Another Tuesday, and still no first line, no teaser chapters.

Then again, with only 9 weeks (63 days (1,502 hours, but who's counting?)) until the next full book, I guess we don't really need those.

"She's not pregnant," Grey said.

The river was on fire, and it wasn't my fault.

There's something preternaturally spooky about being on a boat in the middle of the lake on a dark, quiet night. The spooky factor ramps up considerably when you get to the harbor and the whole city is just as dark and quiet.

For the Svartalves, Eb's not saying that they don't keep their bargains. He's saying that they are predatory monsters and that it's horrifying that Harry is raising his daughter among them.

Harry expresses his view in this book as: "I like the svartalves. They're good people."

If all you knew about Svartalves was what we read in "B is for Bigfoot" -- which one would you agree with, Harry or Eb? How about when you see Mouse in full-on Temple Guardian mode with all the special effects fighting to keep the svartalves away from Maggie?

For Thomas, Harry being wrong just requires Thomas to have done the math and decided that Justine and the Baby are important enough to betray Harry. Maybe not enough to kill him -- just set him up and count on him being smart enough or strong enough to survive the fallout.

We've seen Harry as an unreliable narrator before -- in Small Favor when Mab messed with his mind and his memory, and in Changes when he omitted significant events that had been wiped from his memory, and in another way in Skin Game to keep us in the dark about his clever scheme.

What if Harry is horribly wrong about both the Svartalves and the White Court, maybe even about Thomas?

We've seen Thomas keep secrets and manipulate Harry before to a lesser degree, like in Backup (for good reasons) and in White Night (less so). Could all of the scenes about Justine being pregnant and Thomas worrying about being a father *all* be a manipulation to get Harry acting on instinct?

If Harry had come out of the apartment (after watching Svartalves terrorizing Maggie) and started a fight... or if he'd tried to rescue Thomas... either would have constituted Mab's Winter Knight blatantly shredding the Accords within the first hour of the truce for the Peace Talks. It would have been a blow to Mab almost as serious as being kicked through several walls by Ethniu.

And we see Lara throwing the sex-mojo-whammy at Harry multiple times. It doesn't work to sex-whammy him, but it certainly does change the subject when he's asking uncomfortable questions about what's going on.

Big picture: the local Powers of the Accords are getting together for a meeting to discuss dealing with the Fomor, and Harry spends the whole book dealing with a prison break that could blow up the Accords and lead to millions of innocent deaths. It's sort-of like him to get obsessed with saving family, but it's unusual for him to so completely lose the big-picture plot. How sure are we that he hasn't been mind-whammied?

Could Mab have done it to him again -- perhaps as Lara's first favor? (If she just made him extra vulnerable to Lara's influence, it would explain why she needed to so graphically warn Lara against feeding on Harry, in their first scene.)

[quote Me]the mind-control warlock at the start of Proven Guilty was corrupted[/quote]

Do you mean Molly?  She controlled minds that is what made her a warlock at the beginning of Proven Guilty. 

I was thinking of the nameless Korean kid who was executed for dramatic effect at the start of the book.

Ley lines which mean they are going to come up out of the lake near the Shed Aquarium, so I would prepare my defence next to it.

Next to the Shed is the Field Museum, which means

“THE BEST DEFENCE IS A T-REX.” Harry Dresden, Peace Talks.

This time Murphy is the drummer. Sue is hideously effective against large groups and Harry can be charging into battle playing the Dino serenade brandishing his super weapons jousting with Ethnui.

Jim said Sue would be back some time. She is a fan favourite.

I'd *love* to see this.

There's a bit of ambiguity between actual Nemesis infection (like Cait Sith or Lea) and Corruption (like warlocks). For the most part, the line is clear -- Cait Sith was nemfected, the mind-control warlock at the start of Proven Guilty was corrupted, but what about the corruption of a 7th-law warlock?

If a non-starborn wizard were to do what Harry did to the cornerhounds -- opening his mind up to the Outside -- would that kind of Corruption be Nemesis? Or just another kind of madness?


Re: Justine's madness -- if Thomas's feeding was the only thing keeping her sane, what's going to happen to her when Thomas is locked away in a cell??

I don't think the British Prisoner, even if he is Arthur, is going to be coming out of the cell any time soon. He's waiting for a different apocalyptic prophecy. But that doesn't mean he can't be a mentor to Thomas while he's in lockup, assuming Thomas recovers enough to have conversations.