The Dresden Files: Cold Days by: Jim Butcher

 

Jim Butcher is an interesting author when it comes to the way he portrays family and family structures.  The Dresden Files is a series who’s protagonist begins the series without a family but fairly quickly Harry Dresden builds this found family around him, from Murphy in Storm Front, Billy and the Alphas in Fool Moon, Michael and Thomas in Grave Peril, and even Mouse’s introduction in Blood Rites, Harry keeps people around him that he can rely upon and treat as family.  Molly as his mentor is essentially a trial run for the reveal that he is in fact a father in Changes, killed and resurrected in Ghost Story, and finally Cold Days is the book that deals with familial conflict at its core.  The Dresden Files has set up the Summer and Winter Courts of Faerie as opposing forces and while it is in this novel that their purpose in the cosmic scheme of things, Summer tempers Winter who guard Faerie and the mortal realm from the Outsiders which is a fascinating dynamic.  This is a core point of Cold Days with Fix, the Summer Knight, actively attempting to oppose Harry’s duty as Winter Knight, in this book with the order from Mab to kill the Winter Lady.

 

Harry doesn’t want to kill Fix, the Summer Knight, or even kill Maeve at the start of the novel when ordered to.  He has to, due to his oath, but he doesn’t want to do this.  Harry keeping his identity is the main thrust for his arc in the novel while the exploration of family coats everything else, since it is family that allows Harry to stay human.  Having the climax not just be Harry alone defeating Maeve like Changes had Harry alone make the decision to kill Susan to save their daughter and the world.  This is a book where the climax happens because of actions that aren’t Harry’s, at least not directly.  Mab reproaches him in a manner due to who becomes the Winter Lady after Maeve, something that while true and gets to Harry’s heart and explores the bad things he’s done and has continued to do in pushing away his own daughter, it makes for catharsis.

 

The leaders of the courts follow the classic maiden, mother, and crone trinity from myth with the Lady, Queen, and Mother.  The trinity is an intergenerational mother to daughter, not necessarily in the literal sense but the magical bond makes it a family especially as those who have those mantles for an extended period of time.  The big reveal is that Harry is ordered to kill Maeve because Mab can’t bring herself to do it because it would be killing a daughter.  There is something human to Mab and the other Faeries who appear in Cold Days as this is all a close knit familial conflict with the Summer Court finding their way in due to Maeve attempting to steal her own power due to an evil corruption.  Yes, there is an evil corruption that is bigger than anything Harry has faced before building up from Changes and Ghost Story as The Dresden Files have changed to a story about primal forces.  This includes Demonreach which is where the book essentially starts when we get to Earth and where it essentially ends.  There also isn’t really a conclusion to the book as things end once again on an almost cliffhanger with the catharsis which is becoming a problem.  It’s a trope in long running fantasy series that their installments do not end with an ending, but end with a stopping point that sometimes ends in the author passing away.

 

Overall, Cold Days isn’t quite as good as Changes and Ghost Story and is perhaps Jim Butcher winding down from the high of the last few novels’ buildup.  It isn’t quite floundering for the series as there are still developments and Harry’s characterization in this novel in particular is brilliant, especially at the very beginning and very end when the narrative is in Faerie and he is attempting to just survive.  There is also almost an overabundance of action and the length of the book is a bit too long for one that is supposed to be occurring within a single Halloween.  It is still in the top tier of The Dresden Files, but you can kind of see almost the writer’s block setting in and the slow down in publishing come closer as after this there is one full novel before Butcher took a break from the novels between 2015 and 2019.  9/10.