So there I was being strangled by a ranting, half-naked madman in the middle of the woods, with a she-werewolf dangling from a rope snare somewhere nearby.

So yeah, today Harry’s back to making a big point of the fact the nonhuman monster has tits. We actually don’t even have any evidence this is a “she” at all given he’s just worked out Tera is a shapeshifter, but Tera has a female human body and the part where the brain in that is some monster from the Nevernever doesn’t matter, thus “she-werewolf”.

I’ve had worse days. That’s the great thing about being a wizard. I can always tell myself, honestly, that things could be worse.

It’s frustrating when you can glimpse the story the fans see.

Harry actually being a properly beat down noir detective, who often has oddly muted reactions to events because he’s numbed by past trauma but comes off as just a detached asshole to people who don’t know about it, which is basically everyone.

Except Harry whines about every goddamn thing.

Anyway, time for actual magic!

I stopped trying to struggle against the man who was choking me. Instead, I grabbed his wrist and prepared to do something foolish.
Magic is a kind of energy. It is given shape by human thoughts and emotions, by imagination. Thoughts define that shape-and words help to define those thoughts. That’s why wizards usually use words to help them with their spells. Words provide a sort of insulation as the energy of magic burns through a spell caster’s mind. If you use words that you’re too familiar with, words that are so close to your thoughts that you have trouble separating thought from word, that insulation is very thin. So most wizards use words from ancient languages they don’t know very well, or else they make up nonsense words and mentally attach their meanings to a particular effect.

Which is why Harry picked an actual currently used Spanish word for his fireballs of doom, because fuck those lazy job-stealing assholes am I right SPEAK ENGLISH OR BURN MOTHERFUCKERS.

He then says that you can totally use magic without saying words, it’s just painful. I’d expect a bigger concern would be that what comes out is uncontrolled, but apparently not an issue, or maybe it is and he doesn’t mention it.

My eyes swam with color, my ears with phantom sound. My senses were assaulted with a myriad of impressions: the sharp scent of the earth and dry leaves, the rippling scratch of a centipede’s legs fluttering up the skin of my forearms, the sensation of warm sunlight against my scalp, dozens of others I couldn’t identify-things with no basis in reality. They were a side effect of the energy rushing through my head.

Like, is this a component of damage/pain, or is it that if you channel energy without a proper focus a bunch of it bleeds off to do random stuff?

Because his actual attack seems to work fine, it’s an electric zap.

watching my attacker’s convulsions fade into a numb paralysis. Finally, he just stared at the sky, his lips open, his chest heaving in and out.

Also – this really seems like the sort of thing that can kill.

I think the easist way of thinking about Harry’s no-killing-with-magic rule is that it all comes down to intent. You can chuck a fireball at someone’s face if you’re startled and it doesn’t occur to you this will probably end with them dead, and you can electrocute someone into extended convulsions if all you’re thinking is you really want them off you.

From this, I would guess that cases are only prosecuted when there’s overwhelming evidence this was intentional. So, a spell like the heartsplosions last book means definite naked sword time – it’s premeditated and everyone gets that exploding a heart kills you, so you obviously meant to do it. Burning someone to cinders also probably, because that requires sustained fire so the wizard would have to keep it going after it was obvious the person would die. However Harry killed the first evil wizard must’ve therefore been either a directed strike like the heartsplosion (headsplosion?) or a sustained attack.

I think this makes the most sense. It’d also explain Harry’s otherwise inexplicable bitching about the whole swordy doom if wizard justice is normally innocent unless overwhelming evidence but the council’s ruling means all accidental magic deaths are assumed to be deliberate rather than vice versa.

I studied the man a little more closely. He was big. He was really big, at least as tall as me and twice as broad. He was dressed only in a pair of cutoff blue jeans, and those looked like they were ill fit. He was in a condition best described as “overwhelmingly masculine,” hairy-chested and muscled like a professional wrestler. There was grey in his hair and beard, and there were lines on his face, putting his age at well into maturity. It was his eyes that showed me the most about him. They burned green, wild and haunted, fastened on the distant sky now, but heavy with the weight of too much terrible knowledge. It couldn’t have been easy to live with a curse like his.

