It's implied in the book, when he says Winter Law doesn't matter that because he is a wizard his spine would eventually heal on its own. Whether that would take another year or five or twenty, I don't know.

 

In Changes didn't Butters say he thought it would be possible but would take something like 50 years? Don't recall the exact quote off the top of my head.

 

The odds or Mab letting Harry go are slim. He swore an oath to her and we now know exactly why she's wanted him so damn badly.

@Elvin. Uriel said that it might heal over 50 years.

@ Water mage. You know... You should make that happen in fanfiction.

 

I hear a lot of people complaining about Molly becoming the new Lady, despite being human. I thought all the emphasis placed on the importance of Halloween pretty much cleared that up. We know that it's the time for immortals to die, change, and ascend. We know that Mab was human once, so how did she become immortal? Probably something to do with Halloween.

And on top of that, I think it's pretty obvious how Sarissa became the new summer lady. She's a changeling, so not fully winter, only under its purview. But since we now know that the Mothers are two parts of the same person, so it's safe to assume that there's possibly a similar connection between Mab/Titania.

 

I think it's more a matter of Harry not necessarily being a threat to outsiders so much as an opportunity for everything, as was said in the book a "fulcrum".
He Who Walks Behind was preparing him because Harry is the key to destroying the world as much as he is to saving it.

 

The way I understood it, Molly wasn't a candidate for the Mantle because of Lea. All Lea did was prepare her to control that power and to be ready to take over for whichever Lady she ended up succeeding. I assumed it was because she was the closest person to Harry, like how Lily was the closest person to the old Summer Knight. Also, it definitely wouldn't have been possible on any day other than Halloween, unless they were at the Stone Table.

I also don't see what the problem with the hunt showing up was, I thought it was all but said that it'd be on when the Erlking and Santa were talking to Harry at his party.

Also, the first thing I thought about when I read Demonreach's true purpose was that Harry would release something from inside it later on in order to fight something worse.

 

Wizards and their whole Wolverine ability would be the easiest route. Takes years but no one's sure really how long something that damaging would take. But I'm sure Butcher will have a plot hole of some type he could exploit to do so.

 

I can roll with the idea of a human taking on the mantle, due to the advent of Halloween craziness and the circumstances. Mab was mortal once, and must've supplied the human side for her two daughters (And what, Odin/Kringle as the daddy? If that's so, then him telling Harry that the mantle can change on Halloween and stuff at the end of the book makes sense. He saw it happen with Mab...), so who knows. We'll get answers and stuff in future books, and how it morphs and changes Molly will be the interesting - and potential tragic - part, so hey, I'm in.

Oh, and whoever writes the first Winter Knight Dresden/Winter Lady Molly smutfic should totally call it, "Winter Is Coming". Amirite.

 

So, some thoughts...

Nemesis: When this was first introduced I was like "Oh shit, he's Alera'd Dresden." I actually put the book down and didn't come back to it for a day, I was so disappointed. I've never been a fan of great inhuman world-ending pure evil villains. Butcher had carefully crafted a complex world full of many factions populated by beings of many types with various motivations and relationships... and then decides to override it all with some "evil virus" which turns everything into a convenient "black hat/white hat" situation?

Talk about a let down.

HOWEVER

I picked the book back up, and was pleasantly surprised (for a while I even wondered if the very idea of Nemesis was itself a trick). I think 2 things redeem the idea:

1. The trust issue. This adds subtlety and complexity to an otherwise typical Borg trope. Not knowing who to trust adds an interesting dimension.

2. Lack of mental domination. Maeve was still Maeve. She'd been changed, through being given the power of choice, but she was still Maeve. She still had her own motivations and emotions and thoughts. She's not just a drone. In this way the complexity of the Dresden world is retained, and Nemesis is basically just a way of talking about individuals who are on the same side. It's not clear how Nemesis is transmitted, but it appears that it's a reasonably involved process that can't be done in a flash.

So I remain tentatively hopeful for the future, though it could still potentially all go the way of the Vord.

Other thoughts:

All power has purpose, said Mother Summer. What's the purpose of the Mothers, then, even greater in power than the Queens who are?

