Last time, Harry’s lying, laziness and continual self-centered attitude combine with an idiot ball for cathartic tragic result. Also he leers at a corpse, again.
Walking down stairs with your hands fastened behind your back is more difficult than you would think. You depend upon your arms for balance, whether you realize it or not.
We open with something much like Harry’s last book observation about how whacking people with chairs isn’t like in the movies. It’s an okay detail except for how Harry comes off like oh wow so unexpected and yet shouldn’t this have come up in his life before? Like he’s supposed to be some badass getting into fights all the time and being the only wizard who defaults to punching and how this is so special about him, and apparently he’s never so much as broken an arm.
Also he seems to be talking like it’s pure coincidence that part of the police’s standard method of restraining people makes it harder for those people to fight back.
As they head down, we find Murphy’s one ACTUAL friend is busy running interference for her.
“You want to get in my face about this?” Carmichael demanded. “Look. I’m doing my job. My boss said no one was to go up, so no one goes up. Do I need to use shorter words or what?”
I looked up to see Denton towering over Carmichael, the veins in his forehead athrob, his three associates spread out in a fan behind him. “You are interfering with a duly appointed officer executing his duties,” Denton snarled. “Get out of my way, Detective Carmichael. Or do you want to get added to Internal Affairs’ to-do list along with your boss?”
Then we get everyone’s reaction oh boy!!!
Denton is surprised then emotionless, because remember he’s the guy who likes to be emotionless.
The kid who wears his heart on his sleave is super shocked because remember he’s the kid who wears his heart on his sleeve.
The woman who seemed really chill until the moment she flipped out seems really chill, because remember she’s that person who seemed really chill until the flipout.
The fat guy is pleased because fat people feel only disdain.
“He was arguing with the most recently deceased last night. I can connect him to at least one resident of the house, as well as some of the … decorations there. I’m taking him in for obstructing and for conspiracy to commit murder.
Well when you put it that way it sounds so flimsy.
But then, let’s break this down. He was talking to the recently deceased and involved, and didn’t at any point mention it to Murphy. We know that here, for fucking once, Harry legitimately had no idea, but as we’ll see, Murphy shouldn’t believe him. You see, next, we have the “resident of the house” she can connect him to, which is nicely matching lady. Harry has no clue who she is – except that he noticed she was following them, said nothing, then waited for Murphy to leave before claiming he did a search on the killer’s blood (both of these things directly after his promise to Murphy to tell her everything) that led him to the woman, at which point he argued against doing anything to take her in. Finally, she knows he knew what the circle was and yet the first words out of his mouth was that he couldn’t do this in an attempt to not help Murphy, rather than telling her what they meant.
Even if we just consider the degree we know Harry kept things from Murphy and the rest of them weren’t horribly suspicious, she’d be wholly justified in assuming he was misleading her.
The idiot ball is her not fucking asking what’s going on, especially when she’s worked with Harry long enough to know there’s nothing unusual about him being an unhelpful asshole who knows far less than you’d think.
And yes, it is sad that the best case for Harry’s innocence is that he’s not acting in any way worse than his standard behavior. Personally, I’d guess Murphy snapped when she showed Harry Kim’s body only to watch him leer at the body and then make no reference to the fact he even knew the person.
Carmichael shook his head and walked me to one of the police cars. “Fuck, Dresden. And here I was getting ready to throw in on your side. Guess I’m just a sucker for the underdog.”
Not totally sure it’s fair to be all eye-rolling and well of course he can’t get along with the police when it is noir, but at the same time, the author didn’t have to telegraph it by having the guy who usually hates him suddenly be totally okay with him right beforehand.
I closed my eyes.
I have felt low before in my life, have experienced events that left me broken and groveling and wishing I was dead. That was pretty much how I felt now, too. It wasn’t that I hadn’t found the killer-I’ve been beaten before, taken the blow on the chin, and come out fighting the next round. I can roll with the punches as well as anyone. But I hated feeling that I had betrayed a friend.
