[Coco with marshmallows]

I know we've got a few russian members kicking around this site, any of them Dresdencrackheads who could illuminate us on this point?

[Illuyankas]

acesn8s, on 07 December 2012 - 01:04 PM, said:

So, since Changes has it been acknowledged whether or not Harry actually died? Did he fulfill his Death Curse?

Judging by the scene at the end of Changes, I'm going to go with a resounding maybe. Well, more of a probably.


Also you wouldn't find spelling the name Andi as Andii on any other forum.

[worry]

So do you think Lucifer has to enter the fray at some point? Is he the Big Bad in the end, and God (as in the supreme being, not any worshiped being like Odin) the ultimate top dog? Not necessarily beholden to human church orthodoxy, of course. But representing the ultimate poles of "good" and "evil". Because frankly, neither the Outsiders nor the Denarians seem likely to be the worst of the worst, especially given what Demonreach holds.

This post has been edited by worrywort: 08 December 2012 - 11:36 PM

[Coco with marshmallows]

worrywort, on 08 December 2012 - 11:35 PM, said:

So do you think Lucifer has to enter the fray at some point? Is he the Big Bad in the end, and God (as in the supreme being, not any worshiped being like Odin) the ultimate top dog? Not necessarily beholden to human church orthodoxy, of course. But representing the ultimate poles of "good" and "evil". Because frankly, neither the Outsiders nor the Denarians seem likely to be the worst of the worst, especially given what Demonreach holds.

I'd hope not, in that it'd be a bit cliche.

having said that, Butcher has messed with cliches admirably so far in the series.
Certainly there has to be a god type figure floating around - the angels are reporting to SOMETHING after all.

[worry]

Yah, those were my thoughts exactly. But I'm not sure if he can avoid it entirely, since God is a character (though still mysterious, of course), the angels are characters, the Fallen are a force to reckon with, soulfire is a big deal, etc. I just wonder how God and Lucifer fit into the structure alongside folks like Mothers Winter & Summer, the Archangels, Merlin, Nemesis, etc. Are they the biggest and/or the deepest orders of magnitude?

[Cause]

I always thought that introducing the White God was a bit of a misstep. Not least because messing with 'real' Gods was bound to cause problems. Still if the White God is THE GOD than he has unlimited power and for whatever reason chooses not to use it. We see this already in that he only acts when human free will is violated else its up to them to protect themselves even from the Denarians. If he is THE GOD we also have to wonder why he created the nevernever and Faeries and on and on even though no Abrahamic religion mentions them. So either the religions are wrong or the White God is just another god. Even the outsiders could not be outside from GOD. So far I think Butcher has done a good job of having the christian religion and God play a role in his books and the Denarians are some of the best enemies the series has. I just hope he can keep it up, especially when things start to get apocalyptic.

[worry]

Agreed, that's kinda why I brought it up. He's done a great job so far, and I don't doubt he could pull off making a Supreme Being type God that fits -- like a lot of the stories have some truth, they're naturally not the whole truth, and church orthodoxy plus some of the usual story mutations over time have obscured some things. It could be made to fit, in the "everyone actually worships the same God no matter how they do it" way. But some of you know a mythology-heavy show I won't name that attempted something like that in its final episode, failing big time.

Anyway, none of this is coming from a place of pessimism with me, I'm just curious and excited for the future and speculating on how it all fits. But like Cause says, if God is such a being, then all these other beings of power don't exist parallel to it, but below it. And Lucifer is one of a few entities that could be its opposite counterpart. The Walkers don't seem to be at that level, Nemesis miiiight be, there may even be a different Big Bad Outsider to rule them all (a Morgoth to Nemesis's Sauron?), and the Outsiders might just be the natives of Hell which could tie it all together...or not.

[Pig Iron]

Murphy seemed to think the swords should not be used against the Outsiders and Butcher's stated the A sword is Apocalypse material. Strong hint the Apocalypse is more Heaven - Hell showdown. Also, Murphy's probably already a Knight.

This post has been edited by Pig Iron: 10 December 2012 - 07:06 PM

[Aptorian]

vaiski, on 03 December 2012 - 04:38 PM, said:

Butcher was asked about the swords in a 2011 Q&A (mild spoilers)

Spoiler

Q: How…how long will they have to wait to find out who will wield the Swords?
A: We’ll probably get the new wielder of Fidelacchius in Book 14 or 15. Um, Amoracchius is gonna, uh…(Jim chuckles evilly), that’s gonna be apocalypse time by the time we get [unintelligible]. Amoracchius is not one of those Swords that really rampages around the world very often, and when if does, you’ve heard about it, so...

