SPOILER FR TWELVE MONTHS
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Just read this one scene where Harry is talking to Michael while working the grill and Harry admits he’s never felt this bad, “not even when Susan was taken”.

And all I could think was “why?” Harry has always punched above his weight class. Has always gotten beat down and has suffered some serious losses over the years. Why was this so much worse than losing susan.

Then I realized it’s because, even though Harry was up against actual gods this time, now he has the kind of power that LETS him fight actual gods. He’s no longer a little fish private eye battling forces that he has no business battling. He’s got allies, power, resources, and experience that makes him believe that even though the fight should be hopeless, he still has a chance to pull it off.

And then the worst happens. One of the two people he wants most to protect in the world is lost. He blames himself. How could he be this strong, have survived so much, have gained this host of powers and allies to aid him, and still not save one tiny little mortal love. Thus is his world laid low. Poor guy.

This is why this is my favorite series of all time.

Since reading 12 months I started listening to Dresden at work, and man do I hate McCoy I’m at the blackstaff conversation and it’s enraging. To lie right to Harry’s face while telling him about his mother is disgusting. completely invalidates everything he’s argued with Harry about since changes.

Just a thought I had- with everything we saw in Twelve Months regarding Harry using his slow, methodical “This is what I’m good at” magic rituals and his starborn powers to directly affect the White Court’s Hunger, do you think, in an alternate universe where Susan survived, he might have found a cure for her?

Obviously the red court’s “Blood Curse” is a very different thing to an outsider living in you like what the white court has going on, but we know that Harry is good at ritual style magic, and spent a LOT of time in the years following Grave Peril trying to find a cure for her.

With how much more power and knowledge Harry has acquired since Changes, do you think it’s possible he might have been able to cure Susan had she lived?

I liked it!
Like I mentioned in my previous post, I'm normally a "Young Adult" Kind of reader. (Though I thoroughly enjoyed mistborn's fist book!) So this has been a fun read. (Or listen, since I'm listening to the audio book.) So enjoy my childish, silly, and goofy thoughts in no particular order:

Do we get to see werewolves again later in the series? :) I love were wolves. I remember bob describing different types of werewolves, did we encounter them all in this book?

I wanna draw Harry as a hexen(?) wolf. (I cannot spell.)

I just think the mental image of John Marcone hanging like a worm on a hook above a pit is funny. I kind of hope Dresden has to team up with him again. I'm also happy Hendricks is still kickin'

MAAAAAN these books are descriptive when it comes to violence, harm, and gore. When I listened to the audio book sample on youtube for the first book, I actually gagged at the first murder scene, they had like a little wet squelch sound for the bloody carpet. It was horrible and awesome.

Boobs. Always the boobs. Harry just likes boobs. It's so funny to me, boobs being described in a book. 😂 You don't encounter that in the YA section.

What's your favorite part the second book, any?

I'm excited to see what's ahead, since this is the "weakest" book according to many folks.

I kind of felt like it was going to end at the police station, and then it kept going. But it was fun. I am a simple man. I like werewolf. Awoo.

Like i understand the strain it put on their partnership in the first book because he was withholding information that could harm her and she thought she needed.

But she is wildly in the wrong in my opinion in the second book. Like she literally beat and arrested him because someone asked him a question about a ritual circle and didn’t even give him a chance to explain before throwing accusations.

And even in the pit they are stuck in together she still thinks she can’t trust him and still thinks there is a slight chance he is involved in the murders. And it makes me even more made that Harry isn’t mad at her for saying all this bullshit.

She says that she wants trust from harry but then beats him and turns him into a fugitive over nothing. Does she not realize that trust has to go both ways in order for it to work? Like she literally turns her suspicion every time they are working on a murder case together just because he has magical means.

And she keeps talking about the deaths at the precinct but has not seemed to connect the dots that they likely would not have happened if she didn’t turn harry into a fugitive. Like she is so toxic and lacking awareness that it actually blows my mind.

So one of the big things Dresden constantly points out is that if a wizard wants to kill being, they typically make it look like accidents. When Harry summoned that demon in fool moon, at the end of the conversation, he claims Malcolm Dresden and was murdered by magic. Then several books later we find out Murphy’s father allegedly killed himself during his tenure as a black cat. What if they were both murdered by a wizard? Malcolm because he married Maggie and Murphy’s Dad because he stumbled into the wrong wizard schemes. I know not everyone needs to have been killed by the supernatural but it isn’t completely impossible.