I had promised Murphy
KIM IS FUCKING DEAD BECAUSE OF YOU
KIM IS FUCKING DEAD FROM TRYING TO SAVE PEOPLE AND ALL OF IT IS YOUR FAULT
that I would keep no secrets from her-and I hadn’t. Not really.
Except the woman following, and the spell I could cast to follow the blood, and everything I learned from Marcone. Oh! And the fact that actually, I don’t know anything about werewolves. But hey, how could honestly telling her I don’t know much and, say, wouldn’t have recognized a werewolf restaining circle on sight if someone showed me would’ve had any impact on how she reacted here?
But I had been stupid.
I know how tempting it is to agree here, but wait, this is just yet another of those things Harry twists around. You see:
I should have been putting pieces together more quickly, more instinctively.
Not that he wasn’t doing that or really anything, it’s only he wasn’t so awesome as to do it even better.
Perhaps I had some excuse in that I had been distracted by nearly having my head blown off at the Full Moon Garage, that I had been distracted by my soulgaze upon the Streetwolves’ leader, and the knowledge that he wanted to kill me. But it wasn’t a good enough excuse to clear things with Murphy.
It wasn’t an excuse at all, it’s just another secret you fucking kept from her. Also 3/4ths of your secrets predated that incident, but somehow they were totally a factor!
I wasn’t sure anything would have been. I felt alone. I felt frustrated. I felt like shit.
So in conclusion it’s soooooooooooooooooooooo hard being him. So hard. Just because he didn’t put everything together quick enough despite his very bestest efforts, she’ll never forgive him.
And I felt worse, a moment later, when I looked out the car window at the full moon and realized something that I should have put together an hour before
This I think is actually yet more cheating detectivewise, because it relies on something not clearly stated until this instant:
MacFinn couldn’t have been responsible for all of the deaths the previous month. Two of the murders had occurred on the nights before and after the full moon. If MacFinn’s curse was indeed to become a ravening beast during the full moon, he could not have murdered either of last month’s victims, or Spike at the Varsity last night.
Or, you know, the full moon refers to the three day period of reasonable fullness. But I guess part of them being not anything at all like movie werewolves is them being tied to precisely to the full moon instead of a moon that looks reasonably full counting, as that’s definitely the way random peasants would’ve felt about the matter.
Harry then, honest to god, does the same “what if the women had to do with it” and apparently Murphy did some brain damage when she punched him because now he’s all wait…a wolfy thing attacked me then, and she was there, and what if it was her????
I bet you think I’m making it sound stupider so on second thought, let me quote:
If the dark-haired woman who had led the Alphas was indeed connected with MacFinn, could she have been responsible? Something wolflike had attacked me in the abandoned department store when all the lights had been out-had it been her? One of the Alphas? Perhaps that would explain how the other murders happened.
And then he continues with:
But if it had been true, why hadn’t the killer finished me off while I was floundering in the dark, virtually helpless?
You may recognize this as exactly the discussion that already fucking happened, except that Harry seems to have forgotten his actual conclusion at the time which was that it totally was a wolf and she wasn’t a killer sort of person.
A nice, quiet jail cell didn’t sound too bad, once I thought about it. At least it would keep the criminal element off of my back. Provided they didn’t shut me up with a four-hundred-pound con named “Hump” or anything.
Because it’s not like Harry is some sort of wizard with the ability to light things on fire with his mind or anything. Nope, just an ordinary underdog.
And then an odd feeling crept over me, derailing my train of thought. Once more, the hairs on my neck were standing up. Someone was watching me.
That’s right! Anyone who took that bet has just suffered the greatest indignity of all, losing to Harry. You should’ve known better than to bet against the sue who read the script.
Harry then slowly has a panic attack. This continues to be really solid. Harry’s toned his whole alpha male thing down so he’s reliably got emotions found in the chordata phylum. With luck, he might one day reliably display the emotions found across all amniotes!
