Dresden Files: Winter is coming (Cold Days Spoilers)

[Lamech]

As I said above, I just finished the fourteenth book of the Dresden Files series, Cold Days.

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More annoying is the focus on Outsiders. For one, I don't like the term Outsider, not connected to the representation they were given in the book. Okay, so they live on the other side of this great big gate. What about it? Oh, they want to destroy reality. As opposed to... wherever they live? They seem pretty damn real to me. They just happen to live on the other side of the gate. Since they are hostile and aggressive, of course we have to defend ourselves, but I fail to see what makes Outsiders so alien as they are made out to be. There's just an arbitrary line drawn around Earth + Nevernever.

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Yeah, that bugged the hell out of me. If Outside is just a few steps over a gate? Well their demons, pretty scary and weird demons. But they lost a lot of their alienness if they we can just walk their and visa versa.

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Second, the aforementioned villain decay. He Who Walks Behind was, for the longest tome, freaking terrifying. I think I even had a nightmare about him once. This new outside, He Who Walks... Before? Really? Anyway, he's a villain of the week. Given that outsiders now come by the dozen, it's much less impressive. I understand that this is justified in that Harry has grown stronger, and it is actually a valid reasoning. Still... eh, I dunno.

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Eh, He Who Walks Behind, when it comes right down to it, died to a single blast of fire. He Who Walks Behind has got the cool teleportation power, and invisibility but really he's just a bruiser. A teleporting bruiser, but Cait Sith would have a better shot at ganking Harry. In all honesty He Who Walks Before is probably a bigger danger to Harry now. Harry just got a lot of power creep.

What was more annoying in my opinion is the lesser outsiders getting sliced up. If they are on par with faires and uber-ghouls? If they get ripped apart by teeth, and swords, even if they are from the wild hunt? That doesn't exactly bode well for them. Uber Ghouls, and fairies don't exactly stand up well to modern weaponry. I suppose this could be a set up for a flat out curbstomp with artillery machine guns and nukes, which could be cool...

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What I do know is that I'm not a fan of the adversary. I've seen this in many places. The magical amulet corrupts its wearer. They aren't really themselves, they were being manipulated and influenced. And now this gets applied retroactively to most opponents Harry has fought over the years? I'm sorry, but **** that ****. Making the Outsiders responsible for everything is stupid. I can understand them being the biggest threat right now, but retroactively making them the only threat detracts from those books. It detracts from the realism that Dresden Files none the less has by removing the ability for people to be *******s all on their own. It creates a Sauron.

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Eh, I don't see the retroactivity. Or at least not in this book. It was fairly well established that someone was causing the harm and issues of the first three books. The corruption was obvious in the hexen-belts. And with Leia. It was locked in at least by book 7.