Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:09)
Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to recorded neutral territory where the spoilers go all the way through twelve months. I'm Adam Ruzzo and joining me as always it's Morgan's partner in crime, it's Brian O'Reilly.

Brian (00:21)
Sorry the Merlin's lines didn't work. It's spooky. He doesn't look all that smart.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:26)
Yeah, I know. Looks can be deceiving. But that brings us to tonight's discussion. We are discussing chapters seven, eight, and nine of Summer Night. In chapter seven, Harry heads over to Murphy's place to see if she can help him understand more about Ronald Rule's death. In chapter eight, Harry heads back to his apartment only to find Elaine inside waiting for him with several bombshells. And then in chapter nine,

Morgan forces his way into the situation to try to become the Merlin's ace in the hole. We'll talk about that when we get there. Let's start with chapter seven, though, because after the council meeting ends and the wizards starting heading home, Harry drives over to Murphy's place and receives a pretty cold welcome here, Brian.

Brian (01:11)
Yeah, and you know, we haven't seen Murphy this book, so we don't really know where she and Harry stand. I mean, the last time we saw her in grave peril, she wasn't really in the mood for talking. So it's possible when you start reading this scene that you're expecting this cold shoulder, this this chilly reception.

To be directed at Harry because Murphy, once again, doesn't feel positively about Harry Dresden. But it's not really because of.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (01:43)
No, it's really very clear over the course of this chapter that Murphy is dealing with significant trauma from the nightmare's attack on her mind.

The main cause is that she's having night terrors, which make it impossible for her to get a good night's sleep.

Brian (02:02)
And we don't really know what it was like for her to experience the spell that Harry put her under to try to put her into a dreamless sleep. Because maybe that just worked perfectly, and you're right, it was just the 10 or 15 minutes that the nightmare was there that actually caused all the psychological trauma. But maybe the entire time she was unconscious over the course of grave peril, she was

Intermittently or increasingly, as Harry's magic, you know, wore off with passing dawns, suffering from the you know, curses essentially that the nightmare laid upon her breaking back in. In any event, Adam, it has put her in such a state that when Harry arrives, she actually forces him to take steps to ensure that he's not.

a a fairy or some other magical creature, that he is indeed a human being, which does not seem to be the kind of thing Murphy would be doing at the beginning of like fool mood.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (03:06)
No, she meets him at the door with a gun on him. And she's obviously taking that as a precaution since the thing that caused all this trauma was a thing that looked like Harry Dresden.

this is growth for her character. She should know to be on the watch for things like this that try to enter her home pretending to potentially be something else. She now knows how to defend herself. She's taking that threat seriously in a way that she never did before. It just obviously is tragic that she had to go through all this trauma to learn that lesson properly.

and the apparent cause of this trauma when Harry first walks is Murphy's first husband having recently passed away due to cancer. She's got an old photo album out and the obituary on the table and she doesn't really say anything. She just kind of nods when Harry puts things together, but that's not really what this is about.

Brian (04:03)
there's lots of reasons that Jim gives us to know that Murphy's actually upset about deeper recurring issues in her life. But the thing that I think is the most telling is that she answers the door in her bathrobe and tests Dresden to see if he's human while she's in that outfit. And then she stays in her bathrobe.

For the entire first part of their conversation, only leaving at one point, as far as Dresden can tell, as an excuse to go cry in the wake of the talk they've been having. But when she comes back, she's not in clothes that are, know, sort of more like day wear, and she doesn't keep on the bathrobe. She comes back in a t-shirt and what seems like men's shorts.

She's not comporting herself as somebody who has company over and is going to, you know, talk with them about this murder case that Harry wants to discuss. She seems like somebody is struggling to keep it together and even remain presentable in front of another human being. And that's not Murphy when she's sad. That's Murphy when she's, as Harry notices.

Mixing gin and valium.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (05:23)
But one of the things that I think is very interesting here is Jim is doing multiple things here at the same time. And that's something we talk about a lot is Jim is very efficient in his writing. He put together this scene, decided how he was going to have Murphy appear and get handle this situation, what he was going to do to her, like have the first husband thing. And it works so damn well because A, we're fleshing out Murphy's character into a more three dimensional character.

We've really only seen her in one context where she's the cop and Harry is her responsibility. That's kind of been the situation where she's been in the past. Now we're finally seeing her outside of her job and seeing more about her backstory and how the past books have affected her. So those things are all great. But at the same time, Murphy having a dead husband allows Harry to tell the Elaine backstory.

Right before the reader needs to know it. Elaine is literally waiting for us in the next chapter. So we need to know about his history with her outside the one or two hints that we got, I think, in Full Moon with Bob and Harry's subconscious. So now we have this extra bit of backstory for the reader. And at the same time

It allows her to have an arc in this book to where she has to overcome her fear. So it fleshes out her character a little bit more and gives her some way to grow as a character in this book, which we really haven't seen her do a lot of. We've seen their relationship evolve, but we haven't seen her character change very much.

Brian (07:03)
Yeah, and on top of all of that, by giving Murphy a dead ex husband, as opposed to a dead grandmother or a dead aunt or something like that, Jim is putting Murphy in a similar psychological state to Harry, who is reeling from the loss of Susan, even as he's having trouble grappling with sort of how.

the events of grave peril have affected him psychologically. So they're both traumatized. And now they both have these, ex-lovers who are gone to greater or lesser degrees. And I think this is important because I believe that Jim intended for Murphy and Harry to be parallels all along in the first three books. You're supposed to see them.

As very similar characters, and the conflicts between them are sort of dramatic because of how thin the lines are. But I don't think Jim did a great job of it in the first three books, of of showing us how similar they are. How Harry is, yeah, he's a PI, but he's got a very strict code and he follows the rules. And Murphy, yeah, she's a cop, but she's a little bit of a maverick and she's a little bit unorthodox. And you know, they're right, they're right across from each other, running in in perfect parallel.

And here he's hitting it on the nose a little bit. He's putting Murphy in a very similar situation the Harry we saw at the beginning of this book,

but through a circumstance that he's contrived especially for this chapter.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (08:36)
Yeah, that's a great point about them running parallel on opposite sides of the law, but really close to that line. And it also continues and mirrors itself as Harry becomes more official and part of like the actual team. When he becomes a warden, he like crosses that line to the official line.

Murphy winds up going to the other side, for example, when we go into proven guilty and she goes off the reservation and gets busted down a rank or something to that effect and eventually winds up losing her job. Now

Harry doesn't stay a warden. He goes on the outs with the council eventually. But for those first twelve books or so, they're riding that line pretty close. And then when Harry crosses over to the to the more official side, she d crosses over to the more unofficial side. And now they're on opposite sides that from where they started, but they're still riding the middle of that line pretty close.

Brian (09:27)
Yeah, they're a helix. They keep spinning around the the law together. Yeah. And I think it's really important that we see Murphy just almost too screwed up to put on any kind of a mask because it allows Jim to deepen that character parallel. Harry, by this point, by this chapter, has got his game face on to a certain extent. He is

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (09:30)
Exactly. Yeah.

Brian (09:55)
No longer just moping entirely, he's acting again, right? In the beginning of this book, Will has to drag him to the place where there was a reign of toads. But ever since he met Mab in his office, Harry has been very goal-oriented. And Murphy, we get to see here, is stuck in the same rut Harry's been stuck in.

And now his presence is going to give her the impetus to become more goal-oriented again. And that's important. We have to see Harry be a little bit good for Murphy. Because as much as maybe she hasn't been super likable the first three books of the series, Harry has not made her life better. And if these characters are really going to be friends, they have to start being good for each other.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (10:47)
Yeah, and in much the same way that we talked about Harry needing to accept the fact of what happened to Susan and the fact that he can't change it, you know, go through those stages of grief that we kind of talked about in that first episode for Summer Night. Murphy has a similar problem. She's trying to accept the fact that there are things that she cannot control, right?

something she cannot prepare for. If a poltergeist, ghost, demon, whatever it is, wants to get inside her head, she literally cannot stop it. And that realization of her powerlessness in that situation is something that she has to accept and then start relying on Harry's help in those situations. And this is

Part of what she has to go through in this book and say, okay, maybe I am helpless in those situations, but not everybody is. I'm gonna support the guy who can kick its ass, and that's how she makes her way forward here. But she also has to confront the fears that have been holding her down. That's how she's gonna get over this. And it's really impressive that Jim has Harry come to that conclusion in this very chapter when she insists.

