The Dresden Files, book 14

While this isn't in the top three of my favorite Dresden books (those all have Harry thinking about past actions, about life and the choices one makes, and about maturing during those reflections), this is a good, action-packed Harry Dresden book.

I enjoyed it the first time I read it. And the second. And the third. I'm unsure what the count is for this read, but it is at least the fourth read. Yay Butcher.

Aspects I really like about the book revolve around Demonreach and Kris Kringle (I mean, hello, Dresden has freaking Santa Claus on his side, how cool is that?). The major aspect I didn't like about the book is the lack of reset on Harry's powers. I mean, think about it, he died. Before he died he was becoming more and more and more powerful. He was already the sixth strongest wizard alive in the first book, at this point, with his growing into his power and other wizards dying off, he's probably closer to the top spot (but isn't, hello, Merlin). Dying could be a huge reset button, allowing more growth.

But that's not how it is. Instead, he's still mighty powerful, and still attracting even more powerful enemies, and, well, isn't that how Dresden likes it, poking his finger in the eye of the enemy?

Definite read is you're a Dresden fan. Marsters narration is amazing, if you like audio books.

“Life’s about more than breaking even,” I said.
Location: 1,963

“Sometimes I think that’s where most of us are,” I said. “Fighting off the crazy as best we can. Trying to become something better than we were. It’s that second bit that’s important.”
Location: 2,264

I missed my dog. I missed the familiarity of having a place that I knew, that was a shelter.

I missed my life.

I’d been away from home for what felt like a very long time.
Location: 2,420

I understand this very much.

“I know the world seems dark and ugly sometimes. But there are still good things in it. And good people."
Location: 2,460

So at the end of the day, I really didn’t know what was going to happen to me in the future. Heh. Why should I be any different?
Location: 2,532

“That I was your brother, Harry,” he said. “That I loved you. That I knew a few things about denying the dark parts of your nature. And that we would get through it.” He put his elbows on his knees and rested his forehead on his hands. “That we’d figure it out. That you weren’t alone.”
Location: 2,631

I always thought it would get easier to be a person as I aged. But it just gets more and more complicated.
Location: 2,642

“Like life is short,” he said. “Like you don’t know when it’s going to end. Like some things, left unsaid, can’t ever be said.”
Location: 2,672

Fire isn’t always an element of destruction. Classical alchemical doctrine teaches that it also has dominion over another province: change. The fire of my tribulations had not simply been pain to be endured. It had been an agent of transformation.
Location: 3,018

“He might not give you much choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” I said. “That’s the thing, man. There’s always, always a choice. My options might really, truly suck, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a choice.”
Location: 3,705

“Totally unfair.”

“I had this teacher who kept telling me that if I was ever in a fair fight, someone had made a mistake,” she said.
Location: 3,714

I reminded myself that just because someone is courteous, it does not necessarily mean that they aren’t planning to vivisect you. It just means that they’ll ask whether the ropes holding you down are comfortable before they pick up the scalpel.
Location: 3,813

“Maybe you’re right; I don’t know. But until I have a better idea, it’s smarter to keep reminding myself that I don’t know, rather than assuming that I do know, and then translating anything I learn to fit my preconceptions.”
Location: 4,407

“No one just starts giggling and wearing black and signs up to become a villainous monster. How the hell do you think it happens?” She shook her head, her eyes pained. “It happens to people. Just people. They make questionable choices, for what might be very good reasons. They make choice after choice, and none of them is slaughtering roomfuls of saints, or murdering hundreds of baby seals, or rubber-room irrational. But it adds up. And then one day they look around and realize that they’re so far over the line that they can’t remember where it was.”
Location: 5,231

Power corrupts — and the people being corrupted never seem to be aware that it’s happening.
Location: 5,252

"Will you not always be imperfect?”

