I did threaten just doing the Exalted book, but I’ve had a break either way, so might as well get back to slogging through this.

Let’s see where we’re going.

There are reasons I hate to drive fast. For one, the Blue Beetle, the mismatched Volkswagen bug that I putter around in, rattles and groans dangerously at anything above sixty miles an hour. For another, I don’t get along so well with technology. Anything manufactured after about World War II seems to be susceptible to abrupt malfunction when I get close to it. As a rule, when I drive, I drive very carefully and sensibly.

So, solid opening. We’re recapping info for new readers, something that’s particularly important when one of the defenses of this series includes telling people not to pick up the first two books. For another, this is obviously setting up for the fact he’s about to tell us he is driving fast, and by listing the reasons that’s bad, we get a double shot of tension – speeding is even more dangerous than usual, and something even worse must be going on for him to be doing so.

(I am going to take a second to ask why Beetle is always in italics, it’s pretty annoying.)

Right afterward, we discover a mysterious Michael is in the car with him as well, really showing the commitment to in media res.

He had that kind of salt-and-pepper hair, dark against silver, that some men seem lucky enough to inherit, though his beard was still a solid color of dark brown, almost black. There were worry and laugh lines at the corners of his leathery face. His broad, lined hands rested on his knees, which were scrunched up due to the dashboard.

Plus, maybe having a male partner for his adventures this book will mean women are merely sidelined and we’ve dialing back the misogyny at last! I mean, we just got our first description and Harry didn’t make it creepy at all!

Michael makes a casual reference to God, so also, maybe more of the whole demon/angel thing. I don’t expect it to be particularly good but we seem to be going somewhere with all that and I’m happy to get more pieces. He is also uncomfortable about the fact they’re currently on a mission from Bob. It may be too much to hope that this is because he thinks rapist skulls are awful, but that means it’s likely we’ll find out what godly people think about supposedly non-demonic “spirits”. And this mission involves a hospital and ghosts, so we’re dealing with the afterlife AND getting another shot at finding out what Harry’s presence in a place full of delicate machinery means for the other patients.

“Lord be with us,” Michael said, and crossed himself. I felt a stirring of something powerful, placid energy around him—the power of faith.

Ah, here we go already.

We learned in the very first book that “faith” has inherent power. That works fine when it’s Harry drawing strength from personal beliefs or having pagan magic rituals actually produce some magic…but Christianity has a big thing about monothesism. You can see the clusterfuck every time comics tries to have multiple pantheons running around but at the same time the center of reality is a bearded white dude on a throne.

The very sight of Harry’s faith successfully working with a pentagram should wreck Michael’s ability to weaponize his own faith, because his faith is in the one true god. He’ll have to try to rationalize what he’s seeing as either Satanic (assuming his version of Christianity is compatible with the idea the devil has similar power) or one of those all-roads-lead-to-Jesus situations, a nebulous bit of wobbly thought that really doesn’t seem conductive to mountain-moving levels of faith.

If we assume God is bullshit and human faith is what matters, than monotheist demon-hunters can’t have real interactions with non-monotheists. They’d do best cloistered, in fact, and believing every time one of them faltered upon contact with real life it was demons getting in. Meanwhile, if God does exist and there’s the whole angel/demon thing and Christian faith actually is meaningfully different than Harry’s sort of belief in an ideal – then why does Harry’s form even work? You shouldn’t be able to get an identical effect from different powers working through different methods.

Anyway, as they’re speeding around and Harry is weaving through traffic as if he’s in a car with reliable, dependable abilities instead of something where the steering could randomly stop working any second, Michael decides to tempt the fuck out of fate by getting into a discussion with Harry about religion and relationships, despite Harry being obviously uncomfortable every time this has happened before and being obviously uncomfortable now and distracting people who are speeding is a horrible idea even when it’s not a car that may stop working any second.

He wants Harry to marry the lady he’s sleeping with.

This is probably mostly a matter of getting readers up to speed. This tells us Harry’s relationship status without needing to read Fool Bitches, and it also makes Michael’s character of religiousy dude clearer for those who missed the other clues. It’s just so very not the time dude.

Harry responds by keeping the exposition train going, telling us that he’s full up worrying about the fact there’s been a huge influx of ghost activity for the last fortnight and they’re currently driving toward a particularly nasty one. Michael responds by grilling him about if he loves Rogriguez.

“Harry,” he asked, smiling. “Do you love the girl or don’t you? It isn’t a difficult question.”

Harry has yet to do any bullshit, so I’m happy to take his side on this one.

Unless Michael has no idea about what happened to Harry in the past – and even assuming Harry keeps his mouth shut on the details, he’s either dropped enough clues it was something bad or else Michael is grilling a near stranger about his personal life – it should be obvious that yes, it is a difficult question. Harry actually has a good excuse to be gunshy about relationships and the fact he lives in a world where thought and knowledge have real, tangible effects makes it all the more reasonable he’d be superstitious about even thinking about this kind of thing.

Michael may not share those superstitions. I think it’s reasonable he might believe that admitting to love and codifying it in the sacred holy union of marriage is if anything a great way of countering any threats to Harry’s relationship – but if so, he’s being a dick by not putting it that way and just badgering Harry about if he loves her why won’t he say it out loud, huh? Come on. Just say it. Say it. Say it.