I'm coming with you. If this is a murder, you're bringing me in on it.

Brian (12:09)
Yeah, and I love the dialogue that leads up to that. And we're gonna get to it in a second, because I think there's a nominee for best line in the series there. But I also think it's really cool because in the hands of a lesser writer, it would stop there, Adam. But over the course of this book, Jim is going to make sure that we know that yes, Murphy was helpless in grave peril. But

She is going to at times in this book be the person saving Harry's ass. I'm thinking of Walmart specifically. And that's really necessary because Jim doesn't just leave it subtextual. He has Harry say in a way she'd been raped. All of her power had been taken away and she'd been used for the amusement of another.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (12:44)
Yes, the chainsaw.

Brian (12:59)
Jim is a equal opportunity with the sexual violence metaphor. He has Harry, you know, a sec effectively be the recipient of the same, as we spoke about in the con when we were contextualizing his experiences in grave peril. But he's applying it to Murphy here. just like he shows that even Harry Dresden can have something like that happen to him, he makes it a point to show Murphy at her low point after that experience.

And then a few chapters later, show her kicking ass and killing monsters with a chainsaw like she's from evil dead. And that you know, journey that he has her take is the kind of thing that you know I I feel like another author author would not necessarily take the care to do. But I also want to point out that Jim is really wonderful in that he gives us this.

As Murphy's getting brought into the investigation. I thought this was an accidental death. I hear it isn't. Where'd you hear that? A magic fairy told me.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (14:03)
God, you're being

literal, aren't you? she says. That is pretty good.

Brian (14:08)
Just

just incredible.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (14:10)
And that's when Murphy prints out the case files that she has access to on her computer, and they go over the facts of the case. So J.R.R. Tolkien dies falling down I'm sorry, I mean Ronald Rule dies falling down the stairs. there was a security guard that didn't see anyone ex enter or exit. There's no other ways in or out of the building that don't have alarms on them. The first officer on the scene found slippery goo on the landing, which Harry thinks might be ectoplasm. and then Harry sort of confirms that via the pictures. Rule's sleeves look wet.

And then we also have a fact that Mab provided earlier. She says something was stolen from him, but does not go any further into elaborating on that. So those are the facts of the case as we know here. And of course, Harry knows the assertion that Mab says he was murdered. this is not a lot to go on here, Brian.

Brian (14:58)
No. In fact, Murphy says, God, that poor old man. And Harry goes, I don't think he was helpless, Murph. Rule was mixed up with the fairies. I kinda doubt his hands were squeaky clean. And Murphy says, Okay, had he made any supernatural enemies? And all Harry can respond with is, you know, holding up a picture of his body and saying, Looks like it. You know, that's his suspects list. Could be anybody.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (15:19)
Yeah.

Exactly right. so that's where he he's he's coming in on the ground floor, Murph. You gotta give him some help here. he he's not a homicide detective. That's why he came to you. All right. So after she basically forces him to promise to bring her in if it turns out to be a murder, she finally manages to fall asleep and Harry goes home to get shower, food, sleep, and instead

He finds a surprise waiting for him inside his wards.

Brian (15:51)
And then there she was, a slender woman standing by my cold fireplace, all graceful curves and poised reserve. She wore a pair of blue jeans over long cultish legs with a simple scarlet cotton t shirt. A silver pentacle hung outside the shirt.

Resting on the curve of modest breasts, and it gleamed in the light from my readied blasting rod. Her skin was pale, like the inner bark of an oak, the living part of the tree, her hair the brown gold of ripe wheat, her eyes the grey of storm clouds. Her fine mouth twitched first into a smile, and then into a frown, and she lifted elegant, long fingered hands to show me empty palms. I let myself in.

she murmured. I hope you don't mind. You should change your wards more often.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (16:40)
Yeah, it's the return of Elaine. that is a great introduction. She just shows up inside of his wards, and that is of course one of the pieces of evidence she says like to prove that's who she is in the very next chapter. But one thing in that description there, Brian, stands out. The silver pentacle hung outside the shirt. Now, as far as I know

There are only two other people in the entire series that we've found who wear silver pentacles like that, and it's Harry and Thomas. Now we know that the reason they both wear it is because they both received it from the same person, their mother. Why does Elaine seem to have the same pentacle? Is this a Luke and Leia thing?

Brian (17:26)
Yeah, I think it's obvious, Adam. You know, Jim has denied that, you know, Margaret had three children, but we know that Jim lies. And ha Elaine is clearly Harry's sister. he's just ripping off Star Wars again. No. I think that we can fundamentally take Jim's word for it on two fronts. First, that Elaine is not.

related to Harry, or at least is not a sibling of Harry's. And second, that Harry's pentacle amulet is a symbol of his faith in magic. And what that means is that seeing Elaine wearing a silver pentacle amulet is like if you were, a member of the the Greek Orthodox Church or

The church of the East in Syria or something. you know, some religious movement that, you know, there might be a lot of people who are in your general, sort of faith, but there's very few people who believe exactly what you believe in your area. And you go outside and you see somebody else wearing a chain with that orthodox cross on it, or with that, that symbol that shows that,

We believe in the same things. Now it's really interesting that Harry got that from his mother because I don't think Elaine got it from Justin.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (18:58)
I don't think so either.

And so there's only one person that we know for sure gave those to Harry and Thomas, and that's Margaret. Now, what we can what we also know about Margaret is she had some very unorthodox views about what the White Council should be and what wizards should be. And maybe that also ties into the sort of ideology around this pentacle.

And what it r represents. Harry mentions multiple times. It talks about the various elements of magic all contained within a human will, controlled and and directed for good, essentially. That really resonates with what

Harry describes as sort of Ebenezer's teaching about magic, which does make sense. If Margaret got her sort of ideas about what magic is for from Ebenezer, it would make sense that he would impart that same kind of philosophy to Harry. And like you said, there could be other people out there that sort of believe in that philosophy of why magic exists, what it should be used for, etc., etc. And

Maybe Elaine's actual parents were people in that movement, in that philosophy, ideology, religion, whatever you want to call it, that sort of belief system around magic. And that brings up another question. We've speculated that Margaret may have tried to make Harry as a starborn. Maybe Elaine's parents did too.

Brian (20:36)
Right. I mean, the pentacle could be a symbol of good that has been largely co-opted by wizards who are members of the circle, the Black Council. Elaine could be equally as Harry, they're both raised by DeMorne, a product of that group's efforts to create a star-born wizard for this cycle. It could be even more specific than that, And

Look, we're crossing into fan theory territory here. This is, you know, something that a lot of people who read the series think is completely wrong. But if and we're gonna have to talk about this in this chapter that's coming up, so we might as well mention it now. If Simon Petrovich is Cal and Elaine is Kumori, this is often speculated.

It might make sense that the reason why Elaine was a wizard put under the care of Justin DeMourne, just like Harry, is because she was a member of the Black Council's attempt at creating a starborn, except in her case, it was Petrovic, and she's in some way related to him, his granddaughter, or even just daughter. And that would make a lot of sense if.

Given the Pentacles, because one thing that we know is that Ebenezer and Petrovich were friends. And it seems like they were fairly close friends. And that suggests that they probably, at least ostensibly, had similar beliefs about magic itself. So if they were members of the same sort of magic theology group, then they would both.

possibly have descendants who were wearing symbols of that faith. And the very funny thing is, Adam, Ebenezer, I think obviously, does not share the same opinions his daughter does about the role of magic in the world. But just like how, you know, in Catholicism post Vatican II, liberation theology,

sort of gave a a new meaning to symbols of that faith for people in certain situations. It might be that the sort of circle group of pentacle wearers has the same belief in the symbol that Ebenezer does, that it's magic directed by human will, but takes that to a much greater extreme than the old man.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (23:08)
Yeah, and it's entirely possible that Ebenezer got more conservative as he aged, that maybe something that happened in his life made him turn away from the more progressive views that he initially held, that Margaret still held. I'm hoping we learn a lot more about this in the future.