He then sees amber eyes and flips the fuck out, but instead of a fanged monster being devoured by a noble wolfy friend, the woman opens the door and lets him out.
“Be quiet, Mr. Dresden, or I will not be able to rescue you.”
I blinked at her, over my upraised knees. “Huh?”
If he only commented on her legs as well, this would be a good summary of the book.
She also introduces herself as Tera, MacFinn’s fiancee and therefore the person with the greatest interest in getting a wizard to deal with him.
“You are the only one who can stop my fiancé, Mr. Dresden. You cannot do that from a jail cell.”
This, incidentally, not true. Even assuming Murphy isn’t inclined to listen to any explanation, she saw the circle herself and can tell what Kim was trying to do. She would absolutely be up for bringing the guy to Harry to share their cell so he can get the circle working or die trying.
“I’m not the Lone Ranger,” I snapped in reply. “I’m a hired consultant. And I don’t think the city is going to foot the bill for this sort of thing.”
Tera West’s teeth showed. “If money is your concern, I assure you that it is not a problem, Mr. Dresden. Time presses. Will you come, or not?”
And yes, it’s this answer that makes him consider doing it. The fact people are going to die has not registered so long as it’s not him personally, and even with payment he’s not quite sure.
Like I said, it’s a sad thing the wolf didn’t just eat the monster.
I studied her face. She had clean, striking features, exceptional more than attractive. There were crow’s-feet at the edges of her eyes, though they were the only sign of age on her that I could see. There was, along the edge of her forehead, at the hairline, a long, slender, purpling bruise.
Okay this is actually relevant for once, even if Harry still keeps the focus on where she ranks on his fuck-list. I mean, basically anyone else would’ve considered saying she had striking and exceptional features to adqeuetly cover it, but where would we be if Harry didn’t get the chance to remind us he likes his women more on the cringing violet MILF side of things?
And wounds lasting between transformations despite the fact that transformation is actually totally a historic thing for once, so I’m totally on board there.
Harry, because in addition to being terrible he’s an idiot, then informs her that
“You,” I said. “It was you who attacked me in the department store. I hit you, and you took my rod away from me.”
She glared at me. “Yes,” she said.
“You’re a werewolf.”
I shall take this entire affair to mean that Murphy’s punches are really dangerous and that this is Harry’s bruised brain misfiring.
Tera responds by telling Harry he’s a wizard and they need to get going, likely because she realizes there’s a good chance he’s also forgotten both those things.
She continues to explain: “Your friend,” she said, “the police detective, is close to finding my fiancé. She really should’ve added, “who is a loup-garou, which is a type of werewolf” at the end there but I guess she doesn’t realize quite how stupid Harry can be.
Do you really want her to be the one to face him? Is she prepared to deal with what she will find? Or will she die, as the others did?”
Dammit. The bitch (no pun intended) was right.
So yeah.
This, I think, says everything about what’s been going on with the word. He thinks it’s hilarious to use in the book, but also he really does hate women, therefore he doesn’t see anything weird about calling a woman a bitch for pointing out Murphy is in danger and they need to act or she’ll die, because oh my god did you see how that bitch made Harry help her and get it she’s a bitch AND she’s a bitch.
And so, after being told that he’d be paid AND that they need to stop him or people will die AND that one of those people will be that policewoman he likes to leer at…
I nodded once. My decision was made. “I can. I will.”
Tera then drags him into the shrubberies. He gets shot, but only in the shoulder, but Tera making it clear she doesn’t give any fucks about such a minor thing makes it better again.
We started a game of shadow-haunted hide-and-seek in the little garden, Tera and me against the agents behind us. She moved like a wraith, in utter silence, smooth and steady in the black shadows and silver light of the moon overhead. She immediately cut into the hedges, taking lefts and rights every few paces.
Tera: SO COOL.
She did not slow down for me, and I was somehow very certain that MacFinn’s fiancée would not stop and wait for me should I fall. She wouldn’t hesitate to leave me behind if I could not keep the pace.