“Now you’re catching on,” I said.
Location: 5,787

“I think it’s a cruel world. I think it’s hard to find love. I think we should all be happy when someone manages to do it.”
Location: 5,789

Graves aren’t for the dead. They’re for the loved ones the dead leave behind them. Once those loved ones have gone, once all the lives that have touched the occupant of any given grave had ended, then the grave’s purpose was fulfilled and ended.
Location: 5,876

“What value has life when it is so easily kept?”
Location: 5,991

"Nothing I have to say can possibly make this task any easier for you. The only way to do it is to do it.” He lifted his chin. “You don’t need help, Warden. You are the help.”
Location: 6,482

And that’s when it hit me. I mean, when it really, really hit me. It was up to me. There wasn’t a backup plan. There wasn’t a second option. There wasn’t any cavalry coming over the hill.
Location: 6,490

The only good thing about having your back to the wall is that it makes it really easy to choose which way you’re going to go.
Location: 6,502

When women have a conversation, they’re communicating on five levels. They follow the conversation that they’re actually having, the conversation that is specifically being avoided, the tone being applied to the overt conversation, the buried conversation that is being covered only in subtext, and finally the other person’s body language.
Location: 6,556

There were probably a lot of women who didn’t communicate on multiple wavelengths at once. There were probably men who could handle that many just fine.
Location: 6,563

“Later. Bad habit to get into,” Thomas said. “Life’s too short.”
Location: 7,218

Molly rode shotgun with me, holding her backpack on her lap. Molly was a big believer in shaping the future by way of carrying anything you might need in a backpack. Tonight it looked particularly stuffed.
Location: 7,349

I understand this.

But all things wither away eventually.
Location: 7,521

And this.

As if some freak who had never loved enough to know loss could tell me about pain.
Location: 7,847

That grain of sand might be the last remnant of what had once been a mountain, but that which it is, it is.
Location: 7,887

But you can’t go around changing your definition of right and wrong (or smart and stupid) just because doing the wrong thing happens to be really convenient. Sometimes it isn’t easy to be sane, smart, and responsible. Sometimes it sucks. Sucks wang. Camel wang. But that doesn’t turn wrong into right or stupid into smart.
Location: 8,208

You never know what you have until it’s gone. Peace and quiet and people I love. Isn’t that what everyone wants?
Location: 8,269

"If the balloon goes up, go after whoever I light up first. After that, improvise.”
Location: 8,380

Learn to fight naked and you can never be disarmed. Which is fine, I guess, as long as there aren’t mosquitoes.
Location: 8,456

Fire’s tricky and fickle. Without focus, it’s just chaos, the random release of stored chemical energy.
Location: 8,631

“No. You’re on the wrong side,” I said. “Maybe more than one.”

“That’s what every conflict sounds like,” he said. “Not everyone can be equally right, Harry.”

“But believe you me, everyone can be equally wrong,”
Location: 8,769

“Everyone wants to have a friend,” he said quietly. “Is that so bad?”
Location: 8,807

Winter’s nature was beautiful violence, stark clarity, the most feral needs and animal desires and killer instinct pitted against the season of cold and death—the will and desire to fight, to live, even when there was no shelter, no warmth, no respite, no hope, and no help.
Location: 8,883

“Being able to choose to tell lies isn’t a freaking superpower, Maeve,” I said. “Because it means you can always make the wrong choice. It means you can lie to yourself."
Location: 9,272

“But one does not place all one’s hopes with any one place, person, or plan."
Location: 9,343

Sometimes the things that are good for you, in the long run, hurt for a little while when you first get to them.
Location: 9,510

The Dresden Files, book 13

Okay, if you've been following along in all my Dresden Files reviews, you know that I've read these books numerous times. This particular reading is the rereading having reread all the books in order, unlike my usual rereading of picking up the books in the series I like and just rereading those. As a result of this re-read the whole series plan, I'm reading Dresden books that are part of the series, but not necessarily ones I'm really excited about reading.

Which is to say, Harry is in this odd state, the "Ghost" part of the title of the book, and has "not long" to make things right. Except it is hard for someone who is used to being in control, who is used to having power, who is used to brute-forcing his way through things, to actually have no control, no power, no forcing function.