Brian (23:25)
Well, I was just gonna say, yeah, it might be the case that the backstory between Ebenezer and Listens to Wind, the war that they fought on opposite sides of, is the explanation for Ebenezer thinking that wizards shouldn't be political.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (23:40)
Yeah, we have that word of Jim where he talks about in an interview that listens to Wind and Ebenezer were on opposite sides of the French and Indian War here in North America,

But that's a whole nother topic, and we might learn more about it in the future. For now, let's move on to chapter eight, where Harry discusses the fact that Elaine is still alive. He can't believe it. But why was he so insistent on the fact that she was dead? I mean, didn't his subconscious tell him that she was alive in full moon? And I think Bob mentioned it once or twice too.

Brian (24:14)
Yeah, I mean he has some evidence. Harry says he looked for her, quote, in fire and water, I had spirits combing the earth for any trace of you, hoping you'd survived. So he did literally find no evidence of her living, and and that might, you know, make somebody think that she's dead. I mean, you know, it's it's that's pretty good evidence from a wizard's perspective. But I think it's deeper than that.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (24:43)
Yeah, honestly, I think some part of him did not want her to be alive because her betrayal or apparent betrayal traumatized him so much that he didn't want to have to confront her about it. He wanted to just put it behind him and not think about it anymore. And if she was alive, it meant that he would have to confront that and

Do something about it. And now she's here and that's exactly what has to happen.

Brian (25:14)
Okay, Adam, but that doesn't necessarily make sense to me. I mean, just in the last chapter, Harry said that he, Justin, tried a spell that would break into my head, make me do what he wanted. So Harry knows that Justin was trying to enthrall him.

Why didn't it occur to him that Enlay was enthralled?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (25:39)
Yeah, this l speaks to Harry's earlier trauma as a child in the orphanage after his father has died and he knew his mother had died when she was giving birth to him. So over the course of his life, he learned the lesson that like good things don't really happen to people. Don't get your hopes up. They'll just get dashed, right? Every time at the orphanage he thought he was going, he didn't go, and then Justin comes in.

And saves him from this and is teaching him magic, and it's too good to be true. Some part of him was always like, This is too good to be true. It has to be a trick. Something's gonna go wrong. And so when Justin appears to betray him, and Elaine appears to be helping him, he is ready, he is primed to believe that. I knew it, I knew it was too good to be true.

I knew something was wrong. I should never have let myself hope it opened me up to this pain. And he jumps to that conclusion that she's part of the setup. It sounds so irrational because he's had this relationship with her for years. Is he really coming to the conclusion that she was setting this up for years? Is she that good an actor?

No, he's a kid and he's tr and he's traumatized. He's not using reason to come to this conclusion. It's an emotional conclusion and once he's there, he doesn't have a good reason to doubt it, to be skeptical of it, because again, it's an emotional decision and you can't reason someone out of something they didn't reason themselves into.

Brian (27:24)
And you know what, that actually makes a lot of sense from an emotional perspective, because the alternative that Elaine was enthralled, that she was innocent, and he can't find her because she's dead means that ultimately he killed her and she really did love him.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (27:45)
Yes, that's a much more tragic thing for him to accept than she betrayed me and died as a consequence of my fight with Justin. That is much less painful to believe.

Brian (27:59)
Or it's painful, at least in a way that's familiar to Harry, as you were mentioning it. Good things don't last, they're not real, it never, you know, really is there to help you. She was just like Justin. You know, you can put them in the same box. But in this other universe where Elaine was enthralled, and Harry's in part responsible for her death, and it it really was true. God, then the only thing that ever was real in his life was taken away from him.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (28:03)
Hmm.

Brian (28:27)
That's the kind of secret that could turn you into the exact kind of dark wizard that the council thought he might become. So a lot of psychological protection for himself in not making the assumption that Elaine was enthralled. And I think we get some confirmation that it was always an emotional consideration.

Because he's very easily persuaded to effectively believe her.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (28:58)
Yeah, and we we learn most of what we're describing here during Ghost Story when Harry recalls all of this in more detail. And the quote that I pulled out to support this is quote, And Elaine, she just sat there while he'd been doing whatever he was going to do. She hadn't tried to warn me. She hadn't tried to stop him. I had never known anyone in my life I had loved as much as her. I should have known she was could to too good to be true. Unquote. So

That speaks to his state of mind at that moment, right? He's recalling the memories and the emotions from that exact time, when he's telling that story to his godmother. Now, that does bring us to the next piece here, which is a little bit of an inconsistency. It's a bit of a retcon, because what Elaine said is, quote, Justin caught me about two weeks before he sent that demon to capture you. That day I stayed home sick, remember? Unquote.

In Ghost Story the chronology is a little bit different, Brian.

Brian (29:56)
Right. In Ghost Story, Harry comes home from school early the day that Elaine stayed homesick and sees Justin, presumably in the process of enthralling Elaine, who then has to spring his trap on Harry before it's truly ready.

And later that same night is when he sends he who walks behind after Harry

and Harry might return to the apartment two weeks later ultimately. We don't know how long he spent with Leah, but the whole timescale seems to be compressed from that two week period. Now, it's possible that that's a retcon, but one thing we should flag that Jim is setting up to be a possibility here is that Elaine is lying about literally everything the whole time.

From the first sentence she speaks in this chapter. So either this is a little bit of a retcon, or Elaine is lying and that's why the story's

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (30:48)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So the other thing that I thought was very interesting here is the way that she describes being enthralled. Cause we never really get anyone described that to us. We do see it a little bit later, kind of in proven guilty. It's a different kind of magic, you know, mind magic used there, but we do see it in especially with Lucio in turncoat with what Peabody is doing to the senior council and the wardens.

But what we get here is quote I didn't know it was happening. Not at the time. I didn't have the ability to think clearly. Justin told me that you just needed to be shown what to do and that if I would hold you long enough to let him explain things to you, it would all work out. I believed him, trusted him. I never wanted to hurt you, Harry, never, I'm sorry, unquote.

Brian (31:46)
Yeah, and the thing I think is really cool about this is it seems like with Lucio and Turncoat, she was just sort of given one truth. That she was romantically interested in Harry Dresden. And basically, apart from literally being the person to kill Aleron the Fourtier, she was not otherwise messed with. And we know that that really screws her up. It seems like Justin gave Elaine

A whole slew of truths about the world that she was too suggestible towards him to reject. And that is part of the reason that she was so unlike herself when Harry gets there, not moving according to you know his testimony. But it's also part of the reason why, and we're going to come back to this probably in this book. So I figure I'll also mention this now.

It's part of the reason why the next time we see Elaine in White Knight, she will be expressing such extreme revulsion against the idea of being under anyone else's thumb ever again. Because the way in which she was enthralled wasn't maybe for as long as Lucio or as long as Peabody was manipulating this the senior council, but it was to a degree and with sort of a

brute forceness that we never see again in the series and is unlike anything that happens to anyone else we know of.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (33:12)
Yeah, I mean, everything that we do see happen with Peabody, it's all very subtle and it takes place over a long period of time, which probably makes it much harder to notice that these people have been manipulated and messed with. With Elaine, when you read Ghost Story and Harry's recollection of what happens, he describes her in a way that also almost makes it sound like she's been drugged.

Like it's very clear from his memory, the way he describes it in that story, that something is wrong with her. And he doesn't see it as a kid, right? We just explained why. He's ready to believe the betrayal. And so that's what jumps into his mind. But his recollection, the way he describes it, if he was thinking clearly, he would have noticed that something was wrong with her. Nobody noticed anything was wrong with the senior counsel. Nobody noticed anything was wrong with Lucio. As you said.

Those were not as brute force as this was, so it does make sense that she could have been at least as traumatized as Lucio was after that was revealed.