So I guess you could argue this is the male equivalent of Harry’s obligatory “cute and feminine” note for women, but it’s like with superheroes, the women girls are sexy and cute and hyper feminine, to appeal to men, and the men are rugged and hairy and hypermasculine, to appeal to men.

I can’t tell you whether this is supposed to be there for men to imagine being an awesome werewolf with a hot bitch on your arm or if the bigness is getting played up as a horror thing to show how awful and icky it is to face him, but the point isn’t that Harry is into bears any more than most professional wrestling fans would say the point was how very sexy they thought the oily muscular men are.

Anyway, Tera is only now motivated to get out of that snare. As awesome as Tera is, her actual characterization is one-note super girlfriend. She decides now is time to wolf the fuck out and remove Harry’s trachea, and Harry…

I hadn’t gotten beaten up twice, shot, and nearly strangled to get taken out by a misguided werewolf bitch.

Yup he’s not going to stop doing that any time soon. Fuck you Harry, I wish the book ended here.

Harry uses wind and is “embarrassed” that his magical attack was even more super ultra strong than he meant. Truly this is how you write a character with flaws. It doesn’t actually have any negative repercussions, of course – he has to take shelter from the tiny tornado, but also Tera is completely stopped and distracted rather than momentarily delayed.

The trees had been cleaned of their autumn colors in a fifty-foot-wide circle, leaving only stark branches behind. Where the bark had been brittle or dry, the cyclone had torn it from the trees, leaving pale, gleaming wood flesh visible. The leaves on the ground were gone as well, as were six or eight inches of topsoil-wind erosion gone berserk. A few stones, newly naked, could be seen in the torn earth, as could the roots of some of the trees and a number of startled worms.

To build on the issue of power as flaw, the biggest reason it doesn’t work for Harry is because Harry never gives a fuck.

MacFinn was sitting up, evidently recovered from the jolt I’d given him. His face was pasty and stunned as he looked around him. His chest rose and fell in uneven jerks.
There was a rustle, and then I caught sight of Tera West tumbling to the ground from the branches of the pine tree. She landed with a thump and sat there coughing and staring, her mouth hanging open in surprise. She blinked at me and nervously scooted a few inches backward over the ground.

He doesn’t think that oh no, he could’ve killed either of them. He doesn’t think that he feels bad they’re scared. The consequences of losing control and hurting someone have always, to him, began and ended at the possibility a third party might hurt him in retaliation.

Like, this is a common trope, isn’t it? The hero who’s afraid to use their power because it’s not under control and they don’t know what might happen. Only Harry uses it then gleefully reports on just how awesome he must be to have mangled the surroundings.

And the author knows it isn’t an issue, because the focus just shifts back to how hard it is for Harry and how he’s still a bit loopy from electrocuting someone: I caught the strong scent of wild-flowers and stagnant water, and felt what I was sure were the scales of a snake slithering across the palms of my hands, while something with wings and glittering, multifaceted eyes hovered at the edge of my vision, vanishing whenever I tried to look at it.

But who cares, because he’s a terrible person.

Tera makes out with MacFinn a bunch, because animal girls are wild in the sack, and Harry’s all, “Um…” so they go back to camp and Harry again demands answers, claiming that he wants to prevent people from being hurt. I wonder if Harry knows this is a lie or if he actually believes it. He demands to know why MacFinn killed Kim because “I turn into an uncontrollable ragemonster” apparently wasn’t clear.

“The curse,” he said quietly. “When it happens, when I change-have you ever been angry, Mr. Dresden? So angry that you lost control? That nothing else mattered to you but acting on your anger?”
“Once,” I said.

I think this is true.

Harry acts in anger all the time, but it’s always calculated and he doesn’t feel remorse for it. His behavior actually fits closely to the sort of people who abuse others under the excuse they just couldn’t control themselves, with the only real difference that Harry doesn’t focus his abuse on a few particular targets or bother to fake amicability to the rest. But like them, when he wants to hurt someone, he first considers if he can get away with it, then does with a ready excuse for why this was just.

