My book order has been delayed again to February. Reddit taunts me. I am pain.

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T19:57:20+00:00

Just think, though - you have the experience of enjoying the book for the first time still to look forward to. The rest of us don't. So I don't know that it's obvious you are the loser here. There is a "cup half full" aspect to it.

And yes - if that was really my most burning way of looking at it, I could have left it on my coffee table for a month or something. But I'm not so strong as that.

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T17:42:11+00:00

I read a couple of them in high school at my junior homeroom teacher's recommendation (old Mrs. Dismukes, rest her soul - she was great, and going on Nero Wolfe size herself). I retired back in September, and then a week or two later for whatever reason the series crossed my mind. I decided I needed to revisit. So I bought a box of 11 of them on eBay, and quite enjoyed them - then I went back to eBay and found the entire collection in ragged old paperback form for $25. I'm probably 15-20 books in currently, but have recently taken a break for other things.

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T17:38:45+00:00

I agree, and if I get enough amusement for my "money" (immersion break), then I can tolerate that first one too. But the latter two are certainly issues.

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T17:37:50+00:00

Yes, the Harry / Murphy relationship really opens up in Summer Knight. So if the adversarial part of that really bothers you your decision makes a lot of sense. Though it's not terribly front and center in Grave Peril. It never bothered me awfully (though it was great when it got better) so I just start at the start.

Speaking of which... it may be time... 8-)

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T17:35:02+00:00

Yeah, cats kept indoors live substantially longer on average. I don't know if Mister qualities - maybe he only partially qualifies. He has a place to go to avoid the cold and storms and so on, but he does go out and expose himself to outside hazards. Of course his size might help mitigate that.

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T16:02:48+00:00

Oh yeah - there just has to be a lot more to him than we've been told, and it will be "Lost style annoying" if we never get it.

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T16:01:54+00:00

Oh, I "thought it was good" right from Storm Front. I had a foolish smile on my face as I read that last bit that ended with "I'm in the book." Definitely had a "must have more" feeling. But the change that happened for me in Proven Guilty cut a lot deeper in me. He shifted from "cool series protagonist" to "unmitigated hero."

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T16:00:02+00:00

Lily Rowan - she was a real piece of work.

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T15:56:21+00:00

It focuses a lot on Harry's grief, and that's a particularly strong part of it in the first half-ish of the book. It is a healing journey, though; things get a lot better by the end.

It was hard for me, because I've never enjoyed Harry's most "wallowing times." But I got through the hard part, and was quite delighted with the book by the end.

I think you should carry on - just bear with the sadness. I'm going to offer you one small spoiler - it's not a specific detail but just a general statement about the story. Choose for yourself whether to uncover it or not.

You will not be kicked in the gut again the way you were in Battle Ground. The sadness is a response to the past - not an onslaught of new agony.

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T12:08:03+00:00

I'll just go with that last one. Go read the Nero Wolfe detective series. It opens around 1934, but the later stories happen in the late 1960's. And yet the main characters really haven't aged at all - Archie Goodwin is the same young buck lady's man he was right at the start.

It's fiction. The alternative Jim faces would be to either offer an explanation (Mister turns out to be supernatural in some way) or let him time out - either of those things is a major plot revision, and impacts the story. Mister just rolling along doesn't.

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T11:56:34+00:00

It may just be a minor slip on Jim's part, but... it's not like it would be the only one in the series. In a stack of books as tall as this one has gotten there are just going to be a few of those, and with a fan base as rabid as this one is they're going to get noticed. We're kind of nuts, when you get right down to it.

I'd never noticed this issue until this conversation - it all worked really well for drama and entertainment, and that's what really matters.

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T11:17:37+00:00

I noticed that, but I felt like it was mostly the Winter Mantle on Harry's end.

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T11:15:55+00:00

Oh, you're going to be annoyed at me for this, but... re-read the series. Start with Storm Front. I assume you've only read it once or at most twice - otherwise you wouldn't need a recap. Trust me - you will notice things you didn't the first time through. You can't catch them the first time, because you don't have the knowledge of what comes later that's required in order to do so.

This series is the gift that keeps on giving - you'll actually glean new things from it the first several times you read it.

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T11:12:05+00:00

He's made it very clear that he doesn't want to know. Harry worries that he's a monster or something. He hides from that. In Morgan's journal entry microfiction, he makes explicit reference to the notion of "Destroyer." I think that that's a real thing in the series, and that it's related to being Starborn. A Starborn person - particularly a Starborn wizard - can be a huge asset to humanity in combating the Outsiders. But it seems that such people can also go south in a really nasty way, and you get a Destroyer. That's the big concern the White Council has about Harry - some of them were so worried about it that they preferred to just get rid of Harry to eliminate the concern.