Brian (34:15)
Yeah, I mean she acts like she's been lobotomized. And whenever somebody's, you know, acting like they've suffered severe brain damage, you know, we can expect that the psychological damage that they've suffered is really severe. And that might explain part of the reason why Elaine never reintegrated as far as she says it.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (34:18)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (34:37)
with mortal society, that it took her actually a long time in the summer court to get over the psychological trauma she'd experienced to the point where she could just function again. and if you're 16 and you miss three years of interacting with the world because you're having a mental breakdown, well, it's really hard to step back into it.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (34:58)
Yeah, and one of the pieces of evidence that suggests that what you're talking about there is correct is that she doesn't go looking for Harry. And the way that she describes that in this chapter when he asks, Why didn't you come looking for me? Is she said

Quote, at first because I didn't even know you had survived, and after that, I wasn't sure if I wanted to, wasn't sure if you'd want me to. So much happened. Unquote. Now, that could be true, and that could be speaking to exactly the emotional trauma that you're describing, or it could be part of the bigger lie. I mean, Brian, why is she even here? Do we know for a fact that she's being genuine?

Before she learns he's the winter knight, does she even know that? There's so much to cover.

Brian (35:47)
Yeah. So Elaine tells Harry that she had been granted asylum by the summer court, which is why she's here now acting as the summer emissary.

And the way it goes down on pages, Elaine is about to reveal that when Harry preempts her by saying, and Titania wants you to be her emissary, then reveals that he's been named the winter emissary. And I just want to read Elaine's reaction in the text because I think that interpreting this is honestly really important. Yeah.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (36:26)
It took us two hours.

Brian (36:29)
Elaine's eyes widened in shock and she fell silent. We stared at each other for a long moment before she whispered. Stars and stones. She pushed her hair back from her face with one hand in what I knew to be a nervous gesture, even if it didn't look it. Harry, if I don't succeed, if I don't fulfill my debt to her, I'm

ellipses.

It's going to be very bad for me.

Okay, so the way let's just surface level thing, Adam. The way Elaine is telling is that she doesn't know Harry's the Winter Emissary.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (37:08)
Yes, that's that's what is apparent in the situation.

Brian (37:12)
Just came over to his house cause she was in town.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (37:16)
And she's in real deep trouble and she needs help.

Brian (37:18)
Right. Classic, you know, femme fatale. This could be, I was gonna say Lucille Ball. What is what is what is Bogart's the woman he married?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (37:28)
Lauren Bacall?

Brian (37:30)
Yes, yeah. Classic like Bacall delivering the line to Bogart in the film, right? But that's papering over that trope, the use of that trope is papering over the fact that isn't this a coincidence, huh?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (37:47)
Yeah, and Harry chalks it up to like Mab and Titania are laughing right now. They got a sick sense of humor, right? And we know that Mab and Titania haven't spoken for a millennia. So they could not have gotten together and said, wouldn't it be funny if we made these two the emissaries, right? So that obviously can't be the reason they're both here right now. we know that.

Mab chose Harry, and she probably knows about Harry's relationship with Elaine, because Harry probably explained it to Leah when he was asking her for help in going to fight Justin. We could maybe assume that Titania knows something about Elaine's history with Harry, but we don't really know that for sure, and there's not nearly as guaranteed a reason for her to have filled Titania in about that past as there was for when Harry's like

Hey Leah, I need power to go save my girlfriend from my mentor. Well, she's gonna know about the girlfriend. She's gonna know her name. She's probably gonna keep tabs on her, knows that she's in the summer court. She can put two and two together. Mab can put two and two together. And that could help us explain the question that we spent, I don't know, 20 minutes trying to answer on our first episode. Why did Mab come and choose Harry at

This moment when he's at his lowest point in a long time, well, one of the reasons we didn't outright state is because Elaine is the summer emissary and Mab is like, I'll pick somebody that knows her that will be more effective.

Brian (39:29)
And holy smokes, if Mab did that, she's a goddam genius. Which leads me to believe that Mab did do that, and she's a goddamn genius. But to lay this out, that would make perfect sense. The summer knight was killed. The summer mantle was stolen. The first court to

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (39:35)
Ha ha ha ha.

Yes.

Brian (39:55)
An emissary to investigate the case should be Summer. They have an interest in solving it and setting things to right. Now, Mab doesn't like Mab wants the case to be solved. She doesn't actually want to prevent that. But she is sort of obligated to counter Summer. And a great way to kill a bunch of birds with one stone is to appoint someone.

Who the Summer Emissary won't work against. Because in that point, whatever Summer's doing, you just ensure that it's not going to hurt your interests by putting them in the hands of somebody who Summer is not able to target. And that literally happens. Elaine, on multiple occasions, takes steps to ensure that Harry.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (40:25)
Yeah.

Brian (40:46)
And thus Winter's interests in the matter persist.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (40:51)
Yeah, and one other thing to remember here, Brian, it might not be something everybody remembers on a reread, Elaine has already assisted in Rule's assassination. Whether she went there knowing that it was gonna be an assassination attempt, or they just said, Hey, we just need you to help us open the way, get us into his apartment, we're gonna talk to him, and then Slate kills the guy in front of her, that could have been how it went. Who knows? We don't get those details, but

Harry figures this out by the end of the book and trying to answer the question of why is Elaine here if she's already in this thing with Aurora and she comes in and apparently doesn't know Harry's the winter knight, asking for his help, what the heck is going on? Brian

I think it's gonna be very helpful if we quickly run down the chronology of this book from Elaine's perspective, working backwards from Harry's revelations throughout the book to figure out what is her timetable in comparison to Harry's.

Brian (41:53)
Right. So as you mentioned, the first thing is that Elaine helps Slate kill Rule. Now, put a pin in that because we're the the next thing is that Elaine is named Emissary, and the relationship between those two events is very interesting to say the least. But then Elaine is named Emissary, and then we're here. She goes to see Harry, according to her, for help.

Because she's in over her head. Now, what we're suggesting is that Mab might name Harry between those two events. Elaine is named Emissary, Mab knows that, Mab picks Harry, and then Elaine, arrives in Chicago again and goes to see Harry. Then Elaine learns Harry is Winter Emissary. Now, at this point, everything we just said.

We can be fairly confident that it all happened with no real editorializing needed. But at the moment that Elaine learns Harry is the winter emissary.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (42:59)
Or apparently learns. Yeah.

Brian (43:00)
Right. But at the moment that Lane Elaine apparently learns that Harry is the winter emissary.

Everything she does needs to be examined from sort of multiple angles because we don't actually know specifically what Elaine's deal is in the book. So what we can say is that Elaine thinks quickly enough to not mention anything about Aurora's plan.

To Harry. Maybe she wasn't going to do that in the first place, but she manages not to put any suspicion on Aurora. And she's also even going to go hang out around or investigate Maeve without mentioning that to Harry.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (43:50)
So at this point, we're gonna take Harry's revelations throughout the book as gospel, but again, this is Harry putting things together. Aurora does kind of confirm some of them, but a lot of them when Harry reveals them, she doesn't confirm or deny. She's has very fay answers where she questions things instead of giving a straight answer. So Elaine is then attacked by Slate.

On Maeve's orders, and when Slate comes back, Harry is there at Maeve's undertown court, and Maeve gets all mad because the knife with blood on it is of no use because the blood has been burned and charred and so it's no longer good. Now, we can assume that because Slate is working with Aurora,

He probably made sure that the blood was no good, because he wants Elaine, who's also on Team Aurora, to not be killed or captured by Maeve. That would reveal a lot of very sensitive information. So at that point, we now have Elaine finding Harry's car and going to Aurora for help. Now, Harry insists that this was probably faked.

Right, he thinks they were all in on it and the injuries might not have been real, but we don't know that for sure. Slate seems like the guy kind of guy who would be happy to inflict real injuries even on his allies, if he was if it was part of the greater plan.