And it makes things awkward. I don't feel Butcher actually conveys how the loss of power, vitality, life actually feels, however. Dresden is still Dresden, even without his ability to do, well, anything.

I enjoyed the book. If you're reading the series, keep going. It's still good, just not a great Dresden book.

I felt like I had when I was a kid, when I was full of energy and the need to expend it doing something enjoyable.
Location: 238

Tough to blame the kid. I’ve been a young man. Boobs are near the center of the universe, until you turn twenty-five or so. Which is also when young men’s auto insurance rates go down. This is not a coincidence.
Location: 1280

“Excalibur, Durendal, and Kusanagi, yes, yes,” Sir Stuart said, his tone a little impatient. “Of course I know the Swords of the Cross.
Location: 1358

Killing — or, more accurately, making the choice to kill — isn’t something we’re good at lately. Ending the life of another living creature used to be part of the daily routine. Chickens were beheaded by the average farm wife for dinner. Fish were likewise caught, cleaned, and prepared for a meal. Slaughtering pigs or cattle was a regular event, part of the turning of the seasons. Most people on earth — farmers — worked and lived every single day with lives they knew they were going to choose to end, eventually.

Killing’s messy. It’s frequently ugly. And if something goes wrong, it can be wretched, seeing another being in mortal agony, which means there’s a certain amount of pressure involved in the act. It isn’t easy, and that’s just considering farm animals.
Location: 2042

Unremarkable. Complacent.” His mouth twisted and his voice turned bitter. “Mediocre. Mediocrity is a terrible fate, Harry.”
Page 189

What do you do to make up for failing everyone in your life? How do you make it right? How do you apologize for hideous things you never intended to happen?
Location 3688

“We’ve all got choices,” I said calmly. “At the moment, yours are limited. You gonna play ball?”
Location: 3734

Every flat, open space had been covered in spray-painted graffiti, which I guess we’re supposed to call urban art now. Except art is about creating beauty. These paintings were territorial markers, the visual parallel to peeing on a tree. I’ve seen some gorgeous
Location: 3753

... nothing — something that had been a waste of the resources it had consumed. Something that had never had a choice in its own fate, never had a chance to be anything more.
Page 287

"Death should be a learning experience, after all, or what’s the point?”
Location: 4967

“Complicated. Think of your spirit-self as a seed. Your soul is the earth it grows in. You need both when you die. The way I’ve heard it . . . they sort of blend together to become something new. It’s a caterpillar-butterfly thing.”
Location: 5143

One mistake at the end of my life couldn’t erase all the times I had stood unmoved at the edge of the abyss and made snide remarks at its expense.
Page 380

Pain isn’t a lot of fun, at least not for most folks, but it is utterly unique to life. Pain—physical, emotional, and otherwise—is the shadow cast by everything you want out of life, the alternative to the result you were hoping for, and the inevitable creator of strength. From the pain of our failures we learn to be better, stronger, greater than what we were before. Pain is there to tell us when we’ve done something badly—it’s a teacher, a guide, one that is always there to both warn us of our limitations and challenge us to overcome them.
Page 412

badinage
Location: 6814

noun, humorous or witty conversation: cultured badinage about art and life.

This is book two of the Withern Rise series.

I enjoyed the first book in the series about Alaric and Naia enough to continue reading. This one continues their story, with Naia adjusting to her new world, but never really giving up what she had, and Alaric loving the restoration of his world, but wracked with guilt.

However, instead of having pretty much parallel lives, with Alaric trying to dodge responsibility and his need to make things right, we are introduced to not another, or another, but FOUR alternative timelines, all of which could make one's head spin. Talk about a kid who keeps making mistakes.

And miscommunication. How easy it is for people to be unable to talk with each other, to assume the worst, and act upon those assumptions.

I'll read the last book, this one was good enough. If you're a fan of the first book, definitely keep reading.

The Dresden Files, book 12

I suspect I will have multiple reviews of this book before too long (where "too long" is a couple years, but not "too long" given this site is over 13 years old).

