I never used to keep close track of the phases of the moon.

This is a great opening in both the intended way – it raises all sorts of questions and clearly has to do with some sort of magical thing – and in the unintended way of establishing Harry doesn’t actually know much of anything and is pretty lazy. From the first sentence, you know that it’s a mystery, it’s got magic, and the magic system isn’t going to make much sense.

Moons have only recently been connected to werewolves (it’s a corruption of the fact olden days people understood it actually gets quite dark at night, so in any story where they claimed someone saw a thing in the middle of the night, they’d say it was a full moon. Abraham Lincoln won a court case by proving the witness was lying about there being a full moon that night and so couldn’t possibly be able to identify the accused.) but have a very long history of being connected to magic.

Even if we dismiss all that long and storied history with a handwave about stupid muggles, it would still be relevant for Harry’s work, because the majority of people hiring a wizard from a phone book are going to be some flavor of Wicca and related magickal beliefs, which totally think the moon is a big deal, and a good chunk of the rest will be people whose knowledge of magic comes solely from pop culture, where again the moon is a big deal. Harry should get the occasional extra call around this time (and likely also around the dark of the moon) and know it’s just the regular sort of lunatic.

And finally, Harry supposedly walks all the time and struggles to keep electric lights working, he should just plain see the damn moon on a regular basis.

So I didn’t know that it was one night shy of being full when a young woman sat down across from me in McAnally’s pub and asked me to tell her all about something that could get her killed.

This part establishes that it’s totally modern noir. Because it’s modern noir, it’s less “could get” and more “will inevitably get” because women not dying is way too progressive for modern 2000 era books.

She was a tall woman, buxom and lovely in an old-world way, with pale, pretty skin and round cheeks well used to smiling.

I don’t even know what old world means but I just dislike this. Everything here relates to her being wholly fuckable for the reader.

She leaned across the table toward me, her eyes intent.

But in brighter news, he’s able to mention her posture like he’s a normal person rather than forgetting she has eyes and then whining about women evilly using their sex appeal to get stuff.

No one in local circles recognizes them either. You’re the only real wizard I’ve ever even heard of, much less know.

It’s unclear what a wizard actually is. From context here, it appears to mean formally trained, but last book centered around a wizard without formal training. My best guess is that any time a person of sufficient power is identified, the wizarding body then takes them in to learn secrets of the universe stuff, so that while not all wizards are formally trained, no non-wizards are told anything useful ever.

Where this breaks down is that there appears to be no enforcement mechanism, which is really weird. Harry personally doesn’t want to tell her because he thinks she’s not good enough to handle it, but one wizard telling one other person allows for that person to then take their near-exclusive knowledge and pass it around.

Possibly this is normally handled by more subtle social mechanisms, like not getting invited to the next wizarding information exchange, and since Harry burned his bridges in one go he doesn’t even know that’s a thing he could’ve been banned from.

Anyway, it turns out that Harry is yet again broke, so he’s getting paid to consult by her buying him a steak, and also that she has barely more money so – what use is magic, exactly? I mean, I could see the idea the technology bane thing in a world where technology is so awesome means muggles are now outcompeting magic users, but it seems like weaker magic users have far less of a technology-melting effect and should be able to coexist well enough. They should be basically ordinary people + bonus abilities, how are they doing worse than ordinary people?

Harry adds that additionally, Kim is a sometime apprentice of mine, further confusing the whole question of “real wizard” knowledge.

She leaned forward and put her hand over mine, looking me in the face without looking me in
the eyes, a trick that few nonpractitioners of the Art could master.

It’s really not that hard to just stare at the nose.

On the brighter side, Harry continues to manage to keep his own eyes on her face despite even more leaning forward! Come to think of it, I think he’s getting laid now, so that actually explains things pretty well. Thank you, Rodriguez. And/or Morgan. Whatever it takes.

Harry then discusses how the police have stopped calling. This time, he actually sounds like a halfway responsible person – they haven’t called at all in more than a month, but he says they’ve been tapering off since whenever “last spring” was, possibly a whole year ago. In that case, even if he did try to live more frugally and save, it’s easy to see how he could’ve run out. Also, apparently he’s been eating ramen like he should’ve last time. Good job at adulting, Harry!

But I couldn’t just go and eat the dinner without giving Kim the information she wanted.

This is after Kim says that she’s not going to hold the food over his head if he won’t tell her and it’s fine, and not Harry just out of the blue declaring he won’t fuck her over for no reason, so it actually comes off positively!

It’s not that I’ve never welshed on a deal, but I’ve never done it with anyone human—and definitely not with someone who looked up to me.

Well, no idea about people looking up to you, but I’d say all of last book was you trying to welsh on every deal in sight – except fairies, which I suppose gives you a few points.