Is Cowl a Nemesis? Or was he working independently, maybe even against Nemesis?

Same for Nicodemus. And DuMorne.

Some confusion about Mantle transfer, as has been said. I was certain that Harry was going to become the holder, however temporary, of the Winter Lady's mantle. Molly came from complete left field... almost no dealings with the Fae at all. That said, looking forward to their future interactions... with Molly's fine control of magic, now combined with a fuckton of power, she'll be head and shoulders above Dresden's ability level. And given her past capacity for giving into temptation... we might have a Winter Lady Molly off the rails pretty soon.

At one point near the middle of the book, I thought everything was building up to Harry performing a Darkhallow - or rather a variant of it, drawing in a load of power that was building up and about to explode to one-shot Mab. Or Maeve. Or someone.

I'm neutral on the new revelations about Fae balance. It was always about Mab and Titania anyway, so their armies don't particularly concern me. What I do like is the increased clarity about the nature of Fae origin, succession, identity and mantles. Again, after it was introduced that Halloween could be used to make changes to mantles, I thought Harry might end up adjusting his own mantle as a wizard, or creating a new one, or changing the Winter Knight in some fundamental way. But didn't happen.

 

@Taure:
The Nemesis bit is somewhat confusing, because while it doesn't appear to be a group mind, it does seem to instill some sort of new personality into its host (see Lea and Cat Sith) that works toward the end goals of the organization as a whole.

As for Nic, what we know from book 10(?) would appear to indicate that Thorned Namshiel is a part of the Black Council, which may or may not be an offshoot of Nemesis. I doubt very much that Nic himself is allied with them; I do believe him when he said that he'd eliminate the Red Court given a chance as they were a scourge and a detriment to his plans. If we look at it from a theological perspective, I doubt Lucifer would want anybody muscling in on his territory for world domination/apocalypse.

 

I really don't like Nemesis. Attaching a cause to the evil that lurks in the hearts of men is somewhat of a cop out I feel, and I really dislike the ability to assume direct control in a large scale world. When you're dealing with a closed environment such as The Thing the trust issue is a great tension builder. When you've got a massive world which we know it's slipped in before the question becomes why it hasn't spread exponentially. The idea of a corrupting influence can work and I feel that it's been fairly thematic of the books (even if I dislike how they've viralized the Snake in the garden) but full on meat puppets? With full access given enough time it seems and is mostly undetectable? Almost feels like it destroys tension as the only way the good guys win is if the other side is stupid.

 

I don't know if its just me, but I got the impression that Nemesis isn't the 'big bad' that many in this thread have been calling it. Prior to this book, I always thought that there wasn't a whole lot of Outsiders. To me, Outsiders were big bad entities, no more than a handfull acting in a loose coalition to break into the Dresden reality so they can wreck it for shits and giggles or w/e.

From Cold Days it seems like there are tens of thousands of Outsiders who seem to be united under one banner (some kind of Outsider King?) and Nemesis is just another one of its lackeys. Dresden and Mother Summer agreed that it was 'an infiltrator, a sapper' to allow entrance for the rest of the Outsiders. Nemesis can't be the number one baddie, it just doesn't make sense. IMO, Nemesis serves the real Big Bad.

 

Perhaps "He-Who-Walks-Within"? Or "He-Who-Walks-Beside" to go with the 'B' theme? Then again, it doesn't have to be a Walker.

 

"He-Who-Walks-Backwards" ^

The thing about Outsiders is that there are too many unknowns about them - which gives JB lots of room to play around with them, and change the rules if he thinks it necessary.

I always found it weird that Harry took out He-Who-Walks-Behind so easily, although there seems to be a possibility that Harry never did really 'beat' him; the Walker simply let him win to let him 'grow'.

Then there are the hints of Harry being 'star-born', whatever that means - which gives him power over Outsiders. The whole Chosen One schtick doesn't really gel well with me, especially when wizards like Ebenezar said that he could barely hold them off in Proven Guilty, and that all of the wizards would've been dead if not for Michael's intervention with Amoracchius (meaning the Swords have a better effect on the Outsiders than magic, or that the jurisdiction of the White God does). And it's been said the Ebenezar could lay the smackdown on Harry often.

