Recorded Neutral Territory - A Dresden Files Podcast

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:00)
Brian, I was just informed we've made a major faux pas within the Dresden Files community. We are not up to date using the proper nomenclature regarding entities possessed by Nemesis. Apparently, it should be, according to Zach aka Smokey on the Patreon, NIMFECTE.

Brian (00:18)
Wait, are you saying nem facted, like nemesis facted?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:22)
See that's what I thought, but no, I double checked. It's NIMFETED. Like infected, but with an N and also an

Brian (00:31)
But yeah, so like ninfected, like that's infected with an N, but you're saying NIMFET.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:38)
I always thought it was n fected with like N apostrophe, but then when I say it out loud right now, that sounds dumb.

Brian (00:46)
I've been using that, yes, that's what we've been saying, I think. I think that's what we've been saying, but you're right, it is hard to verbally indicate.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (00:53)
Alright, well, there's still one option that we haven't tried. HHW Befected.

Brian (00:58)
Why would we say he who walks behind affected?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (01:10)
Welcome one, welcome all, welcome to recorded neutral territory where the spoilers go all the way through twelve months. Welcome to our summer night assessment. I am Adam Ruso, and joining me as always, it's a recruiter for the Za Lord's Guard. It's Brian O'Reilly.

Brian (01:27)
Don't know how you're gonna pay for winter law school? Not sure where you're going in life or what you were doing two minutes ago? Wanna make a difference and know where your next meal is coming from? The Zalord's guard The Crew The Loud The Hey did you get taller?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (01:43)
No, no, I've always been 60 times taller than you. Anyway, Brian, we are at our assessment episode where we look at the summer night book from a high level. We've just finished doing eleven episodes going chapter by chapter, but this time we want to talk about it from a high level.

So first, let's talk about

overall thoughts of the book. What is your main conclusion, your main takeaway now that we've spent eleven episodes dissecting this thing?

Brian (02:07)
Every time I reread this book, it makes me re-experience what happened the first time I heard this book. Because I heard it first. I listened to the audiobooks and I specifically got into the Dresden Files so that I would have something that I could listen to as an audiobook that wasn't gonna be as dense as you know some of the other stuff I might be reading that was a little bit more popcorn. And the first three books, I was like, these are fine. Like they're not, I don't think they're incredible, but they're

Good, they're really solid fantasy, they're fun. Love listening to them. This narrator's cool. And then I heard this one, and I was like, my god, I love this author. Not because it's so dramatically more well written than the other three. I think it's a little better. But when I heard, hey, the Queen of the Fairies is named Mab.

There's a Sealy and Unsealy court, and the queen of the Seely fairies is Titania. And I'm gonna make a bunch of Shakespeare references and also clearly like no Irish mythology and Scottish folklore. And I was blown away by how much this demonstrated about Jim's not only ability to play with pop culture fantasy tropes, but sort of deep.

knowledge of like the actual mythology underlying those troops.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (03:32)
But Brian, I also thought this was a huge step up when I first read it. And it really was because of how it blew open the world of the Dresden Files. In the first few books, we're introduced to various supernatural concepts and fantasy concepts through individual characters by and large.

We're introduced to the concept of a warlock through the person of Victor Cells. We're introduced to the concept of werewolves in a couple of different ways, but mostly through like the alphas and the Lugaroo and the FBI agents. There's not really giant political entities behind any of those individuals that we meet in the first few books.

The Red Court is a giant political entity, but it's the only one we kind of learn about mostly through Bianca in the third book. And then we do learn about the existence of the white court and the black court in the personages of Thomas and Mavra. But when we get to Summer Night, we get so much more lore and backstory, and it's not just through one or two people.

Brian (04:42)
I know what you mean, Adam. In the first three books, not only are the stakes very personal, but the supernatural characters that are introduced aren't a big a leap. They're not that new. Like Jim does a cool thing with werewolves and vampires, but they're just another book that's got another variant of werewolves and vampires, like a lot of media.

But who even writes books where fairies, fairies, are like main antagonists and deuteragonists and like the that fairies are a main part of the book and they're not played as like a cute, pretty or like mischievous, bad, naughty thing, but as forces of nature.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (05:37)
Literally. Yeah.

Brian (05:38)
Yeah, it's such a great, such a radically different take on fairies, especially given that fairies are kind of an underserved mythological entity anyway.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (05:53)
Yeah, and so because we're introduced to so much lore here, by the way, it's not just fairy, we're gonna talk about this later. We're also getting introduced to the white council in this book, and that's a big leap too. We we've known that Harry's been a part of it, but seeing it the inner workings of a council meeting and the concept of the senior council and the voting and all of those elements is

Very interesting in and of itself. It's crazy to think that both of these giant political entities are being added into just one book. That's a very high degree of difficulty. It's a very ambitious book when you look at the concept of it. In fact, Brian, we add something like 13 or 14 new characters that are either major characters or minor recurring characters in this book. And that's a lot of characters for one book to introduce.

Brian (06:48)
Yeah, and on top of all that, Jim introduces smaller stuff all the time. Ghouls, his take on

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (06:56)
Yes.

Brian (06:57)
unicorns, chlorophines. I mean, he

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (07:00)
Yeah.

Brian (07:01)
does a whole bunch of stuff in addition to all those big things. And he does it without making you feel overwhelmed, which is wild.

And not only is it well organized in that sense, but it's also well organized as a story. Because this is a big departure from the structure of the first three Dresden Biles books, not just in the sense that it opens up the world, but also in the sense that it's not telling a who done it this time. I mean, that's the framing device.

The framing device is, just like the other stories, who killed Ronald Rule? But as the mothers tell us towards the end of the book, that's not the important question.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (07:48)
Yeah, exactly. And and because the book was this sort of very ambitious, high degree of difficulty, lots of characters, lots of lore, the actual structure is a tried and true one that doesn't make you think too hard because it's one everybody is very familiar with, and it's known as the hero's journey. If you've seen the original Star Wars.

That's one of the perfect examples of the hero's journey. And it's got a total of 12 steps, and we're going to walk through them here. And one of the things, the reason I'm bringing this up, Ryan, is because the hero's journey maps onto this book, or rather, this book maps onto the hero's journey much better and much more cleanly than the previous three books do. And for those of you who are not familiar with the hero's journey, it's essentially a structure of sort of 12 different plots.

Beats for an adventure story where you have a sort of normal person that's called into some kind of thing that they're unfamiliar with. They're gonna have a fish out of water moment to become the big hero. And so it goes through these specific beats. You start with the ordinary world in which we meet our hero. Now, what's interesting in this book, Brian, is the ordinary world is chapter one, where Dresden has to fight off a guy.

Ghoul assassination attempt while he's in the park observing a rain of toads. So that's the quote unquote ordinary world. That's his day-to-day.

Brian (09:19)
Yeah, it almost seems like Jim on purpose kind of knew that this was gonna feel a little bit more classically hero's journey, and therefore made certain deviations very stark, kind of hung a lampshade on them so that you wouldn't, worry, you wouldn't let your sort of subconscious be thrown out of the monomyth by

you know, noticing these discrepancies. And the fact that, you know, for Dresden, this is such a typical Tuesday that he's being just a grouchy, dude towards Billy the whole time. He's not even amazed. He's not, he's just like, toads. I hope they're not real toads. I hope they're just toads made from magical ectoplasm. Like that's

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (10:07)
Ha ha.

Brian (10:08)
a very different place to start than the typical hero's journey,

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (10:10)
Right. It think of Star Wars.

Luke is just on a moisture farm complaining about how boring it is being on a moisture farm. Like, yes, it's sci-fi, but he's still just a farm boy being sad about being on a farm and he wishes he could have an adventure. Like that's a much more ordinary world than we see with Dresden.

Brian (10:30)
Yes, exactly. I th I was gonna bring up the example of Star Wars where the first thing you see, right, is like two suns in the sky. Like that's your

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (10:36)
Yeah.

Brian (10:38)
introduction to Luke's life. It's not your world, but that doesn't mean it's not an ordinary world.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (10:45)
Right, compared to what's coming is the idea. So plot point number two, call to adventure. This is essentially the reigning toads is sort of the start of it, but mab mab's offer is really the call to adventure. Mab shows up and says to Harry, I've got you got these three favors you have to deal with them. One of them is mine. Here's the case, you have to find who Ronald Rule is. And this goes right into number three, Brian, refusing the call.

Part of the hero's journey is usually refusing the call to adventure, but then being forced into it anyway. And that's exactly the structure that this book takes.

Brian (11:24)
Yes, and that's very different for a Dresden Files book, because

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (11:28)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (11:28)
it's not that previous Dresden stories have shared none of the hero's journey tropes. It's just that they make departures that do break the mono myth, which is just another word for the hero's journey.

And Stormfront, he is a detective. He's called onto the case. He's getting paid. He needs the money. He says yes. There's no rejection of the call there.