This is my second favorite Dresden book, after Dead Beat. Knowing this when I read it, I, again, tried to figure out what parts I like so much about this book. I'm unsure if I have all the reasons, but I believe Harry's vulnerability, his willingness to ask for help, the good pacing with the action, and the perfect, horrific climax are the major reasons why.

We learn of Harry's daughter in this book, no spoiler, we knew this from the ending of the previous book. Since Dresden was an orphan, being a good parent, being the parent he didn't have, would be incredibly important to Harry. Those emotions and needs we see in the book. Butcher does a good job with hiding just enough from the reader, and revealing other details, that the action pulls the reader along.

I didn't like the ending, but, well, that's to be expected, given the ending. There were following books, so I guess I'm okaaaaaaaaay with the ending now. First reading, not so much.

Of course, I recommend this book.

“Anxiety, anger, and agitation cloud the mind. That’s why the Worry Room is here.”
Page: 53

“You get yourself an apartment and your plumbing goes bad, he’ll still be there,” I said quietly. “Some guy breaks your heart, he’ll come over with ice cream. A lot of people never have a dad willing to do that stuff. Most of the time, it matters a hell of a lot more.”
Page: 101

Be wary of everyone. Even your protector.”
Page: 109

“Molly,” I said firmly. “You can’t plan for everything or you never get started in the first place. Get a move on. And don’t take any lip from the dog. He’s been uppity lately.”
Page: 116

sober. “Life is too short, Harry. And there’s nowhere near enough joy in it. If you find it, grab it. Before it’s gone.”
Page: 117

Hell, they’d even done that with me, and most of the Council thought that I was the next-best thing to Darth Vader. But at the end of the day, I think a lot of them secretly liked the idea of having Vader on the team when the monsters showed up. They didn’t love me, never would, and I didn’t need them to love me to fight beside them.
Page: 137

“I get it,” she said. “I do. Look. You care about her, okay. Maybe even loved her. Maybe she loved you. But it can’t be like that anymore.” She spread her hands and said, “As messed up as that is, it’s still the reality you have to live with. You can’t ignore it. You get close to her, and there’s no way for it to come out good, boss.”
Page: 170

There is no sensation to warn you when your soul turns black.
Page: 174

But there were some things I believed in. Some things I had faith in. And faith isn’t about perfect attendance to services, or how much money you put on the little plate. It isn’t about going skyclad to the Holy Rites, or meditating each day upon the divine. Faith is about what you do. It’s about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It’s about making sacrifices for the good of others—even when there’s not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.
Page: 202

Faith is about what you do. It’s about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It’s about making sacrifices for the good of others—even when there’s not going to be anyone telling you what a hero you are.
Page: 202

I could smell the warm scent of singed dust that always emerges from the vents the first time anyone turns on a heater after it’s been unneeded for a while.
Page: 223

“That’s the difficult part of being mortal. Of having choice. Much is hidden from you.”
Page: 229

She had shown me Maggie to make perfectly clear exactly what choice I was about to make. Certainly, it might influence my decision, but when a stark naked truth stares you in the face . . . shouldn’t it? I’m not sure it’s possible to manipulate someone with candor and truth. I think you call that enlightenment.
Page: 241

Death is the great equalizer. It doesn’t matter how you get there. Just when.
Page: 242

Paranoia is a survival trait when you run in my circles. It gives you something to do in your spare time, coming up with solutions to ridiculous problems that aren’t ever going to happen. Except when one of them does, at which point you feel way too vindicated.
Page: 259

No matter how bad things got, I didn’t think anything would ever truly faze him. He simply accepted the bad things that happened and soldiered on as best he could.
Page: 266

“Everything’s never in the open, son,” he responded. “There’re things we keep hidden from one another. Things we hide from ourselves. Things that are kept hidden from us. And things no one knows. You always learn the damnedest things at
Page: 424

Only so many blackhearted villains in the world, and they only get uppity on occasion. Stupid’s everywhere, every day.”
Page: 425