Holy shit I thought you vanished. Hello Vaiski.

In other news I finished Cold Days over the weekend. Instead of making another thread I'll just post my thoughts here.

I won't lie, I did not love Changes and Ghost Story. Changes had a stupid plot and the events were too profound to be constrained to one book. Ghost story was just kind of... meh. It was a transitioning book that tied up some lose ends of Changes but otherwise didn't do much for the series over all, besides giving Dresden's character some needed "soul searching". Now Cold Days on the other hand, this book is a return to form. Ridiculous time schedule where the world has to be saved 3 times in a matter of 24 hours while Dresden stumbles around learning the secrets of the universe and accidentally destroys everything around him. It was one of those books where, if you pruned some of the side stories away, you could make a really awesome Michael Bay detective magical mystery summer block buster movie.

Negative parts: I found the "Maeve was lying all along" angle dumb. I was sitting there reading the scene where Mab is accused of being insane and mentally shouting at Dresden to ask Lily how she knows she can trust Maeve and why Dresden should ever trusts Maeve. I felt like Butcher was trying to trick the reader by omission and it turned out I was right. He should have somehow obfuscated this mystery plot a bit more.

Which leads me to my second complaint. I don't like this "Nemesis threat" or rather, I do love me some "The enemy could be anyone or anywhere" type of stories, but I dislike the idea of some kind of infection being able to take over anyone of anything in the world. It's... well... it's too much. For one thing, why is it able to corrupt a god? And vice versa why is a god unable to sense it/destroy it out right if it is perverting the normal state of a creature. Second of all if it can take over everyone why not just infect the entire population of Earth? Or the Nevernever? This threat seems so profound that everything else in the Dresden Universe should be screeching to a halt to stop its spread and influence. Like the kind of "nuke it from orbit" kind of attention you would expect from gods that do not care about mortal lives. Or lets take a second to rip reality apart and change it so that this Nemesis thingy doesn't exist any longer. I do not buy the "we're not talking about the adversary to protect ourselves" angle. It's idiotic. It's like being trapped in a room with an invisible zombie and not telling the other guys that "hey, there's an invisible zombie in here eating people" and then being confused that there's a zombie apocalypse in the closet.

Thirdly, the super maximum wizard prison is ridiculous. Or rather, the idea that the first Merlin built it all by himself and, I assume, personally imprisoned thousands of creatures that are way worse than a Skinshifty guy is a bit too much to swallow. I was getting really peaked when Bob started talking about "the combustion engine" level of magical knowledge as I thought we were going to get into some kind of "pre-human civilization as we know it" type of shit. Like, Atlantians built it, or little green magicians came from another world and built it, or something like that. It's one of the problems I have with the Dresden Files world building. The "Do-it-yourself" style of magic where everything seems to be a personal thing, nobody works together to create a structured framework of magical advances and engineering. All they seem to spend their time doing is working out how to fuck each other over or save themselves from being fucked over and never sharing anything with anybody. The level of skill and strength and knowledge that it is implied must have been needed to make this thing is beyond anything that Bob knows, and we are supposed to believe that the first Merlin did this by himself? Not one of the immortal godlike super beings, but a mortal wizard? A great wizard to be sure, but still a mortal wizard. Gah. Look, even if the Merlin was some kind of Magical savant, like Isaac Newton, Einstein and David Copperfield rolled into one, if he was working on a magical level that is able to thwart a force of nature like Mab or dark things that make a skinshifty guy look like a pussy cat, then shouldn't the magical world look a lot different? Didn't the guy pass any knowledge on? Any "magical theories of relativity" for the lesser Wizards to work from? And while we're at it, why is there not a standing force of Wardens living on the island to keep an eye on things?

I don't like it. But as is implied there's a lot of stuff about the island that Dresden needs to learn, which bring me to my fourth gripe about the book, but really is just a broad look at the series as a whole. Dresdens ignorance and the limitations of his power is beginning to reach the limits of belief. As he himself grumbles about through out the book, the gaps in his knowledge is really disconcerting to the point that you have to wonder why he doesn't know things that seem like they should be common knowledge to him. Why did he not get any tutoring about the political and social and ethnological structure of the Fae realm while he was recovering? Why doesn't he know the Laws of Winter? Why doesn't he know the full extent of his powers? Why doesn't he have any tools of a Winter Knight? Like magical power armor, a super fae wizard staff and an ice light saber? How is he supposed to be the Queens Hitman if he is not even a match for common footsoldiers in the fae hierarchy? What happens if Elder Gruff or the State Puff Marshmellow Summermonster comes trampling into Arctis Tor one day? He is still not able to throw more than 30 seconds of combat magic around with out needing a cheese steak sandwich, a nap and a hug from Murphy. I get that this is part of the series dogmas. Things that are inherent to the nature of the stories that Butcher is telling and that these limitations make Dresden more likable and the stories more gripping but seriously now.