I mean, let’s ignore that thing where he was annoyed Tera wasn’t obeying his unreasonable demands just because he said them so he decided it was soulfuck time. Let’s think back to the first book. Remember that time his temper caused him “trouble” with Morgan? That time he held off punching the guy until the sword was put back and he could safely get away with it?

Harry will excuse a lot of things by saying he was angry, but he doesn’t lose control. These are all things he chooses to do.

Presumably he’s speaking of that time he killed a dude with magic, and with this in mind, I think what he actually means is he regrets not pulling his magic blast just enough that the actual killing blow could be done with his hands, avoiding the swordy doom hassle.

Mind, this whole thing is tripping all kinds of abuser excuses.

“Maybe you can understand part of it then,” MacFinn said. “It comes on me, and there’s nothing left but the need to hurt something. To act on the rage. I tried to tell Kim that the circle wasn’t working, that she had to get out, but she wouldn’t listen. ” I heard the frustration in his voice, and his hands clenched into fists. “She wouldn’t listen to me.”

Why? Why exactly does an irrational ragemonster who you don’t control and barely remember being work by amping up your own emotions?

“It’s how I came back from ‘Nam. Everyone else in my platoon died but me. I knew the full moon was coming. And I knew that I hated them, hated the soldiers who had killed my friends. When I changed, I started killing until there wasn’t anyone left alive within maybe two miles.”

Which is just a giant plothole because how exactly did he handle every other full moon?

I stared at MacFinn for a long moment. I believed that he was telling me the truth. That he didn’t have much control, if any, over his actions when he transformed.

Except what he just said is really the opposite.

Everything we know prior to this is that this werewolf type just autokills because it’s a dumb monster. What he says about Kim is borderline, since it’s unclear if the rage just happens and during the transition it feels like it makes a bit of sense or if he lunged for her because he was irritated at her before the transformation. What he says here is that it’s absolutely him. It’s his issues warped to become monstrous but if the asshole didn’t have a hair trigger, didn’t flip the fuck out because a woman “wouldn’t listen”, she wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place.

This also makes it work as a moral curse – the bad thing happening is partly under his control and it’s really his own refusal to take responsibility that’s keeping the curse going. Why anyone trying to do moral curses chose one that’d cause lots of collateral damage is hard to understand, but I could definitely see fae doing this, since hell if they care.

Though it occurred to me that if he wanted someone dead, he could probably point his monster-self in the right direction before he lost control.
Note to self: Do not cut MacFinn off in traffic.

And you see, Harry does get it, otherwise the joke doesn’t make sense. It isn’t that he turns into a monster and can rationally position it in places it might serve his interests. It’s just that it goes after people he’s mad at first, and he’s the sort of psychopath to want to literally murder you for cutting him off in traffic.

Harry then reminds the reader that, by the way, this is all talking place in Wolf Woods despite how I politely didn’t bring up this stupid shit the first time.

Why to ‘Wolf Woods’? Why not to one of the other stashes?”
He smirked at the flames. “Where else would a werewolf run, Mr. Dresden?”

So what, werewolf you also still can read maps?

MacFinn then explains that it’s totally okay because it’s not like the FBI believes in actual werewolves. They just believe in people who are wolf cultists, which is totally different, who may or may not be ecoterrorists and/or think they’re actual wolves. Clearly wolf cultist ecoterrorists would have no interest in the woods!

I conceded.

Therefore Harry considers this great reasoning. Despite having personally handed his file on werewolves to one of them who seemed to appreciate the reading followed by being told to go check out some wolfy dudes.

Ragemonster explains that he met Kim a year ago and she’s been helping in unclear ways on the whole giant park thing, and then last month his circle was wrecked so she was the natural person to go to.

And the other two nights, I made sure I was well away from human beings.

So we see that Kim wasn’t really making any sort of sacrifice. This wasn’t an act of desperation and heroism. It was just another dumb bitch who thought she could do something even though a man explained to her that she couldn’t, so of course Ragemonster lost his temper and disemboweled her.

MacFinn then says he’s got no idea who wrecked it.

I don’t have much contact with the supernatural, Mr. Dresden. I keep my head down. I don’t know anyone else who can make the change, except for her.” He put his hand over that of the woman beside him.