Same thing in Full Moon. He's eager to patch things up with Murph Murphy. He wants the work. He's trying to get into it. The only way in which he rejects the call is maybe like not working with Kim Delaney, but that's very different. That's him speaking as a mentor figure, not as the farm boy on the Moisture Farm. And then

Grave Peril, yeah, he doesn't want to go to the vampire party. But again, this is not him rejecting the call to adventure.

He's already involved in the events, he just doesn't want to put himself at risk further.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (12:20)
Right. And even then, in the first two books, it's not really a call to adventure. It's a call to his night job, right? He gets called

Brian (12:26)
Yes.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (12:27)
with by Murphy all the time. By the time we get to full moon, it's probably been dozens of times where he's come to consult on a case. So it's not really adventure more or less, only so because the stakes of that one are particularly high. Right.

Brian (12:38)
Yes, it's not Bilbo leaving the Shire, it's Bilbo

going to a different part of the Shire and you know, having Sam do gardening there instead.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (12:48)
Or just going going to see a a a relation for tea or something. Yes, exactly.

Brian (12:51)
Right, exactly.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (12:52)
Now, the fourth plot beat is meeting the mentor. Now Obi-Wan is the perfect example in the Star Wars an analogy, but Gandalf,

Brian (12:59)
Gandalf, yeah.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (13:01)
yeah. In this one, it's it's tough to necessarily but you could probably argue that Ebenezer andor the gatekeeper and or Leah kind of fit this mold.

maybe all of them combined, but the gatekeeper definitely can work. Ebenezer really sticks up for Harry and helps him through this moment and then doesn't show up later. That's kind of what the the mentor usually disappears part way through the story. So maybe that works because Morgan blocks it later.

Brian (13:26)
Yeah, and the key here is not how archetypical of an example this is, but just how much of a departure it is. In Stormfront, there's no mentor in Full Moon. I mean, there's Terra West, but not really. She's a little bit more of like a Spock.

than she is like a, you know, true traditional mentor. And then in grave peril, Michael will mentor Harry in the future, but he's not really doing it in that book. He's kind of on more equal footing with Harry, maybe because they don't trust each other quite as much until the end.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (14:01)
Exactly, more or less. Now, beat five is cross the first threshold, and this is where our hero sort of enters the other world in earnest. So this is entering the wardrobe in Narnia, right? or

Brian (14:17)
Heading out on the road in Lord of the Rings, getting on

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (14:19)
Exactly.

Brian (14:20)
the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (14:22)
And in this book, it was, I would argue, going to Maves Party and Aurora's Domain. Those are like he's entering the never never, but in a way he's never not done before. This is the never never a fairy lady's court, which is very different from just traveling into the never never to go to fight a ghost or to go to try to travel from one place to another.

This is a political move that he's making here.

Brian (14:51)
Yes, and when he does that in other books, it's not usually related to the A plot. Like in Stormfront, maybe it's meeting Bianca, but that's just, you know, going into somebody's house. It's not really magical. You know,

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (15:07)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (15:07)
in Full Moon, I I don't really know that there's a single place where he he enters into an area that's explicitly, not

Of this world. Maybe the full moon garage the first time is as close as it gets. These are such giant stretches that it it really doesn't fit at all. In Grave Peril, there are several places where you can make the argument that he crosses the like the very beginning, Agatha Hagglethorne's demeanor. He crosses the threshold into another place, but none of those are framed as Harry doing something that.

For him, for a wizard, is new, is outside his day-to-day. In the end of Grave Peril, at the climax, ha they just skirt the border of Fairy to make it to back to Bianca's. And that's considered to be almost a climactic moment. Here, when he goes and sees Mave, that's him walking straight into Fairy.

Crossing the threshold into a place that we know is forbidding.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (16:13)
Yeah. So then we have plot beat six, tests, allies, and enemies. So some examples of this one in other media, in Harry Potter, in his first few months we sort of get an idea of what's going on, and Harry has to fight a troll, he falls off a broomstick and he almost dies, he gets lost in the Forbidden Forest. So lots of stuff happens, but he also makes friends and he also makes enemies. And so taking some time in this other world to

sort of work your way through those things. And I would argue that this includes some of the things that we talked about before Mave's party, Aurora's Domain, but also the results of crossing those thresholds into those places, like the fight in Walmart or talking to Leah in the Stone Table. That's another that's an ally moment. So this is just a a a section where the hero faces new challenges and gets a squad. Though this is probably one of those, Brian, that we can find parallels for in the first couple books.

Brian (17:09)
We can, but I would argue, Adam, that the way in which Harry interfaces with, Leia and with Murphy and with the Alphas and with Merrill and Fix, those are a lot more sort of classical, you know, Harry Potter, you know, Tolkien, meet the dwarves, make the

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (17:30)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (17:31)
fellowship. They're a lot more of he literally goes to war at the end, bringing his allies along.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (17:37)
Right.

Brian (17:38)
In a way that's, you know, kind of undercut, ironically, in Full Moon, that he doesn't get to do in sort of the the climax of grave peril because you know Michael is literally disarmed before the the confrontation. In in all of the other Dresden books, these tropes aren't played as straight. And I think this is a great example, as is the next piece.

Which is approaching the innermost cave.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (18:10)
Yeah, this is the plot point where the hero gets much closer to their goal. So close they can almost taste it. And I would argue that in this book, that's the mother's cottage, right? They're here, they're r they're offering to answer one question truthfully for Harry, but then he has to go through all these hoops to actually figure out what the question should be. And we talked a lot about that during the actual episode. Now, this is definitely one that's

Gonna be present in a lot of drama, period, Brian.

Brian (18:39)
Yes, absolutely. But Jim plays it so straight here, and he doesn't do that in any of the other books. Harry is always finding his way to the enemy's lair or stronghold or location, with like the possible exception of cold days and 12 months. He's always, always doing that. yes,

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (19:00)
Because he's an investigator first and foremost. That's what he does.

Brian (19:04)
but he literally here

Enters into like the house of life and death. That's about as

stark as you can do this trip.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (19:12)
and and the beings that are considered to be much more powerful and dangerous than any that he has met so far. Yeah, yeah.

Brian (19:18)
Yeah, literally the house of life and death. They own

it. Yeah.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (19:22)
Which brings us to plot point eight, the ordeal, in which the hero faces his biggest test of all thus far. And in this case, I would argue it's probably outside of the mother's cottage, Aurora's interrogation and Elaine's binding, and he has to sort of escape that by the end. So that is the first ordeal. Definitely there's gonna be other ordeals here, and I think we see Jim actually really does.

sort of a pattern of multiple copies of the approach, ordeal, reward, road back. You might see that two or even three times in his books. So let's talk about them as a collective. So we talked about approach the inmost cave, in which the hero gets closer to their goal, then the ordeal in which the hero faces his biggest test of all thus far, then the reward in which the hero sees the light at the end of the tunnel.

Then the road back, it turns out the light at the end of the tunnel might be a little farther than we thought, then the resurrection in which you have the last major climactic moment of the story. And as you said in our pre show, Jim does that structure multiple times within the same book when we get to more complicated books in the future.

Brian (20:39)
Yeah, Jim is a big fan of what I consider the multi-climax book. And this goes all the way back to the dawn of fantasy. I mean, Tolkien does multi-climax books, certainly in Return of the King. But I would argue as early as the Two Towers, he's forced into a situation where he literally has to write two climaxes for each party and put them in the same book because he's following two different groups.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (21:06)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (21:07)
So

this is venerable roots deep in the dawn of the fantasy, you literature. But the difference is in a modern fantasy story, unlike an old school fable, because of the length, you need to loop this pattern multiple times in order to get something that resolves all of the plot beats you've set up. And usually in Jim's books.

He really does a a bit of a trope subverting thing where for me one of the clearest ones is White Knight. You have the scene fighting the scavis that leads into the duel, that leads into the super ghouls.

there's there's multiple versions of

Okay, there's an ordeal and there's a reward, and then we have to take the road back,

and then we have another obstacle, and then there's another reward, and you know, he plays that multiple times. Here, I think what's really important to note is that

he doesn't loop it multiple times in this book as clearly as he does in others. I mean, if you think about it in Grave Peril, he has the party part one, which is approaching the innermost cave, and then the ordeal of the party, and then they escape, and the road back has Lydia being possessed, and that's an obstacle, and then they survived the encounter.

But then they have to go back to the cave, and the ordeal is Kravos, and the resurrection is kind of literal because he brings a bunch of ghosts, you know, to back to kill people. But in this story, it's really sort of set up to be more clear. He goes into the mother's cottage and comes out, and he's tried mentally by both

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (22:52)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (22:53)
Aurora and Elaine and the gatekeeper.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (22:56)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (22:56)
And then the road back is the battle in the clouds.

And then the final test is Aurora at the stone table.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (23:03)
Yes, exactly. And while we're talking about this, it's important to point out that saying, this story is just the monomyth. It's just the hero's journey. That's not a criticism of the story itself, because this is just one of many structures that stories can take. And the problem that you do sometimes have, especially with new writers or with boring Hollywood types is.