Brian (45:20)
Right. It's like when you get Russell Crowe in a film and the script says, you know, and then he fake punches the stunt double, right? But it's Russell Crowe, so he's actually gonna punch you. You know, it's the same thing with Slate. Aurora's like, okay, and then you need to fake stab her and get s and he just stabs her, gets her blood of the knife, and then burns it because he wants it to be convincing that she needs to be treated medically.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (45:30)
Yeah.

Brian (45:49)
And it's convincing enough that Harry rushes Elaine straight to Aurora where he is told to, where Aurora either actually heals or apparently heals Elaine and is able to meet Harry under grounds of her choosing to sort of throw his investigation off in exactly the right way.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (46:13)
Yeah, Harry never actually winds up asking Aurora if she did it. He does do that to basically all the other queens that he has access to. And so as a result here, he's off balance.

and the next time that we see Elaine, she's at the airport. Harry tracks her down, and we presume that she's trying to flee, but we know that part of Aurora's plan requires Harry making it to the mother's cottage in order to get the unraveling, right? That's the main part of the plan that they can use that on the stone table with Lily, etc. etcetera. So maybe Elaine was

Ordered to get him there and she's trying to run away to protect him. She's worried that he's gonna get killed going to see the mothers. She's heard terrible things. Now she's trying to and she tries to convince him to come with her to not go see the mothers, and he instead convinces her to actually come with him and guide him to that cabin.

Brian (47:15)
Now, that also could be all part of the plan. I mean, Harry is somebody who it's it's pretty easy to reverse psychology. If you tell him don't push that button, it will ruin my plans. He wants to push the button. That's all he wants to do. So maybe.

That's all part of the deception. And Elaine does bind him for Aurora. Now she also sets it up so that he can escape. But the way that she acts seems to be putting Aurora in a position to ultimately succeed. And she saves Harry's life on the battlefield in the climax of the book, but then tries to talk him out.

Of going after Aurora directly. So is she actually trying to stop Aurora when she gives Harry a way out? Or just keep him alive and still help Aurora? And then Elaine helps Harry get through the Thorn Barricade to kill Aurora and shows up at the end of the book claiming she's free of summer influence because she owed everything.

Everything to Aurora and Adam, that last bit might be interesting.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (48:27)
Yeah, because in the chapter we're talking about here, chapter eight, she states, quote, I built up a debt to Titania, the Summer Queen, in exchange for her protection, and now it's time to pay it off. Unquote. So either she owed a debt to Titania and Aurora, and the debt to Titania is paid by being the Summer Emissary, then she's free of both of them. That's probably the simplest explanation.

Another explanation? She's lying here, and she's actually here at the behest of Aurora, and that her coming here had some part of the goal of Aurora's goal in play.

Brian (49:08)
Okay, so the key question, aside from whether Elaine is Kumori, is when we meet her in this scene, does Elaine start manipulating Harry from the jump? Or does she only start lying to him after

Harry reveals that he's the winter emissary. Because if it's the former, that makes a lot of sense in the context of how Harry describes her actions at the end of the book.

But if it's the latter, that I think makes a lot more sense with the emotions she expresses. And Adam, I feel like for the purposes of understanding this story, a lot of which happens to Elaine off screen, we need to know how genuine she is.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (50:04)
Yeah, to me, the whole scene is written in a way that convinces me that she's pretty genuine. It's possible that this whole thing, she's especially if she's Kimori and she's hiding this dark past that she has, like you were talking about, where she's maybe yes, she was in the summer court for some time, but she was also being shielded by Cowell aka Simon Petrovich, maybe for some of that. If she's hiding all of that, then maybe there's

More deception going on here than is apparent. And we'll find out later that mwa ha ha ha she's actually been a great actress, and this was all a deception. All the time she was helping Harry, she was actually manipulating him, or something like that. I just don't buy it. It seems to me that there's enough here to suggest that, okay, she might be hiding something, but a lot of her nervousness, a lot of her fear is genuine, both in this chapter and in the rest of the book.

Brian (50:57)
See, I see exactly the same evidence you do, and I also think she's genuine, but I think that actually militates in the opposite direction. So if Elaine is Aurora's puppet and she's working for her and she owes Aurora, the only reason that she should come here is if Aurora told her to to misdirect the Winter Emissary, in my mind.

Obviously Aurora could just be incompetent because we you know she's not perfect at running this scheme, but I feel like keeping tabs in the enemy's movements is like the first rule of running a covert operation.

And the thing that makes that really interesting is if Elaine isn't really helping Aurora because she owes her or believes in her, but because someone's told her to do it, that gives me a lot more of a natural reason to believe that she has misgivings. And for me, it explains the gap between Dresden's cold description of her actions as a treacherous beast.

Bitch at the end of the book, and the inner conflict she actually appears to have on page, because she's not really supposed to be here. She didn't really think she was getting herself into this. She's trying to help the world. And that's the only reason she's here assisting Aurora. That's why, even though she does ultimately believe in the greater cause she's serving.

She does in the end pull Harry's ass out of the fire.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (52:33)
Yeah, and that does make her a bit more of a tragic figure to get shoved into this whole thing because she is trying to make the g world better in some way.

Brian (52:41)
Right, which is I think really important for understanding her general characterization. Harry is a bit of a modern tragic hero in the fact that he does ultimately seem to be getting happy endings. Elaine might just be totally tragic.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (52:56)
it just makes plenty of sense. If you're in Elaine's shoes and you're in Chicago, you've just wound up assisting in the murder of the summer night, whether premeditated on your part or not, and you're kind of stuck now trying to investigate said murder on behalf of a different supernatural goddess, and suddenly you're like, I I

Who can I possibly trust with this information that will actually help me? That list has gotta be one name long. And that's Harry. So I I really do think she came here looking for assistance. And when when she realized that Harry was also investigating the same thing for the other side, she realized, crap, I can't admit anything to him. And now

I've got to worry about screwing him over by doing my job too well.

It's just it's it's such a tragic position to put her in. And having her get wrapped up in summer while he's wrapped up in winter is just such a great mirror that h that Jim can play with.

Brian (54:04)
Yeah. I personally think that Elaine's story is a more tragic mirror of Harry's story in its totality. And we're gonna talk about that as we go through this book. We're gonna also talk about that basically whenever Elaine appears throughout the series. I think that Jim's doing it deliberately, he's building these parallels starting from the first time we see her wearing his pentacle to set them up not just as foils, but with her

Her as sort of the darker, worse, more disturbed version of Harry's character. Exactly, yes. And I'll say that despite the fact that I think that this chapter actually provides a very natural reading that you pointed out, Adam, that is compelling evidence against Elaine ultimately being Kumori and being that involved in the meta plot. Because

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (54:40)
There but there but for the grace of God go I kind of. Yeah.

Brian (55:01)
The way that Harry recounts the events in this chapter to us, Elaine seems like she's genuinely considering his idea of taking this whole thing and dumping it in the White Council's lap.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (55:14)
Yeah, which obviously they wouldn't necessarily like, but you know what? If you're about to give a whole bunch of juicy secrets to the White Council, boy, that's that's pretty tasty. They do love their secrets. They liked knowing all this stuff that's going on. They like meddling too, so giving them the opportunity to meddle would probably earn you some good graces. But yeah, at the end of this chapter, Harry suggests

There's only one way out of the situation. We've got to go to the council. They'll be able to figure a way out. They'll help us out of this, right? And Elaine is like, wait a minute, didn't they try to kill you for defending yourself? And he actually winds up in the position of devil's advocate here, where he's like, they're not all bad. There are some good people there. you know, we can trust them. They will help you. And when we get to the end of this, Harry says, It has to be your choice, Elaine.

But please believe me, trust me, I have friends in the council too. They'll help. Elaine's expression softened and became less certain. You're sure? Yeah, I said. Cross my heart. She leaned in on her oddly carved staff and frowned. She was opening her mouth to speak when my reinforced door rattled under the wrapping of a heavy fist. Dresden! Morgan growled from the other side of the door. Open up, traitor! There are questions I need you to answer. Now

Brian, that is just awful timing. We were about to hear if she was gonna take him up on that offer. It sounded like she was leaning in that direction. Do you think she was about to accept or was she about to make an excuse?

