Zoo Day spoilers

[datalaughing]

I am betting that he ends up being  Harrys new apprentice.

If Harry was going to get a new apprentice I sort of doubt that we’d be introduced to them in a short. Generally the shorts have small effects on the main series. Usually just a reference here and there that you can grin about if you’d read the shorts but if you haven’t won’t throw you off your stride for people who just read the books. I can’t imagine Jim is going to start Peace Talks with Harry having a new apprentice in tow that the book-only people have never heard of. Jim tends to build major characters, not just drop them in. Molly was introduced like 5 or 6 books before she became Harry’s apprentice.

[jonas]

If Harry was going to get a new apprentice I sort of doubt that we’d be introduced to them in a short. Generally the shorts have small effects on the main series. Usually just a reference here and there that you can grin about if you’d read the shorts but if you haven’t won’t throw you off your stride for people who just read the books. I can’t imagine Jim is going to start Peace Talks with Harry having a new apprentice in tow that the book-only people have never heard of. Jim tends to build major characters, not just drop them in. Molly was introduced like 5 or 6 books before she became Harry’s apprentice.

Yea, Fitz(?) is in line first, he's in the files and he's a talent implying a deeper ability too.

[Mira]

   Though I haven finished the story yet, it appears to me that Maggie suffers severely from PTSD and my theory is it has developed her wizard's sight, thus she sees the young bullies like versions of vamps..  In truth their instinct to attack a perceived weak a vulnerable child among them makes them that..  I think if Harry were to look at those kids with his sight, he'd see them as Maggie and Mouse do.. However as we know, unlike Maggie he has control over his sight.  Now what Mouse sees lurking in the wings as the controlling entity might be something else.  Haven't got that far yet but I think it might turn out to be Austin's monster from the Nevernever, perhaps one of the Ebs that escaped the slaughter at C.I. but in a new form.   Given Austin's age in relation to Maggie's age, if he returns, possible future husband for her?

[Maz]

1) I loved Zoo Day - its been a while but was glad I purchased the anthology despite having read all of them already except for Day One and Zoo Day.
2) Mouse has TWO siblings missing... someone wants to breed evil foo dogs - that's news?
3) Austin could make a good apprentice and I think Harry really needs one to proceed.
4) Maggie came off solidly!
5) Maggie's threats... Mouse's threats... Harry's threats... someone really really dangerous is trying to hunt them all.  I'm sort of excited for Peace Talks.  I already was, to be honest, but this makes it more so.  And by adding "mortal" components to Harry, namely a human apprentice and a daughter, it helps drag Harry back from the land of the Superheros... sure, he himself might be Demigod-like to an extent compared to us mere mortals but there's way to reestablish threats that he otherwise could ignore. 

[pcpoet]

you really cant threaten harry and have him take you serious at this point but his daughter is a different story......its like with superman cant hurt him but hurt Lois lane or jimmy Olson and you have hurry superman.....harry need people to care about so bad guys can make the mistake of trying to leverage his love of friends and family as a weakness to be exploited...this is dispite the fact that he already roasted marshmallows on the red courts funeral pier.

[Darkest-Before-Dawn]

2) Mouse has TWO siblings missing... someone wants to breed evil foo dogs - that's news?

This was the most interesting part of the short for me. Especially 'Taken by figures in dark robes, male and female,' . It absolutely screamed Cowl and Kumori. Cowl has already set himself up to be a true nemesis to Harry, so why not give him a 'Dark Mouse' to boot.

[Mira]

    Finished the story last night, it could be that Cowl is manipulating Mouse's brother and sister..   
 
  I do have a couple of questions..

   1] What is the Book that Maggie was given by the Carpenter kids?  Since it was capitalized was it the Bible or a book of Catechism?  But Maggie's quotes from it didn't fit exactly, wonder if Michael and Charity with help wrote up a kid's version because the children of a Holy Knight could face a lot of crap and needed a guide to cope..

  2] What is the future they foresee for Maggie?  Because they seemed to want her dead because of what she will become, not out of revenge or some other motive to get at Harry..   


Oh and one more observation,  Mouse lumped Mab in with the good guys he hopes will watch over Harry and help him..  Harry might argue with that point just a bit, but Mouse might be the better judge of character as all dogs are.