Is that they want a checklist that they can just follow this checklist exactly and you'll get a a hit, a blockbuster or whatever. And that often strips a lot of the creativity out of it because this structure works fine on its own, but it works best when you break it at the appropriate place.

Points and when you depart from it when necessary in order to fit the story you're telling, the specific story. And I think Jim does that here well, but he starts with this basic structure that everybody's gonna be very familiar with because he's got so much to do. He doesn't want to hit you with all this exposition, all of these new characters, and

do the very complicated multi-plot resolutions that he will do in future books. Those are things you can build to after you have taught the audience who the cast of characters are in previous books.

Brian (24:32)
Yes, I mean one thing when you were talking about, you know, Hollywood types in the monomyth, one thing that kills me in some series by lesser writers is that the hero rejects the call every time over and over again.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (24:48)
Yeah.

Brian (24:49)
It doesn't matter like how many times they've saved the day before. always like, No, I couldn't possibly do that.

Like and it's just like, man, like this is your this is clearly your job.

And the fact that Jim is more closely married to the hero's journey here is functioning in two different ways. The first way that I really like.

Is that he's telling you that this one is a fantasy story. We're not doing, yes, the other ones were wizard detective, and the joke was wizard detective, but he's a detective who happens to be a wizard. The genre of the fiction is neo noir. In summer night, by employing the hero's journey, he's telling you the genre you're in is fantasy.

I think it's Jorge Borgia, and I I might be pronouncing his name incorrectly because I'm I'm not super familiar with him, but I I think I read an essay where he was talking about how the people who invented the detective story had to simultaneously invent the reader of the detective story. Because the idea that you would do a story where I'm not going to tell you.

Who the villain is. And, you know, I'm I'm just not gonna tell you what happened. And that's kind of the point. Was that that's not how we wrote, you know, Don Quixote, or like there's this this idea that part of the fun is the not knowing until the end

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (26:20)
And or the trying to figure out it's it's a more active version of a reader, right? Somebody who's reading more closely, trying to figure out who done it before the reveal.

Brian (26:32)
Yes,

and you can see in something like Sherlock Holmes, they haven't invented that yet. You can't figure them out, right?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (26:38)
No, you don't have

yeah, Sherlock's got his i his encyclopedic knowledge of like, well, I saw that there was white paint on your collar which indicates, you know, some weird thing about chalk that we didn't know about 'cause we don't live in the eighteen hundreds anymore.

Brian (26:53)
But even in the 1800s, it's not like other people were reading it and going, like, yes, the hat had a spot of dirt on it. That must mean that the man's a pig farmer. You know, like

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (27:01)
Yeah, exactly.

Brian (27:02)
nobody was thinking that. And and as the the genre progressed, this way of reading it that you can figure out who done it developed. And that's what Jim's been doing in the first three series to greater and lesser degrees. And he's telling us straight up by employing the monomyth.

That we're supposed to read this one differently. He's telling us, not just by having the mother say it, that who killed Ronald Rule isn't the story of this book.

Not the same way as, you know, who killed Tommy Tom and Jennifer Stanton. That's the whole story of Stormfront. Who killed Ronald Rule isn't the important thing that we're resolving in Summer Night. We're resolving the fate of the world.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (27:48)
Yeah. And to build on what you're saying, it sounds like the first three books are urban fantasy and this is the first urban fantasy that we see from Jim.

Brian (27:59)
And by that fitting into the hero's journey pretty neatly, it also makes it really easy to analyze the plot structure of the book. So this book takes place over three days and three nights, with the epilogue occurring at it on the fourth night. and the time breakdowns are a lot less emphasized than they are in some of the earlier ones, even though we're on a very strict clock the whole time.

Because you're not really worried about that. You know the path a story like this takes.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (28:33)
Yeah, in fact in full moon, Harry's always like, no, tomorrow is the last night of the full moon, or tomorrow's the next night of the full moon, and it's it's like a very temporally important part of the book. But you're right, in this one we really don't care or know about that until we're almost there. Until that this is the clock. Halfway through the book we finally find out there is a clock and it's in two days when the summer solstice hits.

So let's talk about sort of the main plot beats that happen and

Where which ones we think have major repercussions for later books, and which ones we think are our favorite sections, and which sections we think are a little bit weaker. And Brian, we have a lot of them listed for repercussions in later books. I feel like this is definitely the most forward looking, maybe we might say, of all four books we've read so far.

Brian (29:21)
Yeah, I think that's certainly true. It's why Jim has to do all of the lore drops he does in this book, because even more so than in the party in grave peril, he is laying the groundwork for the rest of this series. Like on day one, okay, first of all, I think he introduces ghouls. We're not even really gonna talk about that, but I'm pretty sure he just invents ghouls in the first chapter of this book here, in terms of on the page. But we meet Mrs. Somerset.

Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness, who by the time we get to the last book we've published, like Harry has dinner dates with him.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (30:02)
Yeah, yeah. And she is the closest thing we can come to basically a deity without actually invoking the white god in this world, right? She has limits, but she's also got the kind of power we associate with like Greek gods.

Brian (30:19)
Yeah, and it's truly incredible how far we've come where we're gonna talk about the line that Harry says when he knows that it's Mab in his office in this book. Juxtapose that against 12 months where Harry is treating Mab like she's his, you know, boss at work.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (30:40)
Yeah, just the annoying

boss that keeps asking for things

Brian (30:43)
It

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (30:43)
that he doesn't have to do.

Brian (30:45)
it's just such a big transition, and we manage to do it because she is such an integral part of this series, and to hold off on introducing her until you've already got three books done is the kind of thing that just doesn't happen in another series.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (31:05)
Yeah, and the major repercussion here is that she purchases his debt from Leah, which honestly, considering the fact that Leah is H HWB Fected, is is gonna be very good for Harry in the long run. But he's already paid down one of the favors here, and that will come up by the time we get to small favor. Now, in the first evening, we get to the council meeting, which again explodes our universe to

Okay, we know Harry's a wizard, but here are now the senior council. They are to Harry almost as powerful as Mab, as far as he's concerned. Like they are just that much better than him. And so Ebenezer joining the senior council is a major repercussion in the future. And be doing that because Simon Petrovich was killed is a major repercussion that goes into the future.

The war with the Red Court is now clear and official and it's not gonna slow down anytime soon, apparently. Those are all major repercussions of this meeting. But Brian, the whole thing is definitely my favorite section, one of my favorite sections of this book. I really like sort of the evolving universe that Harry finds himself in and learning about how this works and the politics of these wizards and how do they structure their things to deal with the magic. Like

the creative ways that Jim comes up with, okay, what would a political entity of people that could just conjure water out of the air look like? That is a really cool concept that I like to see how he plays with.

Brian (32:44)
Yeah, it's really cool to come up with a gerontocracy and be like, okay, but you know, how can I make that kind of earned? That's pretty fun. And also just like the calling of the role in the senior council before they get to Ebenezer

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (32:57)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (32:58)
might be just some of the best f kind of frivolous plot unrelated writing

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (33:04)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (33:04)
Jim does across any of the books. yeah, in the first

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (33:06)
Pyramid sitting.

Brian (33:09)
couple chapters of Summer Night, it's

It's an open question. Okay. So the most important thing that's happened in the entire series, is it Mab purchasing his debt or Ebenezer joining the senior council and pushing the war with the Reds as opposed to appeasement? Like, take your pick, you know. Those

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (33:27)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (33:28)
are earth-shattering events that Jim's just getting out of the way so that Harry's girlfriend can come back from the

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (33:35)
Yep. And so after the senior council meeting, then we go to Murphy's place where Harry learns more about how she's been dealing with the trauma from the previous book. We'll come back to Murphy when we get to a later section because after that he goes to his apartment and finds out that Elaine is me, Elaine is still alive, Brian.

Brian (33:53)
Yeah, I love this for a couple reasons. First of all, I think it's really important for the story. We're gonna talk about that later too. But Adam, I challenge you to answer this question because I just can't think of it. I don't think I've ever read a book where anyone has ever done this before. And I'm sure they they exist and they're out there. But for me, I just remember reading this, specifically Harry meeting Elaine, and going, holy sh.

Shit. This guy is really not scared to kind of weave some kind of modern ideas that are deep background lore into his story. To me, and I'm not comparing this in terms of the quality of the writing or the scale of the books, but it's

The same level of intelligence as Tolkien deciding that Eowyn and Aragorn actually couldn't get together, which was the original sort of proto-plan of the Lord of the Rings, and that he had to write it differently, but still keeping their relationship, their interaction in the book, because it feels like it should be happening too. The fact that Grave Peril

Exits Susan's stage left. And then the next book, she does not come back. But Harry's other old love interest, Elaine, who we've only heard about, comes back from the dead. And it's not, and now we're meant to be together. And I just had to get through that other girl to get. No, no, this one's not gonna work out either. This is not gonna be a romance. This is gonna be really messy and complicated and modern.

