And the implication that because they only happened in Dresden's early days in Chicago...the Accords were addressing an immediate issue. Perhaps Dresden himself?
Plenty of juicy info. Just as telling which questions he avoided though I think. Also, pretty sure Jim got pissed off and left the AMA early because someone got political with him. I mean, it IS an AMA so it's fair to ask whatever...but their is a convention of sticking to the point. I think pissing him off achieved nothing and ruins it for the rest of us.
The AMA puts an end to the old debate about power levels between Faerie Queens and Angels.
" Are Mab and Titania equal to the Archangels in terms of raw power? What about the Mothers?"
Nowhere close. Like, /nowhere/ close. Angels are so far beyond a being like Mab that there's just no comparison to be made. Mab might be able to, if she really worked at it, enchant the world into an ice age. But an angel could destroy the SUN.
I mean, for you and me, there's no difference between them. But relative to one another, there's a HUGE difference. The angels have far more power.
But.
Mab has far more /freedom/ in what she can do with her power. Bigger and stronger doesn't mean you win the fight all by itself. Ask a hawk the next time you see it being run out of town by songbirds. Mab might have less muscle, but she can actually apply her muscle to a huge variety of situations--angels exist behind limits hardwired into their very beings.
Angels are, in this instance, kind of like a super powerful AI. Within the world of the computer, it's not a force that can be effectively resisted. It runs the place.
But that same AI can only do what it's been told to do--and Mab is a user with mid-level admin access. She can't command or delete those AIs, but she knows why they were made, how they work--and how to get around them if necessary.
Mab isn't stronger than an angel. But she is, in most situations, far more powerful.
Curiously, he doesn't address the Mothers. But I would say even they are only Angel level at most. Archangel's seem to be on a whole other scale.
Also:
" Just wanted to ask if we'll ever see the angels that guard Michael in action! I love the hints you drop that they're insanely strong!"
788888888888888888888888888888p0000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000------
^---When I started answering this question, my foster cat Fenris immediately came over and determinedly typed this.
Study your math, kids. Key to the universe.
But MY answer was going to be to say that angelic powers simply exist on an order of magnitude beyond that of anything happening on a level a mortal could understand. I mean, who actually has more power in a production: the lead character, or the lowly stage hand who is running his lights and audio. That person playing the character might get the limelight, but the dude in all black is running the show.
A lowly footsoldier angel is a power of an order of magnitude greater than all the local-scale supernatural beings we've seen in the Dresden Files put together. I mean, it wouldn't be a fight. The angel wins, hands down.
Except the angel wouldn't ever win, because more than likely the angel would never be allowed to fight. It's a being of such power that it exists behind strict walls of control, limits beyond which it simply cannot, by its very nature, tread. When an angel IS allowed to smite something, you get rains of fire, flaming cities and pillars of salt. But mostly they are epic beings for epic times and epic actions. It isn't their place to interfere in the lives of the beings of the universe--angels exist to preserve the nature and order of that universe just so all those little beings can do what they do.
Uriel is being a cheeky bugger and taking terrible chances, doing what he is with the Swords, trying to get involved in mortal affairs without actually getting involved. Only Lucifer has danced that close to the line before, and that one didn't work out so well.
Why is Uriel taking chances the other Archangel's are not? Is he desperate? Is Heaven losing the war?
Further, while it has been implied that the vaguely Judeo-Christian theology is paramount I do hope Jim goes further in text to explaining why that is. It is hardly the oldest religion, especially in it's current form.
Also, not Jim's best analogy. Worked in both film and theatre at various points. By and large, those lead actors have a LOT more say. Maybe in really small productions people respect the "lowly" sound and lighting techies etc. But honestly once things have actual money involved things revolve around those crazy actors. Anyone with enough celebrity almost has their own gravitational pull. Which isn't to say they are the biggest fish around...
Another good one:
"In multiple instances throughout the books, lifeforce and the soul have been said to be the same thing. Even Thomas has said that he rips off pieces of people's souls and eats them. If a white court vampire devours the entirety of a person's lifeforce, killing them, does that mean that person's soul is gone forever?"
They are and are not the same thing. Think of them as a mixture. Your soul and your life's energy exist in the same place and at the same time--that's what makes you, you, the combination of what can be measured, your physical body and all its attendant matter and energy, with what cannot be quantified--things like kindness and mercy and love, or selfishness and indifference.
Thomas devours the life-energy and with it he often gets pieces off the soul as well. (That's the part that burns, when the soul has a certain kind of energetic resonance.) The White Court LOVES to get all dramatic and talk about devouring souls, but it's only kind of technically true. And while the two are connected, life energy is merely measurable: it can be manipulated and devoured--but the soul can only be returned to its ultimate source, sooner or later, one way or another.