Brian (56:51)
So I think on page it is written, right? This is written that for us to believe that Elaine is here to deceive Harry. And in this moment, she's almost convinced to stop that and to go to the council and to try to get out of the awful position that she's in, being sort of Aurora's Patsy in this whole situation. And

She's so dissatisfied with the situation she's in that she's ready to take that leap of faith. It seems like Dresden just threw her a lifeline. And yeah, she's she doesn't really trust the council. I mean, Justin inculcated a lot of prejudices in Harry and Elaine not to trust the council, but it seems like she really wants there to be some way for her to get clear of this. And if she just goes,

goes to the council and if they'll protect her from the summer court, then she can expose what's really going on, and maybe everything can be okay. And then you know Morgan ruins it. That's one reading. I think that's how it's supposed to be read on

I don't think that's correct. And there's a couple of reasons why. The first is that that reading makes tons of sense if Elaine is telling essentially the whole truth about her backstory after Justin, that she's essentially been with the summer court the whole time, and basically has no one to turn to.

So offering her any lifeline to get out of this miserable mess she's been stuck in since she was 17 years old or something is very tempting. But I don't think that's what happened to Elaine. And because I don't think that, I think Elaine, when it says she leaned on her oddly carved staff and frowned, was about to make an argument.

we're going to hear in the future about why the White Council isn't a good solution. And that's what Morgan

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (58:53)
That's entirely possible. The one thing that I thought though is like, yeah, they almost killed Dresden, but he also almost broke the first law. She, as far as we know, hasn't come close to breaking any of the laws. So they wouldn't have any specific reason to go after her, would they? Unless maybe part of her backstory, as you suggested, is learning necromancy under Cowell?

that would be a pretty good reason to avoid the council because they're gonna be like, and then you were aware. Wait, that doesn't add up. Tell us the real story, you know, so that that might reveal some things she doesn't want get revealed.

Brian (59:34)
Yeah, and I think that something of a hint towards that is that Elaine knows that the ha council nearly executed Harry. Now, there's only a couple possibilities for how Elaine knows that. Either one, she was during the time that was happening, directly told that by someone who wanted her to know that.

Or two She just later happened to go to the trouble of working out exactly what happened to Harry in great detail from who

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:00:10)
Yeah, how many

people know about like the inner politics of trials of warlocks? There can't be that many. Even though Harry is fairly infamous, I don't know. There there there's a lot of scuttle bud about that that could make it all the way to the fairy courts where she's staying.

Brian (1:00:28)
Possibly, but one person who would have intimate and direct knowledge of the fact that Harry was nearly executed by the senior counsel would be senior councilman Simon Petrovitch, who could have very easily told Elaine, who being under, you know, the psychological after effects of being enthralled, probably would not have been capable of moving very far on her own. Simon could have very easily pulled Elaine out of

The situation at the crater that remained of Justin's house, and brought her off to Archangel, or some other fortress, or someplace in the Never Never where she could be safe, like the Summer Court, perhaps. And then given Elaine all the information she needed about everything that happened to people like Harry, and convinced her that she could never go to the council, because look what they almost did to him.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:01:21)
Yeah, so let's land this plane. We gotta come down on like two possibilities here. And I'm happy to take the Elaine is not Kumori side of things because I want that to be true. I'm like I'm like a Helene shipper. Like I want them to wind up together. I don't think that's gonna happen, but like it's where I wanna be. So

My interpretation of all of this chapter

So she owes Aurora this debt, which she says at the end of this book, which to me is the time when Jim is giving us all the real answers, right? It's a big big mystery book, lots of red herrings, but by the end, the hero is revealing what actually happened. Because now everything is settled, and so this is what actually happened. So I think she did actually owe.

Aurora, not Titania, or maybe it's they she owed both of them and they she paid them both off in this essentially. so because she owes Aurora, she helps kill Rule and realizes she's in way over her head when she gets named investigator into that crime by Titania, goes to Harry for help, realizes he can't help her because he's investigating for the defense, and so she then has to try to walk this tightrope.

Of keep myself alive and not hurt Harry for the rest of the book, which is essentially what she does. That is my take on this chapter. But Brian, I know that you have the Elaine is Kumori side of things locked down, so let's hear your full reading of it.

Brian (1:02:56)
Well, I'm gonna give it to you, but I wanna ask you a couple questions first, Adam.

my question for you is so in that version of the story, is Elaine after this meeting trying to help Aurora because she believes in what Aurora's doing, or because she doesn't see to how to get out from under her thumb?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:03:20)
think it's the latter, but if it is the former, I think it's a misunderstanding of the courts and the balance and what could happen, like we're going to get in the next episode where we talk to Bob and Bob explains that there's all the courts and here's

What happens if the courts get unbalanced, right? You'll get a new ice age if winter gets too strong, or you'll get rampant growth if summer gets too strong. And Harry misunderstands that he's like, that didn't sound too bad. And he's like, Yeah, not too bad if you're an Ebola virus. Like rampant growth can be very bad. So I think it's entirely possible that Aurora sort of misled.

Brian (1:03:55)
It's

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:04:02)
Elaine in the way that fairies do, by telling half truths without lying and saying, you know, winter is wicked and we're gonna stop them and put an end to it once and for all and without explaining that I'm gonna do that by giving winter all the power.

Maybe she's not revealing what the whole plan is gonna be, and so Elaine goes along with it initially and then has reservations when she starts seeing the plan unfold. And of course she has reservations when Harry gets involved on the other side.

But I think it's more likely that she is doing this because she's in a rock and a hard place, which is exactly the same reason that Harry is involved here at all.

Brian (1:04:39)
Yeah, and I think that would make a lot of sense. That would explain both the apparent reality of her injuries in the car scene, and it would explain her ultimately ending up in O'Hare or trying to flee until Harry drags her back into the situation. Because, you know, if she's not really committed to the plan, then her trying to get away and go on the run might seem like the best option, even if she thinks it'll get her killed. Okay.

Now for the Elaine is Kumori side of the equation. So step one is Elaine is lying from the jump with Harry here, but not about the stuff that pertains to this book. Elaine is skipping a step about what happened before she ended up at the summer court.

Which is that Justin's boss, his old master, Simon Petrovich, showed up, picked her out of the ruins of the house, and took her under his wing, potentially actually implanting a long-term conditioning brainwashing in her for reasons we'll get into later, similar to what happened to the senior counsel or to Lucia. And then eventually dropped her off at summer to hide her.

before Harry had the resources to send all the tracking spells after.

Elaine doesn't owe anything to Aurora directly. Elaine is working with Aurora because she's been told to. She's being honest here when she says she owes Titania That's why she has to take the job as summer emissary. That's the person who did hide her because she was asked to by a member of the senior council, Simon Petrovich. So Elaine owes the favor because.

She was hid in summer after she was originally taken out of the fire.

Elaine lies at the end of the book by saying that with Aurora's death, my debt is extinguished. She never owed Aurora in the first place. It's a convenient way to wrap things up without telling Harry why she really had to help Aurora. And the reason why she's fleeing at the end is because she assumes, because remember, Kumori is still working with Cowl The next time we see them.

in Deadbeat. And we know they're already working together because of Bianca's party.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:07:03)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:07:03)
She's getting ready to leave to flee because she assumes when she finds out more of the details about Aurora's plan, when she is actually harmed by Slate as part of that ruse, when the events of the plot are going down, like she's what she's a attempt, she's part of the team that tries to kill Harry when he's in the Walmart. She assumes, hey.

If Cowl had known that this is what they were gonna do, he actually wouldn't have sent me to help. He must have misunderstood. I'm gonna run away and go back to him and say, hey, boss, you know, I don't think we should really be helping these guys.

Elaine does come to Harry for help here, but part of the reason why is because she ultimately thinks Harry will help her with her ultimate goal, which is something we learn in Deadbeat. Kumori, Elaine, wants to end death.