But I'm gonna do it anyway. To me, one of my favorite sections of the book, because it's well written, but it's just really ballsy to do it in a story that's this kind of fantasy.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (35:47)
Yeah, and honestly, you're familiar with the concept of fridging in comic books, right? Where

Brian (35:52)
Yes.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (35:53)
the main character, usually a male, is motivated to do something because a female that he knows is killed

Brian (36:02)
yeah, the trope coiner is a Green Lantern comic where the title character's girlfriend is dismembered and left in the fridge as the inciting incident to go after the villain.

Literally removing her from the page, giving her no agency, and killing her just to motivate the hero.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (36:19)
Yeah, and that is unfortunately in a lot of stuff written by men in the age before the more modern one, and even sometimes still now, that is sort of a common trope to, we need to motivate the main character, just kill his girlfriend. she doesn't matter anyway, you know, is the concept, right? That's why it's looked at scance when it comes to feminist circles. But this is basically the opposite, Brian. Jim is bringing her back to life. He's defrosting her rather

Brian (36:46)
Right.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (36:46)
than fridging her.

Essentially, because she started out as a motivating factor for Harry. He felt massive amounts of guilt over her death. He thought he was responsible. Then it turns out she's not dead, and he has other reasons to find his own motivations. And she gets to have her own agency, her own goals. And as we're gonna talk about later, if she's Komori, those goals may or may not align with Dresden.

Brian (37:13)
Yeah, microwaving your women is something that we're gonna come back to in the next book too, Adam. Really good point there. and then day two, not as consequential, but also has one of my favorite parts in the book in it. It's a great scene, Harry encountering, you Talos as Grum when he searches Roel's apartment. The scene at the funeral is very funny and it's it's consequential and well written, but I love the journey into the belly of the beast.

As they're led through Undertown to Mave, you know, cut to opening scene, s letting someone sadistically die for her amusement.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (37:53)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (37:53)
Jim really knows how to be like, okay, so you met Mab, why is she scary? This is her kid, right? And just leaves that there for you.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (38:04)
Yeah, and and setting the stage for that is when Billy says, You know what really makes me nervous, Harry? Grimalkin never said he'd lead us back out again.

Brian (38:13)
Uh-huh.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (38:14)
So good. Alright, so then we go into night two, and this is where Harry finally meets Meryl and Fix and talks to them.

And then goes to Aurora's garden after finding Elaine wounded in his car. But then we get to the Walmart scene, Brian. And I think it's safe to say this is one of the best set pieces we've seen. It allows Harry to actually flex his competency, but also get set back. Like he's not perfect. He gets caught in that cage match with the chlorophine, like tricked into it by Grum. and of course his ill-fated Looney Tune plan doesn't work out the way that he wants.

But he still doesn't seem like an idiot the way that he did in some sections of Full Moon. So I do really appreciate that. And at the same time, Murphy gets to have quite a few badass moments, and she gets to come up with some great ideas and show her chops and overcome her own fear. The whole thing is just running on.

pure adrenaline from beginning to end. As soon as the lights go out, you're like, what the hell's going on? it's a fog. there's grum. wait, no, it's the ghoul. no, we got past one of those, but now the other one has hairy trapped and they're split up and there's gunfire from outside. And what the hell's going on? There's five people trying to kill him?

Brian (39:28)
Yeah, I think this is the mark of a really good series in modern times when you've got a chapter inserted into the book that doesn't have to be there for the plot of this book. It's purely there to create some future fodder for you to play with. And if you can do that in a way that's compelling, where the reader's enjoying themselves as you do it, I mean you're gonna have people eating out of the palm of your hand.

The Walmart sequence is fun. You could have the book without it, but you couldn't have the Murphy that we are gonna get in the future without it. And because Jim knows he needs that Murphy, we get this great scene. It's extraordinarily well done. But in the very same night, Adam, Leah brings Harry to the stone table and gives him the real perspective on the fairy courts.

And talk about things that'll set up future books.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (40:27)
Yeah, and recontextualize everything you've already read that has to do with Leah, right? The entire last book has to be re-listened to with the knowledge that, she's literally actually trying to do what's best for him. She has to. She is honor bound to. She is obligated to. That changes.

Everything. so that is another element to it that I think is very important. Of course, it's very important going forward that we learn that Harry can, to some degree, trust her to provide some support and ally and or information, at least once they get the nymphtion out of her, as it were.

Brian (41:10)
Yeah, now I do think that the problem in this book, insofar as there's any place to criticism, is the transition from this scene to the climax. Because Jim, I feel like kind of has already put out there everything he kind of wants to do in Chicago in the story. So Harry goes to, you know, meet Elaine at O'Hare Airport.

And they go directly back into Fairy, where he kind of just was with Leia to go meet the mothers. And for the next chapter and change, we get a lot of great lore and we get some really good descriptions of sort of the plot and a denouement and some reveals. But there's a couple parts of it that are really weird. For me, Adam, the kind of overarching odd thing is Harry meets Elaine a couple hours after dawn on this.

Day three, right? He gets back from the stone table and we don't know exactly why it took so long, but by the time he gets back it was the middle of the night, it's dawn now. Okay, even if I accept that.

He's in O'Hare, he says a half hour after he finishes the spell to find Elaine. And somehow from there to sort of, setting out to climb the stairway to heaven, ten hours elapse. The only things that happen, as far as we can tell, are he talks to the mothers in their cottage.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (42:33)
For like twenty minutes at best.

Brian (42:35)
gets out

of the quicksand trap and talks to the gatekeeper and goes to Walmart to buy some box knives.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (42:41)
Yeah. best we can guess, all of that stuff that happens in those chapters probably doesn't take more than four or five hours at best.

Brian (42:48)
at at absolute best, I think that arguably it's maybe two hours and ferry. And then how long does it take Dresden to get the Walmart?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (42:57)
Yeah, my headcanon is that Billy takes a while. He does say that the Walmart was problematic because of something that happened the previous day, and it was it took a took him a while to get through it. So maybe Harry took a four hour nap somewhere in there,

Brian (43:12)
Yeah, that's just not mentioned. Sure. Right.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (43:14)
Yeah. Now the other thing that happens in this section that is, of course, very important repercussions for the coming books is that he gains an audience with the mothers for the first time. And that gives him some important knowledge, like for example, it is possible to have a genial conversation with them.

It might not always be possible, but it is possible. And I think that leads to him actually seeking an audience with Mother Winter in Cold Days. Like his actual observing of her in this scene and probably subsequent research gives him the names he needs to call on her in that scene in Cold Days where he's inside of his grave. So I think without this scene, he doesn't necessarily get there.

Brian (43:59)
Yeah, and I we really can't have the series we have unless we the readers have met them others. So it's extremely important. The same way that, you know, not being the villain, but only binding Harry such that he can get away, you know, and helping him in the final battle allows her to stay in his life as this, resource that Jim can tap on, really well done to let that

be something that he can reuse in further books after he's microwaved her for this one.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (44:30)
Yes, exactly. Then I have to say, when we get to night three, after Elaine and Aurora and everybody has left and Harry has managed to blast himself out and land in the tree, the reveal that the gatekeeper was actually performing another final test was really good and chilling at the same time. I always like that part where he reveals, good.

If you had said no, I would have killed you myself where you stand. That's just like, whoa. A, this guy's hardcore. B, I'm glad he's on our side. But then the fact that Harry meets him is also very important for future books.

Brian (45:11)
Yeah, and I think that honestly, Harry makes such a good impression on him that it sets up things like proven guilty and turncoat. We believe

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (45:18)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (45:19)
the gatekeeper will go out of his way to work with Dresden because of this scene. Another thing that we believe later is why Ace is attacking Dresden in cold days. That's pretty well set up. Letting him off the hook in the sense of not killing him, not sending him to jail, dealing with his ghoul assassin plot separately, and just

Planting the seed that can germinate 10, 12 years down the line, really, really well done. That's before we even get to the Battle Inferior.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (45:51)
Yeah, and boy, Brian, the battle at the river is great. It has some important repercussions because, hey, this whole battle in the clouds is basically a tempering moment for the alphas. I think this is the last time we see them together as a group of like a dozen. We never really get all of their names, to my knowledge. Maybe it's in the RPG files, but I do know that the next time they really come back into the story, it's only like five or six of them.

And certainly by turncoat, that's all that's left in Chicago, because they've all grown up and left. But even before that, I think we still got the impression that there were a lot fewer than twelve running around. So this might be the moment where they said, you know what? I'm good. I'm done. I fought I fought the good fight for a while, but I'm gonna go and get on with my life. And the ones that stick around are the ones that are really dedicated, like Billy and Georgia and Andy and Mercy Marcy and Kirby.