Harry: SO FUCKING WHINY.
Sure, the entire reason she’s there is to retrieve him, and sure, it makes particularly little sense to think of her as “MacFinn’s fiancee” at the same time as you forget she needs you to help him, but it can’t possibly be that she’s moving at his maximum pace, no, he’s definitely good enough to keep up with her and she isn’t slowing down in the slightest as she meticulously “guides” him through the area, constantly checking behind her to make sure I was keeping the pace. so clearly Harry could’ve been left behind in an instant and it’s only that he’s so great he can keep up and so suffering to have to without any consideration for how hard it is for him.
He then admits that, being out of shape, I couldn’t have kept up with Tera West for long. She was that fast, that good. But he totally was keeping up with her this long, okay!
Finally, she gets him to a fence. Harry points out it’s eight feet and his hands are still cuffed, which is totally the only reason he can’t get over it, yes definitely. She’s all whatever I’ll lift you up, and she does, but Harry makes noise when he smacks down on the other side. Quite willing to forgive this – really, his willingness to be pushed over while he was still handcuffed and just going to crash down on the other side the most legitimately badass thing he’s done in this book or the last.
Of course, we can’t have legitimate badassery when it’s a sue, so all the police are now aware of them and close enough that they’ll see Tera hop the fence, and she’s all nope can’t do it, so he does a spell:
I blinked sweat out of my eyes and knelt down as my blood pattered to the sidewalk. Little curls of steam came up where it hit the cold concrete.
I took a breath and drew in every bit of will I could summon, drew in the pain and my fear and sick frustration and shoved it all into a hard little ball of energy.
” Ventas veloche,” I murmured. ” Ubrium, ubrium.” I repeated the words in a breathless chant, curling my fingers in toward my palm as I did.
The curls of steam from my blood began to thicken and gather into dense tendrils of mist and fog. Back along our trail, where more of my blood had spilled, more fog arose. For a few seconds, it was nothing, just a low and slithering movement along the ground-and then it erupted forth, billows of fog rising to cover the ground as the energy rushed out of me, covering Tera from my sight and causing shouts of confusion and consternation to come from the law officials pursuing us.
You may notice this is a spell that would’ve been far more useful had he used it at the start. It isn’t even that he was too tired and so would only use a spell in desperation, because he made a big point of explaing the initial rush of the gunshot gave him lots of energy. I guess it’s all down to Harry’s bruised and misfiring brainmeats.
There was a whisper of sound, a creak of wrought metal, and then a light thump as Tera West landed
To further emphasize how little sense it makes that she couldn’t just hop the fence the moment she shoved him over and had to wait long enough for the police to rush toward them so the spell was needed.
I saw her expression, her eyes wide with wonder, the first emotion I had seen on her face. “Wizard,” she whispered.
“Don’t wear it out,” I mumbled. And then everything went black.
That’s right, Harry is so amazing even the super werewolf who’s fiancee to a different sort of super werewolf is all *_* And it may well be the only reason the author was willing to portray her as so cool is because it’d be fed back to Harry by her showing that she thinks he’s even cooler.
This kind of thing requires a main character who isn’t actually quite terrible. It’d also have helped for the whole spell thing to not be so stupid.
Oh good lord. Time to break out the alternate universe goggles again.
Imagine Tera as the heroine. Badass werewolf lady! Actually has to worry about being misunderstood in the modern era. Unapologetically cares for her boyfriend. Is capable of heaving a grown man over an eight foot fence. Can sneak past FBI agents AND put up with the petulant pout that you just know Dresden was making. In short: she needs to replace Dresden as Murphy’s go-to magic consultant. At least she knows what werewolves actually are and gets shit done instead of wandering into dangerous situations and being shocked when it goes badly. She and Murphy would kick ass together!
Huh. That actually sounds like a lovely premise.
Better keep it away from Butcher. :-P
I still stand by Victor von Onewizardindustrialrevolution. You just know he would cook up something crazy against werewolves, like inverse moonlight in a bottle or something.