So you actually have a hell of a lot more contact with the supernatural than most people.

I don’t think there’s any explanation for how they met beyond “because wolf and nature”. It would be quite reasonable for MacFinn to have a good grasp of the wild end of supernatural creatures but have no idea about any that worked in cities and certainly no clue about ones that actually understood human legal systems enough to be doing all this.

Harry then suddenly figures out that the solution is that one group killed a bunch of peopl then wrecked the circle to frame him, despite the fact the circle-wrecking makes it clear there’s another party involved and is just a generally stupid idea.

Come to think of it, you know what the other flaw in this is? If they know he’s only active on particular days, why do a one kill a night? He’s a ragemonster and just admitted that he doesn’t necessarily stop after killing one group. They should’ve been doing their killings on the same night as the random ones. Not only would that hide the fact there’s another group that’s a different werewolf type, but it’d make it look exactly like he was trying to target someone and there was collateral damage because ragemonster. Make the first full moon night particularly bloody and you could even make the circle-wrecking seem plausible – his attempt at clever murder killed lots of people and got lots of attention and it’s so obviously a werewolf he realizes someone’s going to realize, so he then sabotages the circle to try to confuse things.

Of course, there’s another problem seen when Harry brings up the possibility of him faking this.

So you moan and pose and say ‘Woe is me, I am only the poor cursed guy,’ and meanwhile a bunch of people end up dead. People who were standing in the way of your completing the Northwest Passage Project.”

Except he just explained that getting away from people solves this problem. There’s a maximum of one day where he might be ragemonstering in a civilized area, if his circle is damaged and he doesn’t look at it until shortly before he’s going to transform because after that he has time to take other actions like leaving, and even then, it beggars belief he’d just happen to kill one of the only people in the whole city whose death benefits him.

Now, going on the idea the ragemonster is actually him on steroids (…that actually fits a bit too well, doesn’t it) then he could say that if he transforms anywhere he has free range, he makes a beeline for whoever sane-him is mad at, but his actions are considered temporary insanity and he can’t be held legally liable. However, it seems really unlikely the supernatural community could possibly give a shit about this. The only one we know of that’s even human, the wizard council, barely accepts Harry killing in self-defense. And given they’re on terrible terms with the vampires, I think supernatural creatures generally hate other supernatural creatures of similar power levels because those are threats to you, and they’re left alive only because they form into groups for mutual defense so you can’t wipe them out. A lone superpowerful ragemonster? That’s a threat to you that has no one speaking in its defense. They’d love to kill this guy.

Oh, also the response to Harry suggesting MacFinn did it is:

MacFinn showed me his teeth. “You think the world wouldn’t be better off without people like Marcone and his lickspittles?”

That’s pretty much a confession. Harry didn’t even say he gave a damn about the dead guys, he just pointed out MacFinn did have reason to kill them, and MacFinn’s response is that killing them made the world better while snarling.

“That doesn’t really concern me right now, MacFinn. Men like Marcone know the risks and take their chances. What bothers me is that a bunch of other people are getting dead, and they don’t really deserve it.”
“Why would I be killing innocents?” MacFinn demanded, his voice growing tight, clipped.

So we get here a glimpse of a more proper shades of grey everything sucks detective story.

MacFinn is totally killing these guys, but he actually is okay at controlling it. If he focuses on his hate for someone, when he transforms he’ll ignore other prey to go after them and be sated afterward and unlikely to harm further victims. Someone else is trying to draw down magical police attention by killing other people and framing him.

Someone who’s okay with killing innocents as a general rule and also has reason to believe no one will care to act if MacFinn is just killing his intended targets. A businessman of less than legitimate enterprise, say.

So this guy is a murderer but he’s going after people Harry just said he doesn’t give a damn about but because he’s doing that those other people are hurting still more people. Wow, it’s like there’s some sort of reason societies believe you should treat everyone the same under the law.

But obviously that’s not the story we’ll be getting, so Harry moves on to who might be framing him.