Brian (46:45)
Yeah, definitely. I mean, Jim does a great job of showing us a sort of gang of youths in book two. And Summer Night, he's already like, okay, it's down to twelve, and by the end of this book, I'm gonna be able to tell you all their names because there's only gonna be like five of them left. Very nicely done, and it makes a lot of sense because this is clearly something that's gonna be very traumatic for a lot of the people who experience it. The same way the death of the summer lady is traumatic for

Sure, Harry, but also Titania. And I'm gonna say the supernatural world as a whole, this is the kind of thing that lets you know ding ding ding, the starborn cycle's coming around again.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (47:29)
Right, and boy, does it seem like a bad idea to have an inexperienced summer lady when that's about to happen. 'Cause that's arguably cold days happens because Lily is gullible enough to fall for it. Yeah.

Brian (47:44)
I I don't think arguably, yeah. I think

if we had, you know, presumably Aurora fifty years before this was good at her job, if we had the Aurora of fifty years before cold days, cold days doesn't happen for sure.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (47:57)
Exactly right. So I think that it's more than just, hey, Titania's mad. There's all these other echoes. Because, for example, in the very next book, Nicodemus is going to seek out Harry Dresden because he is worthy of being offered one of the few coins for the knights of the black and denarius. And that is no small honor.

Brian (48:19)
Yeah. I mean, forget about being offered. He's gonna kidnap him and try to force it down his throat. Yeah.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (48:25)
Yeah, sure.

Brian (48:26)
And not only that, Adam, we see the Za Lord's Guard not just as a punchline, but as an actual weapon that Dresden can wield. And man is Jim gonna pay that off in battle talks. Holy smokes, is that a cool scene?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (48:43)
Yeah, and even when we get to the epilogue, there are echoing elements because Mab offers Harry the knight's mantle for the first time. And if that will basically continue to be offered to him every time they meet, from now until changes when he finally accepts it.

Brian (48:59)
And I've gotta say that the whole ending of this book is I when I say this, guys, I don't want you to think that I'm I'm talking about the writing quality, but it's Shakespearean in the sense of the sort of personal trauma that's involved for people. The battle at the river really makes you feel like this is a world where really rough things happen. We've seen that in grave peril on a scale that.

I didn't know Jim had in him before I got to Summer Night. And and he can coordinate this kind of a large action set piece with this many actors, this kind of military scene in a way that I buy. if he had not done such a good job with this scene, I might have put down the series.

Because this is one of those things that's really ambitious and a lot of authors can't do well. Most people can't do a Helm's Deep. And I'm not saying that it's that good, but it's closer to that than some of the poorer attempts at this kind of large scale action scene I've seen.

But the lore, Adam. my god, the lore that's dropped.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (50:15)
Yeah.

Brian (50:16)
We learn not just about Fairy and the White Council, but also

New side characters, new ways of doing magic. The list goes on.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (50:29)
Yeah, so we like to ask at each assessment, what new elements of like the supernatural world, or in this case, just the Dresden world, did we learn about in this book? In this case, the answer is basically all of fairy, almost all of the Sealy and Unsealy stuff. The only stuff that's really missing in large part is the Earl King and the sort of wild fay elements, the wild hunt and the goblins and those things. And of course

There might be other elements of fairy that we still haven't learned eighteen books later, but of the stuff that we know right now, the only stuff that's really missing in totality is the Earl King and the Goblins and the Wild Fay.

Brian (51:08)
Yeah, I mean we get mothers, queens, ladies, knights, the she, changelinks, unicorns. We see the stone table. We learn about the season cycle. We learn about how power can be transferred between the courts and the political dynamics and the war that's going on between them and the people it harms and the ways and the rules about how they can interact with the mortal world. It is an exhausting amount of lore when you didn't.

Put Leah on the page until grave peril.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (51:40)
Yeah, that's exactly right. It's crazy. And we didn't even learn that much about her at that time. But not only that, Brian, because we've been hearing about the f existence of the White Council and that Harry belongs to the White Council, and he had the Doom of Damocles in the earlier books. But the only thing that we've ever seen as a representative of it was Morgan. And that was really in one book, more or less. So the fact that we get

To explode that out to the senior council and multiple people within that senior council that we meet personally and that will have a big impact on Harry's future, and several chapters about the politics of this body that are directly related to whether Harry gets to breathe tomorrow.

Brian (52:29)
Yeah, the fact that like nine eleven happens at Archangel in Russia, right? And that's like two paragraphs

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (52:37)
Yeah.

Brian (52:38)
of of the senior council interactions kind of shows the scope of what Jim's doing here. We get the senior council, their whole politics, the sort of Ebenezer joining the council, the way the gatekeeper is a part of it but seems separate.

And then that all feeds into us meeting Elaine and whether she is going to join this wizarding political body, and that the machinations of Merlin and Morgan maybe prevent her from doing so. We speculated to the contrary, but that's at least the way it's presented on page, that these politics have real consequences in the lives of other characters we're just meeting for the first time.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (53:16)
Yeah, and we even see a little bit of new magic here. Now it's not quite as much as we'll see in other books. Harry doesn't come up with a new gadget or a new type of shield bracelet or any kind

Brian (53:26)
New potion.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (53:27)
or new potion or or a new spell that we haven't seen him use before. We do see him use for Zare in a new way. This is sort of the first time we see him use it as a big evocation, where he's using it to blast himself out of the mud trap.

that Aurora set for him and wind up in that tree. And we see him use it a couple more times in battle later on in the book. that will lead into him using it way more often as one of his main hitting spells in future books. But this is where really where it starts.

Brian (53:58)
Yeah, I think that he's probably packaged the Forzari he uses in Quicksand into his force rings. That's what they are. They're kind of pre-enchanted versions of it. But that's not evocation. And the only other time we've ever seen it is bending the bars of the jail cell in full moon. This is Dresden in a life or death moment manipulating telekinetic force as his means of escape. And then as soon as he realizes he can do that, he goes.

Alright, I'm gonna start using this thing in battle. And we're explained why later on. This is the hardest thing for wizards to use. It's honestly kind of undersold in the text, but Dresden using Ferzare to escape that quicksand is one of the most consequential magical advances we see him take in the entire book. And as we talk about, that's gonna make a lot of sense because.

Dresden has magically advanced in this book. But one other thing we should mention before we get to our check-in on Dresden Adam is that we're introduced to mind fog, which it's not that we're gonna see it again, but the concept of a mind-altering spell that affects a large group of people simultaneously is kind of introduced for the first time here. And Jim is gonna go back to that well all the time.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (55:23)
Yeah, and I love his explanation to Murphy in that scene where he's like, I've never seen it before. It's illegal. And Murphy's like, Wait, what? It's against the law. What law? And he's I'll tell you about it later.

Brian (55:35)
Yes.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (55:36)
So, yeah, at this point now we've got a check-in. We are we we're doing our Dresden check-in. We do this every assessment and we check where he's at physically, mentally, magically, and interpersonally, and just talk about how it's different from the previous books. Now, physically

He's still not really training. I do think I remember reading a reference to the fact that he has started cardio. He has started jogging a little bit at some point in this in this book or before this book. And that is important because he's gonna need to be able to run quite a bit.

Brian (56:05)
Climb lot of stairs. That's what he's gotta do in this book.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (56:07)
Right. But he's not doing like his his weightlifting and parkour that we'll see him do later when he becomes the winter knight.

Brian (56:13)
Yeah,

and he's not even really taking it seriously, it seems. He's just sort of, in good shape. He runs around a lot as a person in his twenties, so he's fairly physically capable. Mentally, though, man, has Harry changed since we met him. First, at the start of this book, Adam, he is in the throes of I think we can just say major depressive disorder. I mean, it's I think on page obvious, and he's got

So many reasons to be. I mean, it might be comorbid with some post-traumatic distress disorder. I don't think that's too far-fetched either. And he is a deeply wounded person who can't even keep his clothes clean because the cat's using them as a litter box.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (56:59)
Yeah, exactly. Because he hasn't cleaned the actual litter box is the implication there, I think. Now, by the end of the book, he is finally on the path to healing. Now, if you just look at the epilogue as it stands, it looks like he's back to his good old self like he was before. But I think if you read between the lines, the assumption is he is getting better. He is now able to interact with his friends in the ways that he used to, but he's probably still not.

fully there. He's still gonna have some bad moments when he's thinking about Susan. He's still gonna have some times when he wants to throw it all away and spend more time in the lab trying to figure out how to fix her. And he's gonna have to get through that, but he's definitely like turned an important corner by the end of this book.

Brian (57:44)
Yeah, we're not gonna talk about it as much on page in Death Masks, but it's definitely the case that Harry has gotten to a place where he is ignoring the hole in his heart at the beginning of Death Masks because of the events of this book. And by the end of Death Masks, it feels like he has some closure. So that is the healing journey. It takes two books, but we get far enough in Summer Night that we don't have to hear about it.

tasks, which is a major turning point for Dresden. This is also the first book mentally where Dresden takes preparing for the final battle as like a thing that's his job that as a wizard he like needs to do competently. This is not what's the plan, boss? We're gonna run headlong into a buzzsaw, guys, like we see in full moon.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (58:36)
I think the first three books, the climax is basically just I'm gonna put on my magical gear and we'll figure it out when we get there.