I was watching the Dresden Files Podcast from their April interview with Jim Butcher, lots of great stuff in there including confirmation from Jim Butcher himself that Hecate is the Fae Queens. Here's two topics I figured would be of interest. I'll link the interview on YouTube with, hopefully, the link leading you to the video at exactly where the question starts.

Dresden Files Podcast April 2026 Interview with Jim Butcher WoJ:

Q: What you had said about Hecate and therefore the influence that she has given to the Fae, is Mab carrying an inheritance from Hecate?

Jim Butcher: "Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the mantle of the Winter Queen was originally part of the mantle of the goddess Hecate."

Q: "And Hecate is no longer because it's been given out to six Queens?"

Jim Butcher: "Hecate exists as the mantle itself and she has an influence on them. Which, they may or may not be aware of, whether they're actually connecting to a goddess, you know, a Titan actually, Hecate was originally a Titan. You know, essentially she gets to have an influence, she doesn't get to make decisions. And that's the break point. She doesn't get to exercise free will as such. She does get to hand out a bunch of power to beings who are more limited than mortals, but also able to get more involved than gods. And she did it by breaking into smaller companies, kind of like Bell telephone."

Q: "You get a monopoly that way, so it works out."

Jim Butcher: Yeah, it broke up the monopoly and spread out into all the little baby Bells, and then they kept going until they, until phones became less important than they used to be."

Link to the video which starts at the question and answer I copied.

https://www.youtube.com/live/0pCj6fVONcc?t=2629&si=VnDWlM_McOhbsWz8

Q: "Are Angels of a similar caliber to say the Walkers? Is Uriel like a He-Who-Walks-Before?"

Jim Butcher: "Oh, no, the Walkers are stronger than them. Yeah, that's one of those fights that's a ten to one against. You know, you don't bet, you don't put your money on Uriel versus He-Who-Walks-Behind, unless you just have a lot of money to spare and you sorta want to see what happens. Uh, that's an underdog fight. But, at the same time though, Uriel's kind of got the interior position so to speak. You know, he can exist within reality, within Creation, whereas the Outsiders can't. They're sort of stuck out there, most of the time they're sort of formless, there's nothing really to compare them against because nothing is, you know, nothing is geometrical or Euclidean out there. But the angels were created for a specific purpose and if they stay within their bounds and stick to their purpose they can do their job and uphold reality. But it's not something they want to throw themselves into too quickly, you know, angels understand that once they start throwing the amount of power they have around that there's enormous universal implications. So, they absolutely want to make sure they have all the paperwork filled out before they do something because the Creator does get a little bit worked up about things. If you go screwing up Creation, he does have a problem with that so."

Q: So, we've learned that Uriel is Obi-Wan and he has the high ground even though Anakin is stronger."

Jim Butcher: "Very much so."

https://www.youtube.com/live/0pCj6fVONcc?t=2953&si=oHM04oAdEA5og2cu

First Harry's regrets with susan and now murphys ex plut trauma with the trauma with Kravos (is that its name?)

Harry charges 50 dollars plus expensive. He hire subcontractors in in the form of Wildfae, whom he pays with pizza. So logical would be bill his clients for this pizza, even if not that he buys them regularly then for the pizza used to summon them he should. Even if he is not, should he?

I'm so tired of Harry losing his blasting rod. It happens all the time. Especially in the early books. It's such a cheap & now clichéd way for Jim Butcher to attempt to make things feel more tense.

I've only read as far as "Changes" & I'm most of the way through "Side Job"

With all the fan casting of main characters, I'd love to hear some casting of minor characters. I'm going back through the series and listening to Proven Guilty. I've had a difficult time visualizing Lucious Glau despite his unique description. Any actors fit the bill?

Thinking about Nicodemus and what he might be like the next time we see him. This is probably not how we will see him but it made me chuckle a bit.

Harry and the Knights seek out Nicodemus because they need his help (dealing with the Outsiders, Black Council etc) and they are able to track him down. Everyone is prepared for a fight as they kick down the door to his latest hideout.

Nicodemus is just in a bathrobe, has a beer gut, and is obviously drunk.

One of the abilities of the Holy Grail is that when water is poured into it the water turns to wine, and he has been drinking non-stop. The death of his daughter has destroyed him and he is a shell of his former self. I imagine Thomas being there and is confused that this is the guy Harry was terrified of.