[Darkest-Before-Dawn]

   
   1] What is the Book that Maggie was given by the Carpenter kids?  Since it was capitalized was it the Bible or a book of Catechism?  But Maggie's quotes from it didn't fit exactly, wonder if Michael and Charity with help wrote up a kid's version because the children of a Holy Knight could face a lot of crap and needed a guide to cope..

Seemed to me to be a compendium of creatures that only kids could see. Created by Molly as a child and passed down through the Carpenter siblings to provide information once the older children had forgotten those creatures and couldn't see them anymore. Makes sense for a family who's father battled monsters all the time.

[Mira]

Seemed to me to be a compendium of creatures that only kids could see. Created by Molly as a child and passed down through the Carpenter siblings to provide information once the older children had forgotten those creatures and couldn't see them anymore. Makes sense for a family who's father battled monsters all the time.

Possible, or once the kid matures they can cope because they have developed the skills to deal with the monsters that might take advantage of vulnerable children.

[wardenferry419]

This was the most interesting part of the short for me. Especially 'Taken by figures in dark robes, male and female,' . It absolutely screamed Cowl and Kumori. Cowl has already set himself up to be a true nemesis to Harry, so why not give him a 'Dark Mouse' to boot.

I hadn't thought about that angle. It would make things very interesting.

[pcpoet]

I wonder what life was like for the IVY when it came to monsters only kids could see....imagine a oblivion story based on destroying or altering this book that the carpenters wrote,  it could be the reason that ivy actually chose to be the arbitrator for the dual in death mask. remember that Molly was 13 or 14 at the end of her child hood but still a child.

[Snark Knight]

I wonder what life was like for the IVY when it came to monsters only kids could see....imagine a oblivion story based on destroying or altering this book that the carpenters wrote,  it could be the reason that ivy actually chose to be the arbitrator for the dual in death mask. remember that Molly was 13 or 14 at the end of her child hood but still a child.

What, like a child-eating phobophage actually trying to attack Ivy? It would probably be dead before it even realized it had made a huge mistake, unless she valued leaving it alive to warn its peers not to mess with her. There's a pretty big gulf in how directly powerful the antagonists for a children's or YA series can be vs. what it would take to threaten someone insulated by the full power of the Archive.

The targets in the Oblivion War that are anchored to reality by human knowledge are the really big fish of the Dresdenverse. As far as Ivy is concerned, if childhood phobophages merit her consideration at all, they're probably more on the scale where she's content to see knowledge of how to fight them spread around. If working to get mortals to forget the nasties was the best course of action for everything, Lara would hardly have personally engineered the Stokerlypse. Frankly, if the things that target kids were so powerful as to be targets of the Oblivion war, the post-industrialization population boom probably wouldn't have happened on account of them eating the extra humans.

Besides, even if Ivy did want the Carpenter kids' book gone, destroying it would do little when there are still young kids around the house aware of its contents and able to recreate it. Even if Ivy were to personally take a role in destroying written records - and everything we know about the Archive's compulsive caution says working through Venator cutouts makes more sense than exposing herself to unnecessary risk by acting personally - the time to get that book would be after the last child has grown up.

[pcpoet]

imagine a creature that is anchored by a  child knowledge that  is really dangerous when compared to the other monsters recorded in the book or the children discovering a ritual that to use on the child hood monsters that actually feed something worse then the monster.…..yes the stuff that molly wrote down was just the childhood fears and how to deal with theses monsters but imagine something worse being written about.

[Slowpool]

Possible, or once the kid matures they can cope because they have developed the skills to deal with the monsters that might take advantage of vulnerable children.

I might be misunderstanding you, but it's specifically stated that when you "grow up" (exactly what qualifies as growing up in this case is yet to be shown) you forget all about these monsters- stated both in-universe and by WoJ.  There's no coping.  To you, they've never existed.  They can affect you, apparently, but you're clueless.

[Mpol]

Jim has confirmed in a recent signing Austin is just a minor character with no plans to use him in the future... as yet.

I love that Jim has this outline of the series but has kept it loose enough to allow additions and  changes to the smaller details.