Brian (58:44)
Yes, we're I'm gonna walk out

into the street on high noon and see if the whistle plays.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (58:49)
Yeah, but here he actually prepares a contingency plan for if he has to kill a fairy princess, essentially, and when he gets there he winds up having to use that contingency. It's it's just a level of planning we haven't seen before, and will eventually culminate in the best planning he's ever done by the time we get to skin game.

Brian (59:12)
Yeah, and we're gonna talk about that more in a second, but something that we should address magically, building on what we were talking about in the new magic section. The other major advancement in this book, besides just the use of Forzare, is that Dresden is not running low on mana by the time we get to the climax. As you put it, Adam, in the pre-show, you know.

That feels like it's happening in all three of the books. Like it's, you know, guys, my cooldowns on my spells are and here

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (59:42)
Ha ha ha.

Brian (59:44)
it really doesn't feel that way. He feels a lot more like a literary wizard usually does.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (59:51)
Yeah, and it's important, I think, because if Jim keeps using that as a crutch for like, I need Harry to not be able to solve things with magic. he's out of mana. I'll just make sure he gets he has to use up a bunch of his magic before he gets there, then it feels a little predictable and it feels a little boring and rote. So the fact that he is ex sort of expanding and saying, you know what, Harry's getting stronger. I'll find other ways to throw obstacles in his path.

Sometimes it's not that he's out of mana, but that magic can't solve this for some other reason.

Brian (1:00:22)
Where sometimes we have to see Dresden be able to throw his best punch and it doesn't work. And if you keep

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:00:28)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Brian (1:00:30)
putting us in a position where he just can't do it, you never get that payoff, which is the kind of thing that Jim is going to use to great effect down the line. But beyond just the stuff that has to do with Harry personally as an individual, there's some interpersonal changes in terms of Dresden's relationships that I think are part of that healing journey.

Like accepting the friendship offered by the alphas, who yes, are younger than him, but are also smart people who are clued in and who accept him for who he is.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:01:03)
Yeah, and they want to be a part of his world and help him do they want to fight the good fight. He's a mentor and inspiration to them. And the fact that he accepts that role is very important here. So that is a very important interpersonal step that he has taken to become a little bit more social than he was in the past, as we saw.

That didn't work out so well for Kim Delaney when he really was more hands-off and I won't tell you information that I think you don't need to know. So that's he's definitely come a long way from Stormfront, where the only ally was the cop that also was mad at him for not sharing information and tried to arrest him for it. Now he's got a pretty big stable of potential allies. And we're gonna talk about a lot of those later on.

Brian (1:01:50)
Yeah, and we're not just talking about mortal allies. The summer lady gives him a boon. He's now friends with her and the summer knight. And his whole relationship with his godmother has been clarified that Leia really is an ally of his, and it seems as though the person who's holding his debt now might be very scary, but isn't quite as evil as might be impossible.

implied by the notion of the wicked fairy queen.

Brian (1:02:19)
So Adam, we've talked about the plot of this book, but we haven't really drawn all the through lines. We haven't spoken about it in broad thematic terms. And I think it's interesting after we've sort of laid out what happens, let's do a little surgery. What can we pull out of all of that?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:02:42)
Yeah, I mean, one of the most obvious themes that you can see right from the beginning of this book, it literally is spoken by Billy. Everyone needs help sometimes. And Harry is resistant to that message right at the very beginning. He wants to do everything himself, and he's partly because of his guilt and partly because of his PTSD, partly because of his depression, whatever you want to talk about there. But he slowly starts to accept that he's

Going to Murphy for help, then he's actually going f to the Alphas for help. And he's been very reticent, is even in the first chapter about bringing them in on anything bigger than, you know, a local, you know, smaller troll or something like that they could potentially handle by themselves. And he winds up bringing them into the battle of the century between the fairy courts. So like he's finally accepting that these people know what they're getting into.

They can make those choices, and if they are offering help, you can accept it, especially when the stakes are this high.

Brian (1:03:46)
So I've got an interesting question for you. And I want to play devil's advocate a little bit here. I I s I have my own answer to it, but I just want to kind of put you on the spot with it. So why is Dresden learning that in this book?

Because in Stormfront we kind of he he lone gunmans and he

Is his ass is pulled out of the fire literally by Morgan in the end, and his relationship with Murphy is screwed up and like the lone gunman thing barely works. But in Full Moon, he gets a lot of help from the Alphas, from Tara, from Susan. And arguably that's the only reason why he doesn't die, Marcone. You know, it's it's only them working together that gets him out of it. And then in Grave Peril, yes.

What happens to Susan is horrible. And arguably what happens to Justine and Harry is almost as horrible. But the only person that Harry tried to bring in to help was Michael. And he's fine. Yes, charity had a a horrible, encounter in the graveyard with the nightmare, but she's okay. The baby's okay.

Michael's okay. He was put in danger. His family was put in danger. Justine was put in danger. Thomas was put in danger. Susan was put in danger. But everybody lived. Why is it only in this book, when actually Meryl, who he just met and has hired him to help, dies, that Harry learns that lesson?

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:05:14)
I think it's kind of a survivor's guilt thing. He's got this sort of instinctive flinch away from putting people in danger if he can do it himself. Right? I don't want to ask anyone else to help me because if they get hurt, it will be my fault, right? He's got that martyr complex, that guilt complex. But I think it all stems back to his childhood and the issues with that he's had with Elaine, where

He blames himself for what happened to her. He might even blame himself for what happened to his mother because she she died at childbirth or whatever. Some people have that kind of a hang up. And in this book, Elaine comes back from the dead, and that might help heal a little portion of that survivor's guilt, but he's also slowly seen all of the things you're talking about, where, I bring these people along, and they're actually very capable. You know, Murphy.

can handle herself against a ghoul of all things. And hey, Michael can handle himself. And I think the thing is, he's he's like an exce Michael is an exception because he's literally got God watching out for him. If Michael gets in trouble, I can't even blame myself.

Brian (1:06:27)
Right.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:06:28)
Michael's a unless of course Harry brings him into the party and then abandons him there to save Susan that

would be something he'd blame himself for, and rightfully so.

Brian (1:06:39)
Yeah, don't spoil Mira Mira, but we don't

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:06:41)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Brian (1:06:43)
have any inside info. We don't have any inside info. no, I think that's absolutely right. I think it's really smart to call out the Elaine thing because not only does she come back from the dead and kind of heal that, he also does he has to, but he ultimately decides I'm going to trust you not just to help me, but also to betray sort of the people who you're working with.

to help me and I'm gonna trust you to do a good enough job that I live. And the fact that he kind of does all of that in the heat of the moment because it's the right thing to do makes it easier for him to think it's the right thing to do the next time.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:07:19)
And there's one other element to this that's different about this story than all the previous stories, and it's the stakes, right? Yeah. Because

Brian (1:07:26)
I was going there next, yes. Yeah.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:07:29)
in the previous books, if Harry turns down the Alpha's offer for help when he wants to go get his girlfriend back because he doesn't want to feel guilt over them getting hurt or whatever, that's one thing. If he turns down the alpha's help.

to stop like a horrific climate disaster

yeah, that might wind up

Brian (1:07:48)
Yeah, the apocalypse. Yeah.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:07:51)
killing them anyway. it's worth bringing them along and risking the guilt at that point. And once he's done it one time, it doesn't seem so bad anymore.

Brian (1:08:01)
And here's another thing that the stakes do here, Adam, because Harry walks into the White Council meeting and has it very starkly put to him exactly how important all of this is. Like, yes, your life depends on it, but like honestly, who cares about that? Right? Like, there's so much more going on. This is so much bigger than him that he doesn't feel like he should.

Be able to handle it himself. He's willing to cut himself a little bit of slack because he doesn't feel like this is something that one wizard of the White Council should be able to handle. And because he's not psychologically handicapped by the notion, if I'm a wizard, I should be able to take care of this myself, he's free to reach out to other people. I think we're gonna see a similar thing in the next book.

Where he's like, Well, this is kind of out of my pay grade, where's Michael? for

like very similar reasons.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:09:04)
Yes. And the other thing that's very different about this book, he contemplates calling in the cavalry in the previous three books, right? He thinks about it in Stormfront and realizes, you know what, they're gonna if I just call in the cavalry, they're gonna blame me. Morgan's gonna tell them I'm the one that's killing people. I can't call them. And then we get, I think, a similar I conversation in his head, like, how do I deal with this?

Should I call in somebody from the White Council? No, I can't do that for this reason. And then in grave peril, no, I can't do that because they won't help me in this case. It's not re it's, you know, put not politically expedient. This time, he actually does call for backup from the White Council, and he would have gotten it if not from Morgan stymieing him, I think. because he was doing the responsible thing and saying, Yes, I get that this is my trial.