Kim is another viable candidate. Now, granted, she’s not a real character and would need some massive expansion before being usable, but she’s already more interesting than Harry:
a) She’s not a powerhouse and presumably would actually be threatened by people like Marcone without the need of being an idiot and not wear a protective bracelet;
b) She has limited information about supernatural and limited access to said information. Harry presumably has a formal education, plus Bob the Rapist Skull, so the fact he knows jack shit about a lot of stuff makes him seem like an idiot. Kim doesn’t know this stuff for legit reasons: nobody seems interesting in telling her much of anything despite her curiosity. When she wants or needs to learn something, she has to deal with Harry and presumably other people in the know, perhaps trading favors in the process, which would make for good plot hooks.
(For those who read Pact, think Mags.)
As such, she is much more fit to be a protagonist. She is a part of supernatural side of town, but she also needs to learn new stuff along with reader and she doesn’t have a solution to every problem or brute force to render these problems meaningless.
Or, hell, let’s go party route.
Victor is the crazy inventor guy always coming up with new ideas of magic applications. The problem is that he’s tripping balls all the time, so a lot of his ideas are out there or outright dangerous. He also has a family not too keen on magic, so there are conflicting loyalties going on.
Tera is the muscle of the operation. You need to punch crime in the face, she’s the person you seek. Not sure about her flaws beyond caring too much about her boyfriend who is at risk of turning into a killing machine (which is more a one-book issue than a source of constant conflict). Making her impulsive and animalistic would be rather cliche and would be problematic in itself… Needs some thought.
Kim is the leader and the most sensible of the three. Young magic practitioner, she doesn’t have a talent for invention like Victor or much punch behind her mojo, but she’s level-headed, resourceful and quick on her feet. She keeps the other two in line, though sometimes she herself gets way in over her head dealing with troubles above her weight class because she cares about her city and can’t leave threats endangering people’s lives alone. (Would probably need some genuinely negative traits as well to round her character.)
Together, they fight crime.
Their first case is the murder of one Harry Dresden. While the dark wizard wasn’t really liked by anyone, he was still technically a part of White Council, making their involvement a matter of time since they can’t afford to leave the death of one of theirs not avenged. White Council is an ancient corrupt organization claiming authority over all supernatural forces operating in mortal world and keeping them in the shadow of society to preserve the status quo benefiting them. They are not known for being reasonable or merciful, so once they get involved, heads will roll.
They are an enormous organization, however, prone to bureaucratic nightmare, so our heroes have a window of opportunity to find the culprit themselves and present him or her to the Council.
The task isn’t easy, since Harry has many enemies, both supernatural, like Bianca the vampire mobster whose path he crossed on Marcone’s behalf, and Murphy, an otherwise honest police officer angry at a wizard cooperating with organized crime and frustrated that supernatural threats are above the law.
Moreover, Morgan, an overseer of White Council in the city, who is normally actually reasonable compared to his colleagues and is willing to work with the local population, is bent on preventing our heroes from finding anything and seem to be dead set on going after Marcone personally, believing him to be responsible. Could it be that Marcone himself killed Harry after finding out about his affair with Morgan?
The clock is ticking, and the Paperwork of Damocles is hanging right above our heroes. Will they solve the case, or will White Council get involved, probably blaming innocents and torturing unrelated people?
Find out in Smiling Skull, already in your local bookstores.
Damn, that sounds good.
Making her impulsive and animalistic […] would be problematic in itself…
Considering
, and as long as
is established early on, would it?
I don’t actually remember spoilers to this book. I was speaking more generally, making badass women more emotional and wild, not fully in control of themselves could… carry certain undesirable connotations.
I got that. I think there’s a way to not associate those traits specifically with her being a woman rather than something else, but, you know, spoiler. At least, if I remember it correctly, the story does treat it as a big twist (it’s arguable how much of a twist it really is, but, eh, better safe than sorry).