Sometimes I hate having a conscience, and a stupidly thorough sense of honor.

And he didn’t even mention gender once! Clearly, having sex really helps with Nice Guy misogyny.

Anyway, time to find out about the actual magic already.

This is a figure of High magic. Three of them, really, one inside the other, like layered walls. Remember what I told you about magical circles?”
Kim nodded. “They either hold something out or keep it in. Most work on magic energies or creatures of the Nevernever, but mortal creatures can cross the circles and break them.”

This is significantly more specific than last book having circles do a whole bunch of stuff, and utterly torpedoes my idea of magic being about boundaries having an inherent magic. This is the most mundane thing you could do.

The special thing about this is there’s an anti-mortal circle. One blocks magic crap, one blocks non-magic crap. And they have to be set up differently: “The second circle is more of a spell barrier to mortal flesh. It wouldn’t work if all you used was a ring of symbols. You’d need something else, stones or gems or something, spaced between the drawings.” That makes a sort of intuitive sense – spirit things aren’t real, so not-real representation is the only thing you need to block them. Real things need to be blocked by something real, with the symbols there to empower it to work properly. Then he can’t make sense of the third. He explains that read literally, it’s for blocking stuff that’s not properly either. Characters being able to read the components and try to work it out is my favorite symbol-reading thing. I realize that sounds specific but seriously, it’s fun. It lets them know what’s up without having all the answers on hand or the horrid cop-out of knowing but forgetting any interesting details because plot says so, and it allows for all sorts of gradients where they could’ve missed a secondary aspect to an alternate reading of something totally different all the way to missing the “do not” hidden off to the side and oops this was saying drawing the binding runes in white reverses the previous ones and Cthulhu will eat your head now.

She frowned. “What kind of creatures are like that?”
I shrugged. “None,” I said, and officially, it was true. The White Council of wizards did not allow the discussion of demons that could be called to earth, beings of spirit that could gather flesh to themselves. Usually, a spirit-circle was enough to stop all but the most powerful demons or Elder Things of the outer reaches of the Nevernever. But this third circle was built to stop things that could transcend those kinds of boundaries. It was a cage for demonic demigods and archangels.
Kim wasn’t buying my answer. “I don’t see why anyone would make a circle like this to contain nothing, Harry.”
I shrugged. “People don’t always do reasonable, sensible things. They’re like that.”

And so we return to form.

The bit about the council seems to just be a fun fact, because it doesn’t appear to matter for his decision to hide this knowledge from here. He just doesn’t want her doing it and is sure the best way to accomplish that is to fail to explain anything about why this actually is a bad idea.

She says okay whatever, just tell me how to activate it. He, actually reasonably, isn’t really a fan of telling her how turn on a Godzilla trap just because she claims she’s totally not going to turn it on and to harass Godzilla.

“You don’t think I’m strong enough.”
“Your strength’s got nothing to do with it,” I said. “You don’t have the training. You don’t have
the knowledge. I wouldn’t expect a kid in grade school to be able to sit down and figure out college
calculus. And I don’t expect it of you, either.” I leaned forward. “You don’t know enough yet to be
toying with this sort of thing, Kim. And even if you did, even if you did manage to become a fullfledged wizard, I’d still tell you not to do it.
…
“Look, Kim,” I said. “Give it some time. When you’re older, when you’ve had more experience…”
“You aren’t so much older than me,” Kim said.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “I’ve had a lot of training. And I started young.” My own
ability with magic, far in excess of my years and education, wasn’t a subject I wanted to explore.

This just leaves me more confused about what a wizard actually is. Now it seems like she may have wizard-grade levels of power and it’s just a lack of training, except the other guy had zero training. The best way of reconciling it is that you’re a wizard if you’re able to pull off certain types of spells, and the stronger you are, the more easily you can brute force your way to success. She’s not in Harry or Stormface Crazypant’s power level, but what Harry can hack together, she could do if it was a proper optimized spell, or could if she had more practice.

Or he’s just lying because women so sensitive, but there’s been no discussion of last books haves/havenots division and even the last line has Harry talking about ability with magic instead of raw power, as if his skill is more due to being able to pick the right tool for the job.

That said, if he’s using ability to mean raw power, as it was in the last book, his uncomfortableness with the topic means he did something bad to get it, which is way more fun than being born as one of the overmen. Ooh, what if wizards could get the power of wizards they kill by magic? That’d explain why there’s such a big deal about the rule about killing with magic and they have a special magic sword and sanctioned killers for carrying it out officially and they’re so scared of Harry. It’s like vampires eating older vampires to gain their powers.

He tries to shift the topic but her job is apparently something about environmentalism, so that’s just more of a downer.