But like the stakes of me failing is no longer my life. It's the lives of everyone. How which what everyone? We're gonna make that joke every every single episode. So

Brian (1:10:06)
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:10:08)
that to me is another element that shows a little bit of growth, but also acceptance of like things are different now. And by the time we get to by the time we get to blood rights, he's like, I've got a black court problem.

Let me get a posse together. It's not

just

Brian (1:10:25)
Yes.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:10:25)
I'm gonna call up Murphy. I'm gonna get four people to go after this thing, not just little old me.

Brian (1:10:30)
Yeah, let let me call badass vampire hunter Mick Kilvimson. Yeah, exactly.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:10:35)
Yes.

Brian (1:10:37)
so I think that's completely right. Harry not only takes the help because he's learned from his past situations and because of what people do for him in this book, but also because his perspective on the world changes as the problems drop that his doorstep change.

And part of the reason they are changing is that in the Dresden files.

Actions have consequences. And I don't mean like the for the characters in the story. Yes, of course they do. But I mean for us, the readers, this is not a book series that you can pick up book seven and say, yeah, this is a case file for the wizard detective.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:11:26)
Yeah, I think the Hardy Boys is a is a perfect example here. Like that is

Brian (1:11:28)
Yes. If anybody knows that, yes.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:11:31)
Yeah, that is not something that you need to read in order.

You're you're supposed to be able to pick up any one of those that you happen to find in in a bookstore in a library or whatever, and and be like, okay, this yeah, they reset to neutral more or less. At the end of everything, they're back to normal and they can start with a new case the next time. And you would be forgiven for thinking the Dresden Files is going to be like that, right? Like a Sherlock Holmes thing. You don't necessarily for the vast majority of the Sherlock Holmes books, you don't need to have read the previous ones to enjoy them.

Brian (1:12:02)
Right. I mean, literally The Rockford Files is a PI TV show from like the seventies that Jim probably unconsciously took the Files name from.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:12:12)
Hmm.

Brian (1:12:13)
And I've never seen The Rockford Files, but from what I understand from a Ben Fold song that references them.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:12:22)
We're doing the deep research here, guys.

Brian (1:12:26)
you don't need to really pay any attention to what's going on to watch them, because the next episode, somebody's gonna walk into the office and give the PI a case, and he's gonna solve the case. This is a lot of TV shows. A lot of TV follows this general formula of this is another day at whatever this place we're we're having the episode is, and it's the sa you know, house.

Like a whole season will go by.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:12:54)
Yeah, coffee shop, office, etcetera.

Brian (1:12:58)
You can watch that in reverse order and it won't make any difference. There might be changes in between seasons, but that's the extent of it. And in the Dresden Files, that's absolutely not the case. The hero's girlfriend doesn't just she's a half vampire now, and she's just back for the next episode, but she can now throw people through a wall. It's like no. She's gone.

He's distraught. He's barely holding it together. Things have changed.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:13:30)
Yeah, even before we get to changes, that is absolutely happening. And as I always like to point out, in television dramas, they were very serialized for a long time. You can pick up any

Brian (1:13:42)
Mm-hmm.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:13:42)
episode of Star Trek the Next Generation, and for the most part, you'd be able to follow what's going on if you knew anything about Star Trek. But by the time you get to the 90s, Babylon V changes that. And of course, we know Jim is a big Babylon Van.

And Michael J. Strazinski said, No, I trust that the viewer can follow a story that takes place over five seasons. So that's the story I'm gonna tell. And Jim is basically doing that here. But as we've been talking about, this book is very different from the previous three. And this is a major way. Because if you had only read the previous three books, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this is a case files book because

They don't really have anything to do with each other at all.

Brian (1:14:29)
Yeah, the villains don't reoccur. The allies sort of reoccur. I mean, Susan's in all of them, but you know, that's the girlfriend character. They're often in all of them in a greater or lesser role. It really feels like a loosely connected series of stories. They're gonna have some continuity, but if you pick up two and then one, who cares? This one breaks the mold, and it's going to continue.

Continue for the next several books to be clear that if you read three and then seven, you're gonna be like a brother. And that's

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:15:07)
Ha ha ha.

Brian (1:15:09)
very, very different from a lot of stories like this. So

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:15:12)
Yeah.

Brian (1:15:13)
I think that actually

tells us it's a good time to check in on something else, Adam. How have our characters changed as a result of these consequences? Because I don't think we've seen really stark differences in people's personalities yet, but we are seeing hints that they're starting to see the world differently.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:15:34)
Yeah, and we've talked about this during some of the chapter discussions, but Murphy's character in the first couple of books starts out extremely lawful good, like that annoying paladin that makes sure you're always on the straight and narrow. And to be fair, from her perspective, from what she knows, that makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't call her wrong based on what she knows. Now, if Dresden was able to successfully explain to her, listen.

There are things that SI cannot handle. You need to let the wizard cops handle them, or you're going to get a lot of people killed. That changes that changes her decision making. And that process of communication slowly occurs over the next three books. I think it starts with that conversation at the beginning of Full Moon, where Harry says, Okay, I'm gonna tell you the information here, but you gotta understand

you can't act on all of it necessarily, this, that or the other thing, and then at grave peril, it continues a little bit, and here she finally seems to accept, okay, I'll come back you up against a monster. I'm not calling the cops I don't have to worry about bringing a monster in and handcuffed. She doesn't even try to handcuff the tigress who is like a well known assassin in the s like, she gives him the breakdown of, Yeah, we think it's this hit hitman named

named the Tigris, well, she just decides, you know what? No, I'm gonna cowboy up with Dresden. I'm going neutral good instead of lawful good.

Brian (1:17:07)
Yes, and I think that change is emblematic of the change from a moral agent to a moral actor. And what I mean when I say that here is that as a Leo, you know, as an officer of the law,

that that functions as a moral agent, as someone who is executing the code of the society, not somebody who is independently deciding what is right and wrong. And look, that's a smart thing to be as a cop or as a district attorney or whatever. If you need to enforce the laws.

You kind of have to take yourself out of the equation or you're gonna drive yourself crazy. But in this book, Murphy shifts. And this is ultimately gonna be the shift that in proven guilty gets her busted down to sergeant.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:17:58)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:17:59)
She says, Okay, I'm gonna make a moral choice here. The thing that is, legally prescribed is I gotta bring in the cops. But I know that would be morally wrong because it would get a bunch of them killed.

So I'm gonna make a moral choice to violate this code that I'm supposed to faithfully execute because I think I found an exception to the rule and I'm allowed morally to make that decision, that this is an exception to the rule. The reason why people don't like Murphy in the first couple books is partially because they don't think she's capable of making that decision.

And as soon as she becomes a person who can make that decision, she's a much more likable character because she's thinking for herself about right and wrong, very similarly to how Dresden does.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:18:50)
Yeah, and I think there's another angle to this that gets her to the point where she can make this choice to go from moral agent to moral actor, as you're talking about. And it has to do with leading special investigations in particular. If you recall, in Grave Peril, when Harry looks upon her with the sight, he sees her as like an avenging angel or Valkyrie type character, but tarnished. Like the rags are a little

Dirty. They're not pure and clean. And I think part of that is when she writes up one of those special investigations cases, she's gotta lie to her superiors

Brian (1:19:29)
Yeah.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:19:30)
to sell it. She has to say, no, no, no, it wasn't a troll. It was just you know, some some some homeless guy that somebody mistook and don't worry, we've taken care of it, or whatever she, whatever she has to say, it's terrorists, you know, this, this, that, and other thing. And because she started this, believing that.

The laws are good and I must uphold the laws that will make me good. But then she has to do so much finagling and twisting of the truth in order to do her job the way that she feels will actually help people. That starts her down the path to accepting that, you know, if I get to make these little choices about what I can and can't tell my superiors, maybe I should be able to make other choices about.

Whether I should try to bring a ghoul in in handcuffs or whether I should call in the cavalry to fight a giant troll or and and and a summer lady, those things I think really start her down that path towards being a that person that can make those choices.

Brian (1:20:28)
Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. Those are her acting as a moral actor. She's deciding what information to pass on on the basis of what would be best, as opposed to just what am I technically supposed to do. And the thing that I think people have to understand about very early Murphy is she's absurdly young to be a police lieutenant.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:20:51)
Yeah.

Brian (1:20:51)
Which means that she must have been so dedicated. She must have been such a cop's.

She must have just been so laser-focused on doing things the way that the department wants them to be done that there was kind of no way for her to totally pick her head up and act independently and really think for herself. Murphy, got her job.

By being the kind of person who does all of their homework exactly the way the teacher told them to, and she's never had to cut corners and kind of be bad until she had to start lying on those reports.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:21:33)
Yeah. And you know what this makes me think of, actually? If we were to try to find an analog in another media for like a Murphy type character, have you ever seen Hot Fuzz, Edgar Wright, Edgar Wright's st

Brian (1:21:43)
Yes, yes.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:21:46)
cop buddy cop pastiche? Nicholas Angel, played by Simon Pegg, who you may know from

Brian (1:21:52)
Sean of the Dead.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:21:53)
from Sean of the Dead or the Mission Impossible series more recently, he plays Nicholas Angel.