Kumori thinks Harry's gonna go along with that in Deadbeat. Of course she would visit him here to try to get him on team, make everything in the world grow forever.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:08:18)
That could be true too, yeah.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:08:20)
Alright, all that having been said, we now have to move on to the next chapter where Morgan's busting down the door. Elaine has to hide in the bedroom. Harry lets Morgan in. He he gets a lot of great wise ass lines in there against Morgan until Morgan starts making some significant insinuations about Harry's relationship with Susan.

Brian (1:08:41)
Yeah, he directly calls Harry out as your lover, the vampire. They turned her, Dresden. No one goes back. That's all there is to it. And man, like she is totally not a vampire. Like, we know that. He's just straight up wrong, or he's straight up manipulative because he's not trying to tell the truth. He's just trying to get a rise out of.

I mean Adam, do you think Morgan believes any of the allegations he's actually throwing at Dresden in this scene?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:09:16)
I think it's possible he believes some of them, but there are some that we can just rule out, right? When he says no one goes back, that's obviously a lie. He's a hundred and fifty and he's a warden.

He must have interacted with the fellowship of St. Giles before. They're literally allies with the White Council that are helping them in the war in the coming books. Presumably they're already helping them now. The war's been going on for six months or so. So he obviously knows that that's not true. But

some of other things, though, where he says, Dresden, you might not be a bad person all in all, but I think you're compromised. If you aren't working with the Red Court, then I'm certain that they're using you. Either way, the threat to the council is the same, and it's best removed by removing you. Unquote. That to me sounds like the most genuine belief by Morgan in this moment. That one doesn't really get a rise out of Harry, but I think.

When he's working himself up from one level to the next, that's the most true Morgan we get.

Brian (1:10:18)
And I think that you're absolutely right because he has to believe that. The journal Microfiction casts an inordinately long shadow over the series for its length, but Morgan straight up says he promised Margaret Dresden to protect her son. This is the opposite of that. He's trying to kill him. So

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:10:38)
Yeah. So he has to

tell himself a story that makes that justified.

Brian (1:10:42)
Yeah. And if he's going to either he's like trying to make the sacrifice of breaking his word, which maybe if Dresden is the one trying to kill him, it won't count as that or something, right? Or he's actually convinced himself that in a way he's saving Harry's soul by having him die here before he can, you know, go full bad guy. And if that's what Morgan's trained himself to believe.

Maybe with some encouragement from Arthur Langtree, then it makes sense that he could get himself to say a bunch of nonsense that he doesn't really believe just to achieve that outcome. Because as much as Harry in the moment thinks of Morgan as just a mindless attack dog, we know that he is a man of not a lot, but very deep passions. And I don't think he would throw away this.

promise he's proclaimed that he's made lightly.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:11:41)
Yeah, I don't think so either. Now, the next piece that we get here Before Harry realizes he's being baited is that Harry almost attacks Morgan and quote, in that moment, I was sure that I could have killed him. He might have taken me with him, but I could have done it, unquote. And later in this chapter, after Morgan leaves,

Elaine reiterates this and says, You could have killed him. But Brian, this is the guy that led a battle charge through the nobles of the Red Court and almost killed the Red King, and he's ready and waiting for your attack. In fact, he's baiting you. Could Harry really have killed him?

Brian (1:12:26)
I think effectively no, not the way that Harry thinks in a sword fight. I think Elaine's right though, because she's more perceptive than he is. You could have killed him, Elaine said, when you first drew.

because I think what Elaine is suggesting is that not that he could have killed him in a sword fight, but that Harry could have killed him with magic, which is something that Elaine might not have the same prejudice against anymore that other wizards do. And that might be true. And I think that Morgan, that goddamn lunatic.

would see that as vindication, so he actually wouldn't have minded. And that's the only reason that it's possible Harry could have done it. But under all any other circumstance, no. Unless he right there unleashed the hardest spell he could, wasn't happy.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:13:18)
Yeah. So after that, Morgan does leave and as we said, Elaine comes out. They have a couple more words. Harry promises not to tell about her existence to the White Council. She leaves, says she'll be in contact, and that's the end of that chapter. now, next week we're going to be skipping that week. We have five Fridays in July, so we're only going to be doing four episodes, like we do most most months, but that means there will be no show on July tenth.

We'll be back on July 17th with chapters 10, 11, and 12, Which is Harry talking to Bob and learning all the information about the queens and the knights. Then it's the search of Rule's apartment, and then finally it's Harry going to Rule's funeral, looking for the pack of young kids that he finds in the picture at Rule's apartment. So we'll talk about that then.

We don't have any question for Bob today, but stay tuned after the credits because I am going to give a quick review of the book Bronze and Blood, which is authored by our very own Nick Strom, the artist who did the episode artwork for our program. So this is not sponsored. He didn't pay me a dime. I paid my own copy of that book. he just wanted to let you guys know that it existed. We did that a while back.

And now I want to give you my thoughts on it because Dresden fans might be interested. So we'll talk about that after the credits.

Brian (1:14:44)
next week, however, we will post a question for Bob to be answered in that episode that'll drop on the 17th, which is we know of some figures that may have been winter nights. Gilles Daray, Andre Chicatillo, Jean Hay, Fritz Harman.

All horrifying serial killers by popular reputation. But we only know of a couple summer nights, and they're fictional. One of them is, of course, a thinly veiled Tolkien analog. But is that because the summer night turns you into a fantasy author? Our question is for you: what do you think are some possible historical summer nights? What

What kind of person does the summer court seek out? And is there anybody in history who fits that position as nicely as Fritz Harman fits as a winter knight?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:15:41)
Yeah, we're gonna talk about that next time.

Alright, so as I mentioned, this is my quick review of the book Bronze and Blood, which is the first book in the RuneTech archives by Nick Strom. And it's very clear that Nick is a huge Dresden Files fan. He created this great artwork that we managed to license from him for the show. And

He is a fan of urban fantasy in general, as well as apparently a sort of Lovecraftian bent, because the way that I would pitch this book is it's urban fantasy with a Lovecraftian setting that includes an artificer as the main protagonist instead of a wizard. Now, the setting itself takes place in a sort of post-apocalyptic Portland, Oregon. One of the old ones woke up some twenty years prior to the book and it sort of triggered a number of things. First

The world was flooded, like the oceans rose by ten, fifteen, twenty feet, something in that range. So a big chunk of the city is now underwater, and the only parts of the city that are still accessible are the ones that were higher up in sea level.

In addition, that means you have people traveling from one place to another in cars, but having to get out of the car and get into like a boat service, a ferry service that's gonna take you like the canals in Venice from one part of the city to another, which is certainly very interesting. But then you have the fact that many of the humans in this world had their sort of latent DNA triggered and they sort of turn into the sort of monster.

people that you would expect to find in an urban fantasy story. So before this apocalypse, there were just humans. But now you have humans and these things called Nospherics, which is basically a vampire essentially. And then you have the allusion to like a a lycanthrope type human. They're not featured in this, but I remember distinctly, I'm pretty sure there was an sort of werewolf description. But then another one that's that's alluded to and sort of more prevalent in this is

Deep ones, which are kind of like weird fish people that have like gills in their neck and other fish type appendages on them. so people got changed by this thing waking up. And you then have the fact that a sort of energy field called aether then permeated reality and it kind of interfered with regular technology. Regular technology doesn't work anymore, but you can make new kinds of technology with

runes, a rune tech can sort of like etch runes into a thing and make it do stuff that technology used to do. So like you can't use an internal combustion engine anymore, but you can etch runes into an internal combustion engine to make it work.

Brian (1:18:59)
So Adam, I got a couple questions for you just on the basis of that description. First, you said twenty years prior the world was flooded. Is it set today, like in a nineties vibe or in this linear future?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:19:12)
So my understanding is that the awakening, as the book calls it, happened sometime in or directly after World War Two, and then the actual book takes place sometime in the late fifties, early sixties, somewhere in that range. So you have lines like this, quote.

After the Second World War, anything beyond simple engineering turned into a nightmare. Planes, complex machinery, anything with circuits instead of bolts went blind overnight. Radios still whisper if you crank them up hard enough, but anything clever died screaming. and the result of that is you have the sort of magic interfering with technology from the Dresden files, but blown out to everything, not just the stuff surrounding the wizard.