Well, sure. Spoilers or no, a good writer can make it work by making sure the traits naturally arise from character’s backstory (see Rin as a good tsundere), providing contrast with other female characters to show the traits are something unique to this person rather than to gender, etc.
For a good example see Rachel from Worm. She even makes calling herself Bitch work (as her villain name) so well, by the time you finish reading, you’ll completely dissociate the word from the insult.
It’s just something that’s easy to fuck up, so personally I would hesitate going with these particular traits.
Tera’s potential flaw could easily be “I only care about me and mine.” It’s often treated as good trait for anti-heroes to have (or even straight-up heroes) to have, but is potentially horrifying in its consequences, and I’d be very happy to see more works explore that. Character growth towards someone who actually cares about people as a whole would be also be a nice antidote to one of my biggest gripes with urban fantasy, which is that it divides the world into “those who know the secret and are therefore protagonists” and “those blind idiot sheep – everyone else.”
As for Kim, I’m thinking that if she gets into trouble above her weight class, it’s possibly not only because she cares a lot (though she genuinely does), but also because she gets frustrated at herself, which leads to her making mistakes. I mean, you describe her as someone who’s resourceful and quick, but not as smart or strong as others, and also someone who gets dismissed easily by others. So she sounds like someone who’d really like to find shortcuts to solutions, in order to get past the blocks and to prove herself. And shortcuts often become dead ends. of course, she’s also the kind of person who learns from her mistakes and fixes what she broke as best she can.
Hmmm, these are good idea. Kim’s flaw would need to be treated carefully as it’s easy to slide into “oh, silly thing, she thinks she can play with big boys,” though. Maybe go Taylor Hebert route and make her someone who was burned by the authority (which fits nicely with corrupt and evil White Council), so she just doesn’t trust anyone else to handle important problems even when they are actually capable and willing because she’s seen far too many examples of people who should have handled stuff letting people down.
Simplest answer with Kim is just that they’re sexist assholes who won’t teach a woman so she’s severely undereducated compared to those in the boys-only club.
Well, I prefer to not make a setting sexist unless I want to engage deeply with the issue, though it’s an option.
Kim is undereducated in supernatural the way I picture her because it’s a good trait for a protagonist (so the reader would learn stuff with her instead of her expositing in inner monologue) and because it fits with the Council’s general agenda: it’s much easier to impose your will on people who don’t know how to explode your head. And if a few of those people die because they lacked some crucial info to deal with a nasty monster, oh well, omelet and skulls.
So Kim had to scavenge bits of knowledge from various often unreliable sources and piece it together with Victor, preventing him from going on tangents about how, like, every moment of time exist in the now, man, in the process.
Hm, maybe she’s made some shady deals with powers best left alone because it was either that or letting people die due to her not knowing what to do, so now she has to find a way to get out of these deals so as not to follow the dark will of said forces…
I was thinking about some inner flaw of Kim that would lead to her occasionally making bad decisions and create a room for her to grow as a character.
Yeah, I was thinking along the lines of “Kim is at least as good as the ‘big boys’, but they won’t let her play with them and won’t teach her what she needs to know.” You make a good point that she probably got burned by the Council’s corruption. I’m picturing her as someone whose drive to do good makes her pretty bad at distinguishing people’s true motives. If they promise to help, she doesn’t look too deeply at why or what it will cost, unless they’ve already betrayed her in the past. Then she won’t work with them even if for a particular case, they are perfectly willing to let her do the dirty work and provide her with a few resources to do it.
I do like the idea of a character arc where her drive to do good and her pride are very tangled up at the beginning. So there’s always that frustration and anger at not being acknowledged for how good she is at the back of her mind. She wants to be known for her deeds, so she won’t stop arguing with people when she *knows* she’s right, and she breaks the masquerade by telling everyone what really happened. The magical world wants to shut her up, and the non-magical one thinks she’s off her head, although occasionally useful. She does gain well-deserved fame over time. I don’t want to imply that women are bad for wanting and enjoying it. But she also figures out that, for example, the acknowledgement of the people she saved is worth way more to her than that of the White Council, and that she’s okay with people not necessarily knowing that she saved them, so long as they’re safe.
