Yes,
Harry
Dresden was dead – or rather, mostly dead – but he's
all better now, and back up to fighting trim as the new Winter Knight, thanks to the tender tough love therapy overseen by his new boss,
Mab, the Winter Queen of Air and Darkness, ruler of the Unseelie Fae.
Just in time for her to give him his first real assignment – kill
Mab's daughter Maeve, the Winter Lady. Why would Mab put a hit on her own
daughter? How do you kill an Immortal anyway? And
what's Santa Claus got to do with it all?
The
answer to the first question helps further the overall shift in this
series away from what was originally the tales of “the only
consulting wizard in the Chicago Yellow Pages,” a simple urban
fantasy series, to an epic of cosmic proportions. For it seems that
our Universe – which includes the world we know as well as the
linked worlds of Faerie, the Nevernever, and so forth – is under
siege from without. Literally from Outside. There are some definite
Lovecraftian overtones here. And it seems that Maeve, along with
others who have appeared from the beginning of the series with
increasing frequency, has fallen prey to One called here the “the
Adversary” or the “Nemesis,” and is actively working to unleash
dark forces that have been imprisoned beneath “Harry's
buddy-island” Demonreach in a prison forged by Merlin himself. Add
in a dash of internecine rivalry within the highly dysfunctional
family that is the Winter Court, complicated by the fact that these
beings of Faerie are, as alien as they may be in some respects, all
too human in others, and you get a conflict that is heart-rending in
its climactic tragedy. One that may destroy Harry and all that he
knows and loves.
For
the answers to the other two questions, I'm just going to send you to
read the book itself. Cold Days is a typically –
increasingly – complex tale from The Dresden Files that
cannot be summarized easily. I'm not even going to try. There's
an extensive summary on the Wikipedia page for this book, but it
would be far better to read it for yourself – with a proper
grounding in the thirteen novels leading up to it. Plus a volume of
short stories, although those are less integral to the overall
narrative. I
wrote previously of my great love for this series. Characters
and situations from throughout appear or are called back to in this
volume, which ends with major shifts for some of my favorite denizens
of Harry's world. His “padawan,” Molly, whom we've
literally watched grow up from a gawky young teenager to a powerful
wizard in her own right, over the course of a dozen or so books,
becomes much more by the end of this book. And there is a definite
sense that by the end of this series Harry will look back on the
trials of this “file” and think, “Hell's Bells!, I had
it easy...!” I mean, Butcher has revealed that his plans for the
series are to cap it off with what he calls “The Big Apocalyptic
Trilogy”!
But I
will leave you with this: Not only does Harry meet Santa
Claus in this book. He kicks Jolly Old St. Nick's ass!
Cheers! – and Thanks for reading!
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