Finally, it disappointed me that we went through all these changes, these severing of ties in Changes and Ghost Story, only for Butcher to just throw Dresden back into Chicago and reconnecting him with the Scooby gang. I guess from here on in, we should simply expect the back drop of the series to remain Chicago with the occasional trip to the Never Never or where ever, but as Dresden himself wonders, it's like we're watching a cable show that can't afford a more international plot and more exotic locations. With the mantle of the Winter Knight I was expecting Dresden to do some globe-trotting. Fighting foo in Asia, battle ice woodoo in Jamaica, setting up a super secret underground fae facility in Antarctica. Instead, here we are, back again in Chicago. How many earth shattering, world changing events are going to be connected to this town? Is there no where else that the bad guys could do their nefarious business? It's beginning to feel like a Spider-man comic where you're asking yourself "Why doesn't Dr. Octopus just leave New York and rob a bank in Idaho?".

All that nitpicking and bitching aside? Who gives a shit this book was AWESOME!

That ending made up for the last two books combined. Lets be honest, everyone had been waiting for Maeve to be the villain of a book, and finally that psycho died. Good riddance you crazy bitch. And then Marrissa turns out to be Maeves sister! And Molly becomes a Lady! And Mab was once a mortal! And Mac is... I don't know what he is. An Insider? And Dresden is now "The Warden"! And Murphy and him kissed! Toots has a lady friend! It goes on and on. So many crazy twists in this book. I could have done without the Red Cap side story portions which I think just slowed the book down but the book was really well paced and went from strength to strength. It really is the character development and character interaction that binds this whole series together. I still can't read a Murphy and Dresden scene with out getting a little emotional.

The series had left me a little cold (ha ha see what I did there) the past couple of years but I am definitely back on board the Dresden hype train.

This post has been edited by Aptorius: 10 December 2012 - 05:18 PM

[Coco with marshmallows]

Interesting thought....

Merlin built it - but how do we know he wasn't TOLD how and why and where to build it by, say, Odin, who we've already seen enjoys taking a hand in things from behind the scenes a little.

Hell, how do we even know Merlin WAS human? There's bucketloads of mythology of the "god takes a human form" type floating around - maybe a god decided humanity needed magic, etc, and plopped themselves on earth as a human to set up the White Council and generally kick evil ass as Merlin?

[amphibian]

Also handing each magical being on Earth the magical knowledge equivalent of a nuke is a baaaaaad idea.

The White Council primarily exists to keep a lid on the human magical population. That's what Merlin built it to do and that's what it does.

Also, the Outsider He Who Walks Before was mortal that day - as it was Halloween. Dresden blasting off a copy's head with no effort meant that taking Dresden and his friends on at that juncture was not going to turn out well, even with 50+ copies.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 11 December 2012 - 02:30 AM

[Abyss]

Nowhere is it stated that Merlin was the one who captured all the beasties. He may not have even built the prison... We only know that he did the ritual that guards it.

[alt146]

Briar King, on 11 December 2012 - 01:43 AM, said:

I was thinking he tapped into the power of the 6 ley lines to power up his mortal limited power.

Is that stated anywhere? It was implied that the ley lines are the energy of the imprisoned beasties, so if that is the case then Abyss's theory might be correct.

Abyss, on 11 December 2012 - 03:49 AM, said:

Nowhere is it stated that Merlin was the one who captured all the beasties. He may not have even built the prison... We only know that he did the ritual that guards it.

[Tapper]

amphibian, on 07 December 2012 - 08:05 PM, said:

Briar King, on 07 December 2012 - 06:11 PM, said:

What's a polevoi?

That's exactly my point.

There was a conversation that Sanya (the black Russian atheist Knight of the Cross) had with Toot Toot when they first met. Sanya called him a "domovoi" which is kind of a house fairy guard dog. Toot Toot indignantly declares himself a polevoi and Sanya laughs. They move on.

If you do some e-digging around (in English), you find that a polevoi is a sorta vague-ish woodland or field spirit. The Russian language stuff might have more, but I'm willing to bet that it's still pretty vague what exactly a polevoi is and what they do, what they pay attention to most or what they become.

