Previous book here. All Dresden Files book reviews from now on need to be behind a spoiler cut, so I'll just leave it at 4.5 stars. Almost as mind blowing as the previous two.
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Once upon a time two books ago, Harry agreed to become Winter Knight to Queen Mab of Faerie. He thought death would get him out of it. Nope, not so much. Now that he's been brought back from being mostly dead, it's time for rehab...Mab style. She has him working out and doing physical therapy...and fending off a daily attack on his life. (There is an amusing moment where he thinks she's quoting Princess Bride when she says she'll most likely kill him in the morning. Her response: "What's that?") That's Mab for you. After he's recovered, she throws him a birthday party....and by the end of it, Mab wants him to kill the Winter Lady, her daughter Maeve. Which leads to two questions: (a) how do you kill an immortal--turns out timing is everything and the time is right about now-- and (b) why does Mab want Maeve killed?
The answer to this is...hoo boy.
Harry finally gets to return to Chicago, alive and well, and reunite with a lot of his friends and allies again. Molly's doing a lot better, I'm happy to say. But she's been checking up on Demonreach Island that Harry's linked to, and....it's not doing so good. Harry goes over to investigate and finds out that Demonreach was created as a jail for monsters and someone's trying to release the prisoners. And that person may or may not be Mab. You see, there's a corrosive evil infection in the world, and it's entirely likely one of the Winter queens has contracted it. But which one? Harry ends up calling on most of the Queens trying to figure it out, and rallying his allies for yet another whopping battle. We find out more about the great overall evil in the series --things are still somewhat vague, but it gives you more of an idea of the future of the series.
As for Harry himself, he wonders--and his friends certainly worry-- if joining Winter is going to inevitably turn him into an evil bastard a la his predecessor. You may still be able to trust Harry now--he's a guy who's used to fighting his darker instincts-- but how long will that last? Well, I trust Harry's integrity, but Karrin Murphy, not so much. (Fans who ship them...yeah, there's a reason why I don't ship them, I just don't see a point to it.)
As for the ending...well, there's no easy out for Harry, but there's a big surprise ending. I'm not sure if it has QUITE the same shock value as the end of the last two books did--but that would be hard to come by. And the big change in this one isn't for Harry so much as it is for someone else. It's very game changing for a few characters, and should be very different for them in the future. At any rate, Harry has a lot less incentive now to look for some other way out of Winter Knighting--not that there is a way out, I think.
Overall, I whipped through this book once I got it for Christmas, and I look forward to the next.
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