Harry ends by asking her not to do anything and she’s all mad and leaves.

She cut an impressive, statuesque figure. I could feel the anger bubbling off her. One of the ceiling fans shuddered and let out a puff of smoke as she walked under it, then whirled down to a halt.

So our options are:

1) Magic-bane is amplified by emotions
2) She actually is in the wizard weight class
3) Magic-bane effect is now the same for everyone, so minor magic users are even more screwed than major ones rather than less.

I sat back down, frustrated. Dammit. Kim was one of several people I had coached through the difficult period surrounding the discovery of their innate magical talents. It made me feel like crap to withhold information from her, but she had been playing with fire. I couldn’t let her do that. It was my responsibility to help protect her from such things, until she knew enough to realize how dangerous they were.

So here’s the plothole. Kim was really fixated on this, and Harry was attempting to talk her out of it even after he refused to help, indicating he’s concerned she might try regardless. And if she doesn’t know what you’re supposed to do for that third circle, that means it’s gone from “likely fatal” to “absolutely definitely Satan is going to kill her then go on a rampage”. Harry also has a whole buttload of free time right now.

He should just go help her. She gets to see it work and have a front-row seat to how it’s too dangerous for her to do alone, he avoids her doing it directly and risking whatever happens when you do a spell without knowing all the wizard calculus behind it. Harry hasn’t said anything about this being a generally terrible idea, he just thinks she’s not up for it yet/ever, meaning he is.

To say nothing of what the White Council would think of a nonwizard toying with major summoning circles. The White Council didn’t take chances with things like that. They just acted, decisively, and they weren’t always particular about people’s lives and safety when they did it.

And continuing to not explain what the wizard/nonwizard divide is. I mean, wouldn’t Stormface Crazypants have fucked up the spell too due to a lack of wizardcalc?

Harry does feel bad about this, and it’s shown pretty well by him rambling on to himself for a bit about how this was definitely the right thing, yes, definitely oh god I feel like shit now. But there’s no given reason why he can’t just help her with it.

Also we learn he was bullshitting her about her talent: when teaching her to contain and control her modest magical talents. which dammit Harry I’m trying to like you so this book won’t be so unpleasant can’t you do a bit more on your end?

But he can’t leave to go help her because if he didn’t get to brood with his alcohol, Murphy couldn’t appear to offer him money in the hopes of maybe him actually providing the agreed upon service.

“Sitting here pouting,” Murphy said. She bent over and absently picked up the wadded scrap of paper I had tossed aside earlier, tucking it tidily into her coat pocket rather than letting it lie about as clutter on the floor.

That’s likely to be important. Nice detail work-in.

His description of her is better:

Karrin Murphy wasn’t much more than five feet tall. She’d gotten her golden hair cut, from shoulder length to something far shorter, and a little longer in front than in back. It was a punky sort of look, and very appealing with her blue eyes and upturned nose. She was dressed for the weather in what must have been her at-home clothes: dark jeans, a flannel shirt, hiking boots, and a heavy woodsman’s jacket. She was wearing her badge on her belt.
Murphy was extremely cute, for a grown adult who also held a black belt in aikido, and had several marksmanship awards from Chicago PD. She was a real professional, one who had fought and clawed her way up the ranks to become full lieutenant. She’d made enemies along the way, and one of them had seen to it that she was put in charge of Special Investigations soon after.

Better being relative. But you could read his comments on her “punky look” being “appealing” as taking about the fashion of it and it only gets outright bad at the point he has to get into the cute thing.

Harry has to ruin even my relative praise by being a dick.

“Hello there, Murphy,” I told her. I took a swig of ale and said, “Long time, no see.” I tried to keep my voice even, but I’m pretty sure she heard the anger in it.
“Look Harry—”
“Did you read the editorial in the Tribune? The one criticizing you for wasting the city’s money hiring a charlatan psychic named Harry Dresden’? I guess you must have, since I haven’t heard from you since it came out.”

So when he’s being all “waaah why won’t the police hire him it’s a mystery” it’s because he decided to ignore the fact he knows full well it’s because they getting heat for hiring him and quite likely can’t.

This is particularly awful when he just said that she’s had to claw her way up, she’s got enemies, and given the enemies “saw to it” that she got a particular assignment, she’s got enemies above her in the hierarchy, meaning that if someone at top says she can’t hire him, she can do all of jack shit about it and Harry knows this.

She rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “I don’t have time for this.”
I ignored her. “Not that I blame you. I mean, not many of the good taxpayers of Chicago believe in magic, or wizards. Of course, not many of them have seen what you and I have. You know. When we worked together. Or when I was saving your life.”

She tells him STFU already and come deal with this murder. Oh Murphy. I thank you for what you do even as I am sorry for your sake that you’re in this book.