Remember:  Slate had to die to give up his Mantle.

I think... Fix would be OK with that.

Just sayin'

Oh, I don't think Fix would have a problem with ending Slate.  But Harry himself was worried about becoming the next Slate.  What could even motivate Fix, who had first-hand experience of himself and his friends being Slates victims, to consider taking an offer to be the Winter Knight?

Yes, he does like to be his own man and also likes his power and his own little empire.  Namshiel will have to manage him so that Marcone believes he is calling the shots.  This basically is what Andriel has done with Nic, he buys that it is an equal partnership. Something Harry never bought when Lasciel offered it, but will Marcone see through it?

Namshiel's character and motivation is an area I'm actually quite curious about.  What we saw of him in SmF as one of the Fallen who dominates the host and was pretty firmly in Tessa's camp seems contradictory to later WoJ that he's basically the magic nerd and a bit of a loner from the other Fallen who mostly just wants to refine his experiments.  The latter sounds like he would have been a pretty good fit for Harry, if Nic had had his coin available instead of Lasciel's.

Then again, he also got pretty badly burned by Tessa and Rosanna - they betrayed him and left him to be un-hosted. I think they were hoping he'd stay coin-bound as long as possible in the assumption he was nem-fected, as cover for one or both of them being the actual 'Judas' as Nic put it.

Is he long-gaming a plan to dominate Marcone, or has he made a strategic choice that his bridges are well and truly burned with the other 29, and an actual alliance with Marcone is in his interest?

Also in Mirror Mirror: Relating to the soulgaze scene in Proven Guilty between Harry and Molly.  We will see how different choices could lead to different outcomes.

Mirror Molly as Morgan's Warden apprentice, let's go!

Assuming Jim hasn't changed his mind, he's told us what the big choice was. It's at the end of Grave Peril when Harry goes to save Susan. Our Harry summons a bunch of vengeful ghosts to kill the vampires when he could have absorbed their power and lashed out. The other Harry does the later.

He said the divergence was late in GP.  There's still room for it to be a few possibilities.  One of the big possibilities is !Harry might have taken Bianca's coward's bargain, to abandon Susan and walk free. 

Depending how far back you stretch late in Grave Peril, it could also be a few other things. There was a moment relatively late in the book when Thomas came to Harry to return Amoracchius after he recovered it from the earlier fighting and propose teaming up to rescue Susan and Justine, where Michael wanted to kill him without even seeing what was in the box because vampires are all bad.  If Harry hadn't gone to bat for hearing Thomas out at that point?  Well, that could start a pretty dark timeline.

Yeah, I read his two first novels and they are... fine? He went to the Jim Butcher school of making his protagonist a bit of a butt monkey, but in the case of Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby, he went a bit overboard and made him just pathetic in too many regards. While I definitely will get the third book of the series, coming out this month, so far the character hasn't convinced me yet that he is a worthy main protagonist, where Jim made Harry a bit pathetic, but also a lot of interesting in one book and has kept improving the character ever since.

I think he's pretty clearly going for an arc like Tavi in Codex Alera, where the MC isn't actually the crippled weakling he initially appears.  But, yeah, he's overcooked the setup by a good 20-30%.

What has me in some doubt whether to keep following the series is actually something quite a bit more specific.  Pretty much the central plot twist of James' second book struck me as being *far* too similar to something from TDF, and rather unsubtly executed besides.  He was clue-batting it so heavily I actually thought there was going to be some squirrelly twist within the twist coming to mess with his dad's fans who'd come to his series through TDF, but nope, he basically just did straight up with one of his POV characters.

I don't want to beat up on a beginning writer *too* much, but you can't be crossing the line of repeating your father's plot twists if substantially the same set of customers are supposed to be paying good money for your writing.

It isn't clear though how they finally did, or I don't remember it.  What I remember is that a bunch of Wardens together took him down, but I don't believe it said just how they took him down.  Actually I don't think they did, as I said a couple of posts ago, I think Evil Bob is actually Kemmler. 

My tin hat theory!

What if Bob has been Kemmler all along?  Bob is a spirit, can he be killed? Don't think so unless maybe Mab can do it.  Is that why Bob fears Mab? Or is it because Mab knows who and what he is? Anyway, so the Wardens "kill" Kemmler, but they don't really because he retreats in his spirit form, or Bob.  Bob is very useful so a Warden like Justin steals him for his own use.  Justin was a Warden, he wasn't always evil, but what if having "Bob" in his possession corrupted him? Turning Justin warlock?  "Bob" would know about star born, "Bob" would have plans for such children.. Monkey wrench into the plan, Harry Dresden. Harry kills Justin, takes the skull and names the spirit, "Bob."  Just naming the spirit begins to transform him, also Harry orders him to forget the evil stuff he knew before Justin died.   Thus it was until Harry needed information about Kemmler and ordered a reluctant Bob to call him up.  Evil Bob emerged and nearly killed Harry, after that Bob was so horrified he cut himself off from his evil "memories" for good.  Those memories became Evil Bob who we met in Ghost Story, or was it really Kemmler?

A lot of WOJ's about Bob would have to have been lies by Jim to cover up a plot twist for that to be the case, but then again, that is something he'll do if it's an important enough plot twist.

Bob is plenty destructible, though.  Sunlight when he's out of the skull is a deadly danger to him.  Same for fire.

Given Harry's experience of walking around as a naked soul where fire was still a danger to him, too, I think that was probably key to how the Council got Kemmler for good.  There's a WOJ about the final execution involving a flamethrower - I think as the spirit comes out of the body, the fire gets that too.

Which, actually, also goes a long way toward an in-universe explanation for the witch hunts using burning at the stake.  I wonder if it was an early version of the Stokerlypse, with someone in the know recommending the Inquisition a way to conduct their executions that would actually end pretty high-level warlocks.

To be honest, Mab was quite hard in her first appearances. I mean, we have no reason to believe she is evil per se but she is not only ruthless but apparently a sadist. Later, that was not so much the case. So, even when I agree with you Mira that Harry was quite biased in his storytelling, there are some facts that justified his perception.

In the bigger sense, did Mab change?  Or did she have a calculated reason to think that fronting as extra sadistic in her first meeting with Harry was a strategic route to getting something she wanted?

Starborn is the key, I think.  Since Harry is starborn and has power over Outsiders and Outsiders have no power over him, Harry can say his name, or in this case use his name without harm or fear of attack from using it.

Furthermore, there was a WOJ that, basically, Harry is a somewhat unique case where others trying to use his name against him would instead be making themselves vulnerable rather than getting power over him.  That was in reference to Harry as narrator ending SF with his name and "conjure by it at your own risk".

That might be another aspect of being starborn besides just immunity to and influence over outsiders that hasn't been explored yet.