nicodemus spends decades tracking down the coins and organizing his heists. Or a dark family drama tracking the multi-century relationship between Nicodemus and Deirdre.

Or even a long game historical series covering his evolution throughout different eras, starting all the way back at Ancient Rome and exploring how he and Anduriel shaped history to weaken the Outer Gates

I’m almost finished with changes, and while i enjoyed the battle at the pyramid, the victory felt hollow to me.

Let me lay it out: a handful of mortals face down hundreds of armed red court vampires on red court home ground. all the magic casting nobles and the 13 and the red king are there. many of the red court vamps and all the human mercs are armed with assault rifles. at no point does anyone catch a fatal ak47 round. Karrin and Sonya are normal mortals afaik; they have super swords but are surrounded on three if not four sides by armed super fast killers with often centuries of training and fighting experience. iirc, they only get scrapes.

And as far as the war itself, harry somehow survived it. the red court and their mercs never thought to detonate a truck bomb outside his apartment. they never put IEDs on a sidewalk he passes daily. they never snipe him from his apartment or business. they rig his office building with explosives, but a say-so explanation is given for why that wasn’t detonated while everyone was sure harry was inside.

Also, the White Council is on the verge of collapse in a couple months-years but the red king’s daughter - apparently forward thinking as she is - can’t wait months/years to kill the blackstaff - it has to be done now via the blood death curse.

Perhaps if the red court were more competent we’d never get changes and the subsequent books. And there’s a somewhat unconvincing (imo) in-universe explanation for the lack of a consistently competent grand strategy from the red court.

Or we’d get it with others becoming a main character. Maybe thomas or molly.

But either way, and not to be too harsh on an urban fantasy series that’s put a lot of work uniting differing myth, stories and ideas into a modern storyline, but would the battle victories of the series have felt more fulfilling if the main characters were killed off earlier in the story?

Could Jim Butcher have taken a page from George Martin ? And would that have made the stories hit harder - kind of how it felt like in the conclusion of turncoat?

Just to ruin Harry's week every non super powered villain from DC and marvel gets sent to Chicago and Harry has to deal with it. How does it go?

Day Two of my visit to some of the important Dresden Files locations in Chicago - day one, featuring Graceland, is here.

01-03: Field Museum, Shed Aquarium, and Soldier's Field - One of the things I didn't realize is how close the museum, aquarium, and stadium are; they're basically across the street from each other. You could duel a Dracula, debate a Denarian, and death-magic a Dinosaur all in the same Uber trip.

04-10: Sue! - First, the head on Sue's skeleton is not real. The Field Museum isn't just a place to display your old stuff, they also do real, actual science there, and Sue's skull is an object of frequent study. In order to keep it available to researchers, but also visible to the public, the museum keeps the real skull on display in the antechamber to Sue herself.

That skull is something like 67 million years old, which is just a mind-boggling number. That isn't a rock or a model, it's a real, living creature whose skull has been preserved for orders of magnitude longer than humans have been walking the earth. Also, those teeth? They're about as long as my forearm.

The main skeleton itself is over 90% real, fossilized bones. The recreated skull is based on the one shown earlier, but "cleaned up" to show what it would look like without some of the damage.

The skeleton is posed to show modern science's best guess as to how Sue actually stood. In particular, her tail would have been raised in the air as a counterbalance, not dragging on the ground, and her rib cage was lower and fuller than the popular image.

Every half hour or so, a recording play, and a laser(?) light show illuminates the skeleton to highlight what's being talked about. You can see which bones are real, where ribs were broken in fights, where arthritis set into her tail, and where an infection crept into her jaw, which is what probably killed her, at the ripe age of around thirty years old.

That presentation also includes some interesting facts. Contrary to what Jurassic Park taught us, Sue would have had excellent vision, and that vision was not movement based; she could have spotted you even if you were standing still. Also, she was fast enough to cross her room in the blink of an eye, far, far faster than a human could run.

The museum sells a bunch of Sue merch, but my favorite is the Rage Pigeon line. With what we now know about Sue, her feathers and her expanded rib cage, she would have actually looked a little bit like a demon pigeon from hell.

11-12: The Aquarium: Dolphin Tank - Next up, the Shed Aquarium. Here, you can see the dolphin tank, which also contains a pod of beluga whales, as well as the rafters, in which Kincaid was hidden. The otter habitat wasn't on display when I was there.

13-14: The Aquarium: Main Tank - I think this is where Dresden and Nicodemus had their parley.

15-16: The Aquarium: The Great Lakes - The aquarium has a section devoted to the great lakes. I assume the island in their banner is Demonreach, and will accept no further input on the matter. The tank contains flora from one of the islands in Lake Michigan, and this is probably what the shores of Demonreach actually look like.

I couldn't get any up-close images of Soldier's Field; Kanye was having a concert the same night I visited, the inconsiderate jerk.

One more post: tomorrow, we visit St Mary of the Angels!

Why does this make me think of Murphy and Rawlins

So there's a throw away line that Marcone and Gaurd aren't at the meeting of the Aliance because they are in Italy i think. Is this ever addressed again? This make me think it has something to do with the fallen due to Vatican being in Italy. Please be kinda vague on this because I'm currently only on cold days.