It feels a little like the Dresden Files is going to pull a bit of an 'alternate world' cliche where the Outsiders are simply from that other world - something Marvel often does or like a situation where the Armies of Narnia are trying to break through the Wardrobe to conquer Earth . If that were true, it would bother me a little; simply too many planes of existence (of course, I don't doubt that JB would have some plausible way of explaining it in a kickass manner).

There's Heaven (God), Hell (Lucifer), Earth (Mortals, Vampires, Werewolves, Ghosts + Fallen Angels), Nevernever (including Faerie) - (Demons, Fae), then there's the Outsiders, which apparently doesn't fall into any of these categories.

**** please don't let the Outsiders be Aliens. That would be such a cop out.

 

I'm reasonably confident that Nemesis will turn out to be the big bad, insofar as he will be the guy pulling the strings and the one Dresden will be acting against on this side of the Gates.

He may not be the "real boss", but he's almost certainly going to be the arch-enemy, at least until the BAT (that's when the real leader, if it's someone else, will reveal themselves).

 

This isn't a likely explanation of Outsiders. I don't remember the exact wording, but the Outsiders are from a place not in the universe.

They are not of reality.

Which aliens, from whatever far flung corner of the universe, would be.


My favourite part of Cold Days was Mother Summer taking Dresden to the farthest reaches of the Nevernever and him running into Rashid. Again, I don't recall the exact wording, but that whole scene where its explained that the Summer Queen could crush Mab, but she'd have to forfeit the entirety of reality itself to do so...

Chills, man. It puts the conflict on a scale so vast and huge that it almost renders it meaningless, but because I care about the characters - even Mab, especially Mab - somehow it justifies the scale.

Well done, Jim.

 

Think you have that backwards. Mab is the one with the army of jillions.

 

Anyway, I was really surprised at the explanation of Soulfire. I like Harry's explanation of casting with your entire being, rather than chopping off bbits of your soul.

 

This.

Harry's internal monologue was all wrong in this book. Leaving aside the egregious men are from mars and women from Venus moments, the whole 'fae sly, me Neanderthal' bit bothered me so fuckin' much. And dear god, the caps lock abuse.

Secondly, I get that Butcher was trying to showcase how the mantle is warping his mind but, frankly, less is more. A couple of lines of his feelings about Molly affected me more than the long internal monologues cataloging the various women he met. Instead of all those paragraphs, a few shockingly inappropriate thoughts would have sufficed, and probably carried more emotional weight.

It's strange really but, despite how epic this book was, it was curiously lacking in emotional resonance.

Finally, the gates. Tying them to a physical location is bad idea. Firstly, it seems to signify an 'end' to faerie land, which is in itself a weird concept at this juncture. It's always assumed they they'd get diffuse, less predictable, chaotic, the further you went from Earth. But them ending at the gates is surprise, and not a good one.

Merlin's magic is really interesting. Since it is mentioned that it is more than the sum of its parts, I'm assuming that it's not necessarily true that Merlin was that absolutely powerful, or even clever, but just that he was smart enough to manipulate certain natural forces in his favor. This would make more sense to me than a human being able to entrap scores of demigods.

Molly's tragic, really. Will she retain that emotional sensitivity in Winter? If she does, one can assume she'd become fucked up, fast.

Loved how absolutely deadly motivated little people are.

Similarly, Mac's boring now, and Murphy was really boring this time around. Bombs = Dresden. Yeah, excellent logic.

Anyway, will read again soon, or at least skim through some of the major parts. Didn't really like the book so much, despite how many answers and questions it provided. The writing and many of the characters just felt off.

 

Ah, I did have it a bit wrong.

Mab has troops in the jillions, but if she were to pull them from battling Outsiders, she'd lose in the end.

Here's the passage I was talking about:

Mab has her power to protect the realms from Outsiders, and Titania has hers to protect the realms from Mab.

So damn awesome.