But then that technology was sort of replaced with this rune tech, or at least augmented with it. So you get lines like this: quote, Now the skies belong to Zeppelins, stitched with copper veins, engines humming on aether like bottled lightning. Down here, the streets run on ghosts of the 1930s and forties, fords and packers gutted and rebuilt with rune circuits, brass fittings, and copper spines. The old beasts still burned gasoline, but they ran better with a few runes etched in.

So it's set right in that period of classic noir, like the Raymond Chandler period of the fifties, but you have sort of the ghosts of the nineteen forties technology, along with this newer rune tech that allows them to do stuff that's more magical.

Brian (1:20:34)
so I have to say, I do love the DNA transformation thing. I wonder if Nick's read blindsight. But do we meet a lot of non-human characters? Or is it basically a book about humans, some of whom are, you know, these artifices are people?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:20:50)
well actually, the Nospherics, the sort of vampire people, are featured as antagonists in this first book. So they are featured pretty significantly and

There's also sort of a mob boss. That's actually the premise of the book is a mob boss has been murdered, and our hero, our protagonist, has been set up for the murder. And it's set up in such a way that it looks to everyone else like he's the only one who could have done it. And his whole thing is he has to figure out what actually happened and prove his innocence, which

Kinda feels a little bit like Stormfront, right? With the senior counsel and Morgan going, I know you're the one that did this, and Harry has to figure out who the actual murderer is and stop them.

Brian (1:21:36)
It does,

but that is just a very noir trope. And this is also giving me like a steampunky vibe almost when you mentioned how rune tech works replacing, you know, normal technology. Does it have that feeling or is it more of like a fantasy thing because of the low-tech setting?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:21:38)
Yes, exactly right.

No, it's definitely a little bit of a steampunky thing. In this case, it's more like a like like rune punk, like magipunk, I guess. I think that's a thing, where you have, you know, a gun that does function, but you can like supercharge it if you put if you etch some runes into it the right way. And there's also the concept of, well, anybody can technically learn to be a rune tech and they can use basic runes to just as long as they can etch precisely, they can do basic things. But

In addition to some people being nospherics and some people being deep born, some people became resonance. They sort of like have a connection to the aether in a way that normal people don't, and they're the ones that can really do things with rune tech that

Other people can't they like invent new runes that they can like feel with their connection to this weird energy field? And maybe that's connected to like the Lovecraftian stuff that's going on. But there's also like some other kind of magical spells that are coming along too, in addition to the rune tech that seem to be suggesting there's secret cults that are trying to like

raise up more of the old ones or wake up the old that old one that did wake up even more. Like that's all hinted at in the background. So there's definitely a bigger, interesting meta plot in the same way that Stormfront has some interesting questions left hanging at the end of it.

But despite all of that, I do want to emphasize this isn't just Dresden Files with New Kona Paint. He's not copying that.

It's very clear that Strom was inspired of the same things that Butcher was inspired by, especially in the way he uses metaphor and simile and the anthropomorphization of inanimate objects. And I just wanted to give you a quick example of that. So here's a couple of paragraphs that don't have any spoilers in them. Quote I limped forward. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, hesitant now, as if it didn't want to touch this part of the city. I reached the lantern and

and thumbmed the dial along the side. Its light brightened reluctantly, sputtering, coughing up its last bit of aether like it resented being woken. A faint halo shimmered over the water, cutting through the fog in pale rings. The canal stretched ahead in silence. Drowned storefronts leaned against each other like drunks, their signage half submerged, the faint outlines of runes still glowing beneath the surface, sickly green beneath the black. I could feel their hum in my teeth.

Wards, protections, long since broken. The city had choked on its own magic and it was still twitching. Unquote. So one thing I will say. I do really appreciate that style of writing. And I I think I compared it to, for those of you who have played the the the computer game

Max Payne, specifically Max Payne 2, the fall of Max Payne, was very heavy in that style of metaphor and anthropomorphization of inanimate objects. And I really do like it. I think it's a little heavy-handed in this book. There are some periods where I'm like, okay, there's like four paragraphs of him driving through the city and talking about how it was wheezing like it was on its last breath or something to that effect.

there are some that I thought were very artistic and cool. On the whole, I felt like it was twenty percent more of that than I wanted in my own personal taste.

Brian (1:25:16)
Yeah, it's so hard with Modern Noir not to lean into the tropes too hard and come across as being a little bit purple. But I find that that's forgivable if the story is genuinely gripping. You know, if I want to keep reading because the plot's so cool, I can put up with you being a little bit overly descriptive. So overall, how would you rate it?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:25:39)
Overall, I would rate it at a 7 out of 10. And that's not like video game 7 out of 10, where it's like 7 out of 10, that's garbage. That's the worst result you could possibly get. No, Exactly. No, I mean genuinely 7 out of 10. Pretty dang good. I did enjoy reading it, and the more I got into it, the more I wanted to sit down and read it more. And like it's it slowly unfolded the mystery. I was I was like, okay, I really want to get to the bottom of

Brian (1:25:44)
Where it's bad, yeah.

No business school dri grade inflation here, yeah.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:26:08)
this. So it did help drag me in more and more over time. And I would say it's very comparable to Stormfront in that way. Like Stormfront is clearly like a competently written and it's pretty well done.

But something tells me that if Nick keeps going on this, we might see him improve as a writer in the same way that we see Butcher improve as a writer. And I really do hope that, because it's a very interesting world that he's built here. It's very different from anything else that I've read. Clearly very noir-inspired and very urban fantasy, because there's a the our our our protagonist is trying to solve a mystery. His friend is a cop.

And they kind of skirt the law on some things, and technically he abides by the rules, but he has a secret workshop where he works on unsanctioned runes and things like that. So very similar to Dresden, where he's riding that line between legal and illegal, but he doesn't like to do anything that's really bad. So you like him as a person. So all of that stuff is set up to be a very interesting sort of thing, especially if you're into the Lovecraftian stuff, which has that like

Weird cults and their summoning stuff that the world has not seen in millennia, that kind of weird stuff. And I I've never been a huge Lovecraftian person. the the amount that was in this book didn't bother me. It was just fun background mysteries to the the current s much smaller scale stuff of like, well, our g our our guy Fidalius Corvin is gonna be framed for murder.

And he's gonna go to jail unless he can stay out of jail long enough to prove he didn't do it. And how's he gonna do that? With a bunch of cool gadgets that he managed to to make of his own like special design that nobody knows that he has. And that was my favorite part. It felt very much like Bond getting up the gadgets from Q, except Q Bond is Q. He made the gadgets himself.

before he goes on his final journey to like, I finally now know who it is and I have to go confront them and now I've got all these gadgets to do it. That part was pretty fun. It's what makes him an interesting protagonist in the same way that Dresden is an inter interesting protagonist because he's gonna solve these murders, but he can also do magic.

Brian (1:28:22)
Yeah, I feel like, you know, when you first started saying it it's an artificer instead of a wizard, I started to be like, okay, so this is very Diet Coke from, you know, my sort of perspective. But the more I think about it, love craftian elements sort of go together with very artifice crafting heavy magic, a little bit like chocolate and spicy peppers. Like for some people it's just never gonna work. But

They're actually like a combination that's really interesting and like kind of classic in a way, because that feeling of of dread from the Lovecraftian elements can kind of give that noir feeling of a fallen place, even though you're essentially looking at a creative hero who is constantly building things up.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:29:06)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:29:15)
You know, that that sort of tension I feel like sounds just to like it it it would really kind of play off each other in a way I I didn't really expect. So so thanks for the review, man. That was cool.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:29:26)
Yeah, and like I said, if you like Dresden Files and the sound of this concept sounds interesting to you, I do recommend checking it out. It's not that expensive on on on Kindle or or an wherever you can get your your your ebooks and I believe it's also available print on demand. If you want more details, check out the description of this podcast here because there's a link to Nick's website with places you can pick it up.