I’d say that it was Johnny Marcone-he stands to benefit if you can’t oppose his business interests in the Northwest. As I understand it, the Northwest Passage would pretty much put nails in the coffin of a lot of industry up in that direction.”
MacFinn nodded grimly. “It would.”
“So that gives him a good motive. But how did he know about your curse? And how did he pull off ruining the circle? It doesn’t sound like him. He would just have your brakes fail, or maybe arrange for you to meet a couple of big men in a dark alley. It’s just his way.” I shrugged. “Who else would be doing it?

Harry, I know you really like Mobster Dad, but holy shit think for a second.

Marcone doesn’t just benefit by preventing this park. He also benefits by having the other people with similar interests disappear so he’s the only one left, and the fact the other guy’s stuff actually goes to him means either he had extra motive to kill his partner OR since he was planning to kill his partner he went through some effort to set things up so he’d absorb the guy’s stuff.

He’s also the only muggle you’ve met who knows anything much about magic. He knew you were a wizard and the real deal. He knew about soulgazing. Every magic thing you’ve pulled out he seems to take in stride, as if he’s learned enough to be familiar with the basic stuff.

Even assuming he doesn’t have a direct line to magic shit, blackmail is a fine mobster tradition. All that needs to happen is he tried to dig up regular dirt on this guy only to learn that he’s from a supposedly cursed line AND that there were some shenanigans going on in Vietnam where his platoon was wiped out but he survived and somehow everything else in that radius was wiped out. If he puts MacFinn under surveillance, he’d also notice the guy stays inside on full moon nights. From there, it’s just one quick break-in to see if they can find anything useful inside and he’d know about the circle. He doesn’t have to know anything more about it than that circles can contain things and in this case presumably a werewolf to be able to wreck it.

Now, releasing a ragemonster that’s mad at you is a pretty risky business – BUT, he knows it’s coming. Isn’t it interesting he had one of his well-known and perhaps well-smelled bodyguards off in the middle of a well-known piece of his property? Sort of like that guy was a decoy for the werewolf to attack while Marcone stayed well away.

Then he goes to Harry, because last time a supernatural thing was trying to kill him, Harry (eventually) took that out. Maybe the fear is because he was hoping Harry would notice this was happening on his own and do something about it before a whole month passed and the werewolf was a danger again, unaware that Harry gives no fucks and the police had stopped calling to make him. After all, if Marcone set this up he’d want to avoid going to Harry and reminding him that he’s a muggle who knows a surprising lot about the supernatural and so could’ve done this.

MacFinn then claims that he can’t think of any other grudges because before this he’s always managed to avoid killing people, reminding us again how stupid Harry was for not getting a better answer than “a murderer” from the demon, because identifying when he was a murderer would let us know if this is true.

Then Harry’s like OH THAT’S WHY GIANT PARK, PERSONAL GAIN OH MAN I UNDERSTAND NOW.

“A place for you to go in safety when the full moon comes-a really big no-people zone.”

Also I think he’s a little confused how wildlife refuges work, because people can and do still get in there, they’re just lower density. If he’s a ragemonster he should just hunt down campers and stuff.

MacFinn glanced aside at Tera, who was staring stoically into the distance. “That and other reasons.”

But it seems he actually just is an environmentalist.

Harry then sits and runs through the options he laid out. Harry gets back to the whole maybe they’re just gonna kill him because he is still too stupid to notice Tera totally could’ve so many times already.

Careful, Harry. Don’t get too paranoid. Not everyone is planning and plotting and lying. But I had to wonder about Tera West. A nasty scenario was laying itself out in my mind. What if the dear, sweet fiancée was tired of hubby? What if she had done the before- and after-moon killings, then set up her sweetiekins to take the fall for her? She could get rid of MacFinn and Marcone’s partner all in one fell swoop.
Leaving her and Marcone alive. Marcone could have found out about MacFinn from Tera, and about the weakness of his circle from Tera as well. Tera wasn’t human, not even a little. She was something else, maybe a being of the Nevernever. Who knew how her mind worked?