I think it's a good example of Butcher being cagey enough to build some flex into Toot Toot, rather than declare him Fairy Type X, which immediately shackles him into certain things as a character. Or it could be that Butcher has something in mind that I didn't find in my 20 minutes of e-digging.

What I found is that a polevoi is a field sprite instead of a house sprite (domovoi) - aka, he is a non-domesticated creature of the wild.
Butcher may also have tied in a bit of pseudo-latin/ greek, given how martial Toot is in equiping himself (and styling himself with titulature) and his merry band of followers:

"domo"voi (in latin "domus" means house)
"pole"voi (in greek "polemos" means war)

[polishgenius]

Tapper, on 11 December 2012 - 12:54 PM, said:

"domo"voi (in latin "domus" means house)
"pole"voi (in greek "polemos" means war)

I wouldn't have thought so (though maybe he's linking it in a sort of post-modern fashion. In Slavonic languages the word for house is also something along the lines of 'dom' (that's what it is in Polish, and I assume it's very similar in Russian) and 'pole' just means field.

[Illuyankas]

I know it says 16+, but I'm rereading Grave Peril for the first time ever - I normally start my rereads partway through 4 or from 5 - and man, Michael was a prissy pants alright. I'd also forgotten that Thomas kicked Susan into the Red Court vampires at the party, glad to see she never held a grudge. Do we think Ferrovax is going to be in 20, or the big apocalyptic trilogy? (book 21 is totally going to start with Harry fighting some big monster with the Alphas, leading it to an open abandoned space, kicking its ass, the Alphas change back and then one of them sees the news van and the live report going on some distance away, now totally focused on the magic and the werewolves and the monster. And then Harry's going to be fired)

[amphibian]

I'm re-reading Cold Days.

The naagloshii from Turn Coat really interests me. We're introduced to it early on in the book as it follows Dresden for some reason. We never really find out why - we assume the Black Council has made it into some form of bounty hunter or that it just wants to eat Dresden for the power-up.

However, what if the naagloshii is able to sense the reverbrations of the future - as in knowing ahead of time that Dresden was going to become the Warden of Demonreach and thus the jailor of its kin under the island?

[Abyss]

Illuyankas, on 15 December 2012 - 12:52 AM, said:

...Do we think Ferrovax is going to be in 20, or the big apocalyptic trilogy? ...

I'm virtually positive we're going to see Ferrovax eventually, but i'm sort of hoping Butcher goes in a direction other than 'Big Bad Enemy Dragon'.

Tho Michael killing Fer's mate may be an issue.

amphibian, on 15 December 2012 - 01:21 AM, said:

I'm re-reading Cold Days.

The naagloshii from Turn Coat really interests me. We're introduced to it early on in the book as it follows Dresden for some reason. We never really find out why - we assume the Black Council has made it into some form of bounty hunter or that it just wants to eat Dresden for the power-up.

However, what if the naagloshii is able to sense the reverbrations of the future - as in knowing ahead of time that Dresden was going to become the Warden of Demonreach and thus the jailor of its kin under the island?

Interesting possibility.



I'm wondering about Fixx... with Lily dead he has no reason to remain Summer Knight but the only way to ditch a mantle seems to be death... wrong place wrong time and Harry could end up with BOTH mantles.

[amphibian]

Abyss, on 17 December 2012 - 03:53 PM, said:

I'm wondering about Fixx... with Lily dead he has no reason to remain Summer Knight but the only way to ditch a mantle seems to be death... wrong place wrong time and Harry could end up with BOTH mantles.

Kringle/Odin's words about Halloween being the time to put on and take off masks and mantles means that there is a way other than death to "ditch the mantle" as you say. Recall that there was a metaphysical eagle/snake for the transfers of the Summer/Winter Lady mantles and that Mother Winter mentioned that she once had control over the transfer of the Winter Knight's mantle.

I speculate that there will be at least one more Halloween book in this series (years down the line) and that book will feature Dresden handling the live transfer of at least his own Winter Knight's mantle to another being in a fairly eventful manner.

[EmperorMagus]

amphibian, on 15 December 2012 - 01:21 AM, said:

I'm re-reading Cold Days.

The naagloshii from Turn Coat really interests me. We're introduced to it early on in the book as it follows Dresden for some reason. We never really find out why - we assume the Black Council has made it into some form of bounty hunter or that it just wants to eat Dresden for the power-up.

However, what if the naagloshii is able to sense the reverbrations of the future - as in knowing ahead of time that Dresden was going to become the Warden of Demonreach and thus the jailor of its kin under the island?

From what I remember,Morgan said "He has probably picked up my scent" or something.I think the naagloshi wanted Morgan and was following Harry to find him.