I think in probably something like 70% of books Murphy is done dirty, and this one’s no different—it’s just more egregious. Especially given the fallout with Marcone and Butters being a Jedi knight (I love that for him, don’t get me wrong but also wtf), the fact that Murphy just never gets a glow up in a world where literally every person Dresden meets becomes super heroic in some way, or else just becomes a foil for his internal turmoil, really, really irks me. Even the last book where Mab advises Dresden to kill Molly because she wouldn’t be able to handle the mantle if she died and it passed to her, is just a long standing tradition for this series to misconstrue what agency for women actually is. Even his daughter enters the equation, when he flies off the handle when someone dies and gets angry and powerful, but then when his daughter is threatened the opposite effect occurs, and he is almost powerless and hopeless. It’s just old school chauvinism again, where because romance is involved in one, it provokes a different reaction than literally the urge to protect your own child. It’s wildly unconvincing and stupid, to me.

Beyond that, though, this series develops a problem with stakes similar to superhero tv shows like in the DCU. Every person has to become super heroic and every stake needs to be escalated, so now there’s another battle for the entire world, just like with Susan and the red court (and we know how that ended, surprise surprise), and it’s all just devoid of the best book in the series, Dead Beats’, charm. Where things were rooted in more verisimilitude and because things were smaller they were somewhat more believable. Whereas every aspect of this was fairly deeply unconvincing. It also was very clearly padded and should have been one book. I very much doubt I’ll read the next one, but who knows.