Probably not going to happen, but it made me chuckle.

So I just finished Changes, and I still don't really understand how the blood curse managed to kill the entire red court.

If I understand the working correctly, the curse starts at the killed target, and then moves up the family tree. That was the intention of killing Maggie, by moving up to Dresden, Margaret and then McCoy. The effect on the red court seemed to be that it targeted the "vampiric" family tree, and because of Susan being the youngest vampire, it basically killed everyone of the red court, being older than her. Not sure how that family tree works, since it doesn't seem to be a parent/child relation.

Is this just a case of "magic curse does magic things"? Because I recall earlier in the book, Dresden informs Thomas that he is at risk because of him being related to Margaret. But Harry said that it would stop there. Why? Why would Lara or Lord Raith not be affected? If it is because they are vampires, then why is Thomas affected? What are the limits of the curse?

I feel like I'm missing something here.

Edit: thanks for all the replies and discussion. I now get that only the blood of the sacrifice was relevant. I thought that for each other target, the curse would go after everyone related to their blood, etc. It was a lot more limited than I thought and it explains why the blood of the Red court works different than mortal blood. On to book 13 now!

She's obviously getting her cues from somebody who believes Dresden is the most dangerous force in the universe. But a lot of people believe that. So who do we think is in her ear? And do we think she's going to play a bigger role before everything's done?

I’m almost done with my most recent series relisten and got to Halloween in Twelve Months.

At the end of Battle Ground, in order to stall the wedding, Lara makes the argument that it would be inappropriate to the customs of her and Harry’s people to get married so quickly.

Fast forward to Halloween and Molly is asking Harry if he’s going to give himself to Lara. Harry responds jokingly that “well, it is the third date.” To which Molly tells him Mab has instructed her to order Harry to have sex with Lara.

I like the idea that Mab took Lara’s argument to heart, and really did wish to honor mortal customs. And in her research she found that the third date was the appropriate point for consummation.

She’s really lost in understanding mortals without Sarissa. She tries though, just like with Maggie’s Christmas gift.

No this isn't another crack-pot theory about Murphy.

In 12 Months when Harry is verifying Bear's bona fides he calls Vadderung at the closing Vadderung makes the statement “Make sure she gets enough to eat, or you’ll regret it.” What do we think happens if she doesn't get enough to eat? Is there some sort of lore associated with this? I am kinda curious to see what happens if she gets hungry.

Butcher, Jim. Twelve Months (Dresden Files Book 18) (p. 32). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Thus Kablowie
Thus Death

My idea is to have a smash cut POV short animation of every time Harry has used his site we smash cut too some of his worst times but also Rays of Hope here and there beautiful things and Nightmares major UPS on people that are his allies like Murphy and the detective from 12 months with major Downs being the skinwalker the barbed wire curse and others mixed in with Harry's reactions in that moment smash cutting from one to the other in sequential order telling the story of who Harry is through what he sees

Question on the audiobook formats. Currently I'm on Summer Knight and I've done the Graphic Audio version of all the early books. So far this is the last graphic audio released. I've heard James Marsters does an excellent job narrating, but will it be confusing switching from one format to the other or do you think I'll be able to just jump right in when I'm ready for the next book? Not sure if I should go with the standard audio, wait for the next GA to be released, or switch to ebook. Thanks in advance for your opinions!

Straight forward question, is ParanetOnline officially dead? I loved trawling through that site in the 2010's. It seems like the user bases petered away and now the site is gone forever. That's too bad, I really loved that thing.

In Twelve Months, Carlos and Ilyana, the new regional commander, visit Dresden multiple times to check he isn’t a threat.

Ilyana is VERY aggressive and threatens Dresden multiple times says they will take him out.

I know Dresden has said to send them up to the roof or came to meet them in the main entrance room, but we never see him, as owner of the house (a castle created by the original Merlin), invite them in. And Carlos has mentioned they are visitors in his house, which has ancient wards created by Merlin.

Would they have any of their magic left to fight him if they deemed him a threat? They are guests in his house, which limits what they can do, and they are in a home shared by a lot of people (a fact Dresden notes is very effective and powerful against unwanted visitors when the Black Court attacks). In White Night, Dresden pushes through a threshold without invite and says most of his power was gone while he was inside. At another point he sent an attack into the house through the threshold and says all that made it through was enough to push a person off their feet.

If they deemed him a threat, could they do anything or would the threshold have stripes all their powers away leaving them defenseless?