With Tara, I love Farla’s idea of her being *actually* animalistic even more than mine. It would also set her up for conflicts with Kim in the above scenario. Tara’s all “we’re good as we are, stop making waves,” and Kim gets angry with her for “being okay with mediocrity.”
Yes, that’s an interesting conflict. Pride born out of frustration with the world.
Reminds me of this: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10820443/1/An-Imago-of-Rust-and-Crimson
(Technically a fanfic, but doesn’t require knowledge of source materials.)
Making her impulsive and animalistic would be rather cliche and would be problematic in itself… Needs some thought.
A thing that might work is remembering actual animals aren’t really what we think of when we picture impulsive and animalistic. It’d make sense for Tera to favor plans with minimal steps to them and to be a creature of habit who doesn’t like new stuff and doesn’t bore easily. She’d also be more easily startled or frenzy if people know how to push her buttons, so if, say, her boyfriend is stolen, good luck getting her to listen to the 20-part plan you’ve devised.
Tera could be like a less annoying Harry, where you have to figure out how to motivate her to take part in whatever plan the other two cook up/convince her not to take a more direct route when she is motivated to get something done right now.
She also seems awed by magic, so she might refuse to go into cursed areas the other two insist are fine, and then when they get ambushed by whatever nasty thing is lurking they’re in extra trouble. Maybe she won’t lend her nose to the scene of Harry’s murder because wizard + rapist skull spirit.
Hm, yes, that sounds neat and ripe for conflict.
“She also seems awed by magic, so she might refuse to go into cursed
areas the other two insist are fine, and then when they get ambushed by
whatever nasty thing is lurking they’re in extra trouble.”
Heh, and then she tells them “I told you so,” even though the problem wasn’t actually related to the area being cursed.
That spell was actually very interesting, Why can’t he do stuff like this all the time? Making fog should be one of his most basic spells when trying to hide. And if you could slow down the creation and make it seem like natural fog, one would actually be able to sneak in everywhere and anytime.
Don’t get use to magic happening in the first two books. Despite being the or one of the strongest wizards on pretty much the continent, he does not have a magic bag of tricks.
So, let me get this straight: Harry fumbled around for twelve chapters, accomplishing only Kim’s death, and then he is literally dragged to the solution of the mystery by another character, making what little he managed to do like looking up public information on the guy responsible (using demons because he’s an idiot) completely irrelevant?
I’m pretty sure he’s not going to figure anything out for the next twelve chapters too.
I think he’s going to figure out that Marcone is awesome. That’s an accomplishment, I guess?
To be fair, the plot is really dumb.
Is she going to get fridged? She’s going to die isn’t she.
As far as I know, she doesn’t show up again.
She’s so awesome she escapes the books.
Does she team up with Leah Clearwater?
So, as some of you know, Something Short and Snappy blog does a readthrough of Storm Front.
In the comments, Ana Mardoll (of Ana Mardoll Ramblings blog, which has a nice readthrough of Narnia, among other things) mentioned her review of the book on Amazon.
Here it is: http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R9RN9R0HE62PH/ref=cm_cr_pr_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0451457811
Check it out. The review itself covers familiar ground and raises similar problems to what we have discussed here, but, being an Amazon review, it attracted a different crowd, resulting in hilarious comments.
The author also wondered if I had given his an erotic fan-rewrite of the books.
I can’t say it’s a wrong question.
I was wondering, you know…
It’s interesting how he has an entirely different opinion on viability of Harry/Marcone pairing than Farla.
Ana Mardoll (of Ana Mardoll Ramblings blog, which has a nice readthrough of Narnia, among other things)
I didn’t know that blog, sounds interesting. I’ll check it out.
Did Dresden Files slay another Let’s Reader?