white night: dresden files book nine

I'm so sad I finished the last book I can get my hands on without paying for it or lugging my ass out to the library. But I'm happy that now I get to go to the bookstore, because I also want to pick up Chalice and... something else that's escaping me just now. Damn.

Anyway, this book brings us Harry helping Murph solve the case of a serial killer that makes it look like suicide-- and who's calling card is mystically-imprinted references to the line in the Bible about not suffering witches to live (though using magic to leave it kinda puts him in a pot-kettle-black situation, and no one mentions that). Which leads them to realize that the women were all low-grade magic users, which leads them to the Ordo, an organization of witches that aren't strong enough to join the Council, but are mystical enough to need togetherness to help handle it. And some of them are Wiccan, and like the Circle. From there, we learn that the women were last seen in the presence of a very tall man in a grey cloak, and so people in the Community are thinking Harry's gone batty / murderous and he has to work against their distrust of him as well as their fear of getting killed. Eventually, we get around to the machinations of the White Court, there are flashbacks to something bad that happened between books and informs the climax of this one, there's secretivity from Thomas and a really crazy-fun clearing up of that storyline (though someone said there's a Thomas book coming out? hope, hope!), there's people stealing other people all over the place, there's working with Marcone and getting random benefits from his businesses, there's training of an apprentice who's too headstrong to realize why she needs to learn, there's Murphy kicking ass (and I'm always a fan of the books where Murph gets to do things) and being kind a little (which keeps the shipping going in my head), there's ghouls, there's crossdressing, there's the Return of the Ex (again) there's vampires of various ilks, there's infighting, there's fire, there's Harry manifesting anger issues, and there's alot of Lash / Lasciel the Fallen Angel (which just proves that Harry is stubborn as all hell, but comes to a good conclusion after several books of being there). And it ends on a fairly up-note, storywise, and that's a good thing. Happy Harry is more fun then Depressed Harry.

Harry seems to inspire people to do what he does, and it's neat that Jim Butcher is running with this idea and having Harry go more equality-- all magic users need defense, not just the Council. I like this tack.

But I'm still sad I have to wait for the next one now.

Up next:
Either UnLunDun or Three Days to Never, whichever I finish first.
Then, hopefully, Chalice, and maybe the next Song of Ice and Fire / the short stories collection. We'll see how well-stocked out B&N is before I say for sure.