“Then you don’t mind saying it?”
“Saying what?” I stalled.
“Harry,” Michael scolded, holding on as we bounced through a dip in the street. “Don’t be a child about this. If you love the woman, say so.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“You haven’t told her, have you. You’ve never said it.”
I glared at him. “So what if I haven’t? She knows. What’s the big deal?”
“Harry Dresden,” he said. “You, of all people, should know the power of words.”

YES EXACTLY.

Now, if he outlined that he believes God is love, God protects love, admitting love lets God in to protect you, etc, this wouldn’t be an asshole move. But it seems to be just general badgering to a friend who’s in a relationship, and it’d be reasonable if it was a general friend in a general relationship.

But…

“Let me hear you say the words.”
“What?”
“Say the words,” he demanded. “If you love the woman, why can’t you say so?”
“I don’t just go around saying that to people, Michael. Stars and sky, that’s … I just couldn’t, all right?”
“You don’t love her,” Michael said. “I see.”
“You know that’s not—”
“Say it, Harry.”

…is honestly rather worrying given we know that words do have power, and it’s the power to fuck you over. We spent the last two books rehashing the fact that Harry saying his name aloud gives the person who hears it power over him. We just had it brought up that words in general have power. And it’s a very common theme in magic to say that spoken contracts are as binding as written ones or more so. With that in mind, hassling someone into saying a very specific series of words out loud and refusing to accept anything that communicates the same concept because it’s important those exact words be said and said by this exact individual…

I think this is a noir vs magic issue. In noir, the hero’s inability to emotion properly and weird hangups is a personal issue, and any more well-adjusted friends will try to push back against it. In magic, it’s the villains who are always trying to get the character to violate the safeguards so they’re vulnerable.

Anyway, definitely not a villain Michael wins and Harry snaps out the magic words. Michael is pleased…and then digs his claws in deeper.

“Regardless, you needed to realize that you do love the woman. After Elaine, I thought you might isolate yourself too much and never—”
I felt a sudden flash of anger and vehemence. “I don’t talk about Elaine, Michael. Ever. If you can’t live with that, get the hell out of my car and let me work on my own.”
Michael frowned at me, probably more for my choice of words than anything else. “I’m talking about Susan, Harry.

So he does know Harry has reason to be anxious. He casually brings up something that Harry has no doubt told him before should never be brought up, and responds to Harry’s rage with deflection – oh, but I’m not talking about that! I just mentioned it in passing, while talking about the similar situation that you’re terrified will end the same way!

Anyway, having forced Harry into admitting love and then triggering him by bringing up Elaine, he gets back to how Harry simply must marry this girl. Given marriage is a contract, this would likely put Rodriguez on the hook for Harry’s debts and/or allow people to trick her into agreements that then apply to Harry.

But obviously none of this is a concern, because the magic and noir halves of this are never properly integrated.

You need to keep up human contact, Harry. It would be so easy for you to start down a darker path.”
“Michael,” I snapped, “I don’t need a lecture. I don’t need the conversion speech again. I don’t need the ‘cast aside your evil powers before they consume you’ speech. Again.

We also get a spot more information about how Michael deals with the dissonance between the One True God and Harry’s powers, and apparently it’s demons. Now, we’ve had references to Mass. While a few others sometimes talk about going to Mass, it’s generally a Catholic thing and that’s presumably what it’s supposed to signify here. The thing is, despite the historic charges leveled at Catholics getting a bit wobbly in their monotheism, the current champions of the idea demons are running around with lots of power is actually found in the craziest Protestant subcults. Catholics mostly just do the statue worship and treating saints as subgods things. For indomitable faith combined with belief in demonic powers, non-denominationals seem the better bet.

But probably, he has to be Catholic because they’re the older religion with more of the shiny and the history while despite their best efforts Protestant beliefs are still kind of dull and reasonable.

Speaking of he pulls out a five foot long sword. No wonder Harry hangs out with him!

Then he reached back in for a white cloak with a red cross upon the left breast, which he tossed over his shoulders in a practiced motion. He clasped it with another cross, this one of silver, at his throat.

Yes, this is definitely the sort of quality goodness you need Catholics for.

Harry whines that the cloak clashes with the rest of Michael’s outfit, and Michael says NO U because Harry’s wearing the black leather duster. Good to know that survived! I was very concerned for it last book. Harry then blathers on about how actually he looks fashionable as fuck and the fact covering yourself in leather is actually a good idea when you’ve expecting to be smacked around continues to go unmentioned. Bikers didn’t start wearing it because it looked badass, it became badass because bikers wore it for practical reasons.

The only comparable fabric is kevlar, which is better at some things and worse at others, and either way probably starts melting when Harry touches it.

Also, Harry has to carry his staff, his “blasting rod”, AND a leather sack, and apparently he can’t attach it to his belt and there’s no cord to put it on his shoulder probably because then it’d be a purse and Harry would just die omg, so he carries that in his teeth, and basically everything would make so much more sense if he’d shut up for three seconds about how he’s wearing the coat to look cool.

We drew no small amount of stares as we entered, my duster billowing out in a black cloud behind me, Michael’s white cloak spreading like the wings of the avenging angel whose namesake he was.

But that’s not happening.

Harry then finds an orderly, who is male so still no creepy stuff on Harry’s part, and demands the man show the armed weirdos the way to the nursery. I’m not sure they’ve thought this plan through.