A cops cop of cops who is so goddamn impressive that he makes everybody else on the London Metropolitan Police Force look so bad that they transfer him to the ass end of nowhere to get him out of there. Like he's doing so good. And then

Brian (1:22:16)
I mean they

basically transfer him to SI. The plot of the movie

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:22:20)
Yes.

Brian (1:22:20)
is that it's like a conspiracy in the town. Yeah.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:22:22)
Exactly. And

by the end, they're like, crime is so bad in London, we need you to come back again. And now it's a comedy movie, right? But that, if you take the if you strip the comedy element out of it, I think that must have been her journey of like, she's so good at what she does, but of course it's a boys' club, and she pissed off the wrong person because she's so by the book that she didn't want to bend the rules at all. And so she made somebody mad. And so they're like, we can't not.

promote her, but just stick her in SI and she'll probably flame out real soon, right? That's what that's her journey.

Brian (1:22:57)
And she's not the only person who's changing. Because I think Harry bringing that Felise to the battle in the clouds is one of the most s significant under discussed things in Summer Night. As readers, we don't know that the bag has pixies with box knives in it. But Harry knows he put them there. He put them there several hours ago.

He came up with this plan sometime after he walked out of the f the the never never and you got back home. And look, he doesn't release the pixies with box knives when they get to the battle. He doesn't release it when Talos nearly kills him. He doesn't release it when they're trying to get through Korick. He saves it for Aurora. It's his ace in the hole. Not to take the unraveling from her. The Pixies aren't supposed to do that.

Not to get Lily away from her. They're not doing that either. To kill her. To kill her in a really gruesome manner. That was his premeditated plan. This guy, two years ago, has Roger, whatever his name is, the you know, the

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:24:09)
The redheaded kid did the FBI, yeah.

Brian (1:24:11)
Hexan wolf.

Who has literally been trying to kill him and his friends for like a day or two now already, and who is a murderous psychopath at this point who's addicted to bloodlust, has him at his mercy and says, Guys, we just gotta let him go. We'll take his wolf belt, but we just gotta let him go and walk away. we can't kill him. That would be wrong.

and that means that Dresden is starting to

Like plan to neutralize a threat. Cause the the the thing I'm trying to drive out here is that Roger is going to come back and try to get the belt from him.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:24:49)
Mm-hmm.

Brian (1:24:49)
And letting him go just puts that, knife at his back. And here, Harry doesn't know that he's gonna have to kill Aurora. But he brings a contingency to do so because he started thinking of it as.

Okay, but if I do get knifed in the back, that that would be bad. You know? So

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:25:06)
Ha ha ha

Brian (1:25:08)
he started to treat those threats as if they're inevitable, I might have to eliminate them before they're imminent.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:25:16)
and future versions of Dresden will not really make that mistake. I mean, another example from Full Moon is when he pisses off Parker at the Full Moon garage and he runs away and he's like, Boy, I hope that doesn't come back to bite me in the ass like a couple years down the r no, it's it's like six chapters down the line, buddy. It's coming right back around. So

You're right that he's making contingencies and planning for that. And as he has told us in the past, a wizard is incredibly powerful when they take the time to plan things. And he's gonna start actually taking that and and making it part of his own identity.

Brian (1:25:54)
Yeah, he's gonna come up with a way to neutralize threats before they're in imminent danger. And dealing with Aurora like this, saying she believes what she is doing. She's even if I stop her this time, she's going to try something like this again. I have to put an end to this. Not just keep it from happening at midnight. I have to put an end to this.

That is a very different Harry Dressed.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:26:21)
Absolutely.

Okay, now we go on to the section where we have any undiscussed questions. Questions that we just couldn't find a place to fit during our actual chapter discussion of this book. And really there's only one here that I could think of, Brian. If not for Harry being in danger, does Ebenezer ever decide to join the senior council?

Brian (1:26:41)
I don't think so. And I think we spoke about this. I don't think the Black Staff is really supposed to be on the senior council. And I don't think that Ebenezer is, goody two-shoo-less rule follower, like we were speculating Murphy has been in the past. But don't think he's gonna break that taboo unless he feels like he has to. And

Obviously the Merlin doesn't know that Harry is his grandson necessarily. But it's only a circumstance like this, where his family is at risk, that he thinks, I've gotta break that taboo.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:27:17)
Yeah, and e more so than just the taboo, it's pretty clearly explained that he doesn't like all this politics nonsense in the the senior council and the white council in general. He'd much rather be just down on his farm minding his own business. Like that's the impression I get. He does this because he feels a weight of responsibility towards it. And that's probably how he treats the black staff position too. Somebody's gotta do it. I'm good enough to do it. I'll do it. And I get the impression

from what we get from Jim where we know that Ebenezer like head of the Wardens during the period where Lucio was in the old west in in Fistful of Warlocks and stuff. So he did his time as like a leadership role in the senior council as like a battle wizard leading the wardens, but we know he's not the leader of the wardens anymore. I think he's basically kind of retired and now he's like coming out of retirement to help save Harry.

And he doesn't it's not something he wants to do. It's something he feels like he has to do.

Brian (1:28:11)
Definitely. And I think this also presents a little bit of a problem for people who think that Ebenezer might actually be black council. And if you're asking who thinks that, I promise there's more than one person, you know, I've I've I've spoken to them. and I I it's not that I think this is like a death knell for that theory, but you have to explain why he only tries to put himself on the senior council.

It seems in response to the situation that Harry finds himself in, you kind of have to believe that he engineered that entire situation. And I don't really know how that works. I don't think it's impossible, but I really think you'd have to plan that out very carefully, figure out how that could have happened if you're gonna suggest that he's a Machiavellian character.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:29:00)
Yeah, gen generally I I think I tend to agree. The other thing that we don't know is how often and how recently have the senior counsel switched around. I mean, we know that the Merlin has been in charge for a while, certainly for the last several years because he presided over Harry's trial, if I'm not mistaken, and that would have been ten ish years ago when we're talking about summer night.

And we can probably presume that Ancient Mai, who often seems to be described as one of the oldest members of the Senior Council, is almost certainly been on it for a long time. I get the impression that Martha Liberty has also been on it for quite a while. And of course, Listens to Wind has also been on it for quite some time. He is also one of the oldest members on there. Now,

As for LeFortier and Petrovich, we don't really know precisely, but I get the impression that both of them are a little bit younger than the other ones on the senior council. So maybe this is the first opening that Ebenezer has had since he stepped down from being in charge of the Wardens.

Brian (1:29:59)
Yeah, I I think we actually know that everyone who was on the council the day Petrovic died presided over Harry's trial. And Harry's, I guess, twenty-nine in summer night. yeah, so it's

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:30:13)
Yeah, he was what, sixteen, seventeen in the trial?

Brian (1:30:16)
it that's that's at least a dozen years of continuity kind of as a minimum floor in terms of senior council positions. And

Seem like we're not told about any great old wizards who recently died. So it kind of sounds like probably since Kemmler was walking around, you know, about that era, there's been a lot of stability in the wizarding world. It might have been the entirely same senior council since, you know, 1965 or

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:30:48)
Yeah, I think it I that's basically what I've been thinking of along those same lines.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:30:52)
All right, Brian. So that concludes our Dresden check-in. We talked about the plot and we talked about our overall thoughts and some of the new introductions to the various things that are happening, but there's a lot of stuff happening in the background that we wanna talk about, including the sort of the meta-analysis of how Harry uses his spells compared to previous books and the physical punishment he takes, and our of course

our favorite lines and our rankings of the books, all of the stuff that we normally do in an assessment, but I don't think we can fit it all into thirty minutes.

Brian (1:31:20)
No, we definitely can't because to tease the episode that's gonna come after this, guys, we're gonna have a sort of background review of the plot that Dresden doesn't know about in this book, in our crazy theory corner. So because we got a lot of ground to cover there, and all of the normal stuff we generally do in an assessment episode, you're right. This is gonna have to be two parts.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:31:47)
All right, just to give you a heads up on the next couple of weeks. Next week we will rec release the second part of this assessment on October ninth. The week after that, the sixteenth, we will be not releasing an episode. We have five Fridays in October, so we are gonna take one week off like we normally do. And then on the twenty third, we've got the first Death Masks episode followed by our special Patreon episode releasing on October thirtieth.

Brian (1:32:14)
Yeah,

sign up for the Patreon if you want your Halloween Dresden folks, cause we're gonna do our normal three episodes in spooky season, but that's where the Patreon's gonna fall. And really excited, Adam, to polish off this assessment and then get started on book five, one of the scariest books in the series, the week before Halloween.

Adam "Bridger" Ruzzo (1:32:34)
Absolutely. Looking forward to it. We'll see you then.