You know – maybe what’s really going on is the conflation of “female” and “alien monster”, and that’s why “she-werewolf” and “vampiress” and all that shit. Harry’s run through of the motivations put heavy emphasis on the fact Tera is 1)female 2)in a relationship and generally sounds like misogynist reasoning where of course your girlfriend is secretly working with another man to stab you in the back because she’s bored of you, then follows up with how mysterious her mind is.

He then finally wonders what’s up with that other group he saw Tera bossing around, but instead of just asking I went fishing. “How are Georgia and Billy, Tera?” I asked, my tone conversational.
She blinked. Her mouth worked for a second, and then she answered, “Fine. They are well.” She pressed her lips together, clearly desiring the conversation to end.
I watched MacFinn. His face registered confusion, and then he looked between Tera and me uneasily.

Why not just fucking ask? That’s how he behaves in almost every interaction, but suddenly he’s doing this instead.

Aha, little miss werewolf-shapeshifter-thing. What are you plotting?

And yes, he is still emphasizing she’s not merely female but a girl and this will never ever stop.

Anyway, before he can ask around what he actually wants more, well, remember how it’s been repeatedly pointed out that this is a stupid place to hide? The police have finally shown up. Murphy! And we get a quick conversation between her and Carmichael regarding the fact that they’d have been here several hours back if the FBI hadn’t held them up somehow, but then somehow they start arguing about how this is a waste of time.

“You don’t even know if they’re here,” Carmichael protested.
“I’ll bet you sex to donuts that they are, Carmichael,” Murphy said, her voice dripping sweet venom. “And that should tell you how certain I am.”

I get it’s a sign of her certainty but it’s still kind of uncomfortable, especially when she’s a secondary character talking to a tertiary character so you don’t have things established like “they just talk like this and no one ever actually follows through on a bet” coupled with the whole “venom” thing just making it seem like actually their relationship is shitty enough that if Murphy was wrong Carmichael actually would be like “welp you owe me sex now”.

Harry tells the others that no for real now he’s out of magic and useless, although by that he means he’d do TOO MUCH and kill somebody, and how you can TOO MUCH WHOOPS THEY’RE DEAD with fog goes unexplained.

“We split up. The first one discovered makes a lot of noise, puts up a fight, and gives the others a chance to get away.”
“No,” I said. “MacFinn, you’ve got to stay with me. I can make the circle with some sticks and dirt, if necessary, but if I’m not there, I can’t hold you in when the curse takes hold later tonight.”

But we see that there actually is a perfectly reasonable way of dealing with this: STAND THE FUCK UP AND TELL THE POLICE YOU’RE THERE.

Murphy may hate you, but she saw both circles and Kim’s death strongly suggests that as a werewolf, this guy is uncontrolled. Letting Harry be in a cell with him to draw a circle isn’t too much to ask – it’s honestly the wisest option if she thinks he’s involved, because now he’ll have to draw the circle or die first.

Sure, the fact Harry ran off makes him look bad, but the fact he turns himself in now that he has MacFinn would go a long way to helping that, and he can explain he did it because he was desperate to find the guy before moonrise. It’s not absolutely certain it’d work, but as a plan it’s less risky than everybody running and hoping both Harry and MacFinn make it away within the rapidly approaching time limit.

MacFinn’s teeth showed again. “No time to argue, Mr. Dresden,” he said.
“Indeed there is not,” said Tera, and then she took off at a dead run. MacFinn hissed a curse and grabbed for her as she ran, but missed.
Tera flew on into the woods, rushing silently down the slope on an angle that would take her past the edge of the pursuers’ line. She was noticed after only a few steps, shouts going up from three or four throats.
“Bitch,” MacFinn cursed

Yeah.

Anyway, when it’s a woman putting herself in danger for Harry’s gain, apparently chivalry doesn’t trigger and he’s totally able to say things like that Tera “Knows what she’s doing,” because that’s how flaws work, right? He then hears gunshots and someone scream in pain.

Call me crazy, but those sounds, added to all the other things that had happened that day, were just too much for me to handle. I turned, cradling my wounded arm against me, and stumbled up the hill into a long, loping run. I kept my head down, watching my feet, only looking up often enough to make sure that I didn’t run into a tree, and fled.

Chivalry’s not dead if it was never alive in the first place, after all.