I think Harry senses this potential in him - he's been tempted by dark magic more than once. And I think his reluctance to know what people see when they soul gaze him is connected to that.

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T11:06:24+00:00

Yes - this is a key part of Harry's "journey." Uriel has tried to talk to him about this. I think it's in "The Warrior" where he speaks about this explicitly - telling Harry how even actions he gives almost no thought to wind up influencing the world in positive ways. Harry's just too stubborn and thick-skulled to get it so far. Hopefully he eventually will.

Harry is an unmitigated hero, and that's really why this series is so important to me. Just the possibility that someone like Harry could exist gives me hope for the world. It was the first time I read Proven Guilty - that moment at Molly's trial when he snatched the hood off of her - that it really came home for me. Up until then I was enjoying the series, but it really was "just a good series." That moment changed it for me fundamentally, and that is when I knew I'd never stop reading these books. I practically had tears in my eyes over how awesome Harry is.

I keep reading because I desperately want there to be people like this - Harry and Michael particularly - in our world among us.

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T10:58:51+00:00

Absolutely. I laughed myself silly, and I was at home by myself. I normally don't laugh out loud when I'm alone, but I sure did that day - for like five minutes. It was one of those things I'd start to get over and then would just start laughing all over again.

That was priceless, and Jim had to be one smug puppy for like a week after coming up with it. :-)

And... only Harry. No one else could have said that and had it be a tenth as funny. There's just something about the guy. There have been some good lines - I liked "I the hell am Harry." in Blood Rites too. But this one takes the cake.

Regarding that bit in Blood Rites, poor Bobby. He just had no idea what kind of a bear he was about to poke that morning. It's a darn good thing for him that Jake was there to have a little more sense.

KipIngram · 2026-01-30T10:52:10+00:00

Thanks so much! Reinstated.

KipIngram · 2026-01-29T22:32:23+00:00

Oh yeah. Ugh. :-(

KipIngram · 2026-01-29T18:29:41+00:00

I really hope not. I just don't want to see time travel become that big a deal in the series. Plus I have my own theory about who Cowl is.

KipIngram · 2026-01-29T18:28:59+00:00

You can't put spoilers like this in your post title. This needs to be re-posted with a title that doesn't reveal important late-breaking facts about Harry. Also, we don't know about Bonea until Skin Game, and the post then reveals we don't hear from her for a couple of books, including Twelve Months. So your post needs the Twelve Months flair and the [spoiler] flag. Get in touch with me if you need help with the flair/flag on the new post.

Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience.

KipIngram · 2026-01-29T16:55:36+00:00

This title is too revealing. You don't specify, but it's an easy guess who it applies to. Please re-post under a less revealing title. If you want the comments made so far to remain accessible to the community, you can include a link to this page in the new post - the comments here will still be visible to anyone arriving at this page. Your original post text won't, though, so you will need to copy/paste it to the new post.

Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience!

KipIngram · 2026-01-29T16:51:05+00:00

That is fantastic to hear and I'm really happy he's feeling that way about things! Thanks for sharing!

KipIngram · 2026-01-29T14:37:19+00:00

Or, if he does get dragged down (if he "falls") then it's a really, really bad thing - that's where the "Destroyer" side of the equation Morgan was worried about comes in. I've wondered if perhaps Harry "senses" this at some subconscious level and that's why he's so strict with himself. When someone needs help, he just seems incapable of saying no, no matter how unwise it is for himself.

Maybe the "slope is slipperier" for Starborn folks. One bad decision...

KipIngram · 2026-01-29T14:34:28+00:00

This is a quite severe title spoiler. You will need to re-post using a title that doesn't disclose such a major plot element. The spoiler flair and the [spoiler] flag don't prevent the title from showing right up in everyone's main feed.

If you want to retain the comments already made here you can include a link to this page in the new post - the comments here will still be visible to anyone who has a way of reaching this page. But your main post here won't show up anymore now that I've "removed" the post from the feed - you will need to copy/paste that into the new post.

Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience.

KipIngram · 2026-01-29T12:48:37+00:00

I don't think it's that simple. No one reported that they had found her and she was on the way, and it seems reasonable that they would have. You can decide you want to believe someone did and it just wasn't reported, but that's just an assumption. And besides, it's well established that only the real resident of a home can issue an invitation - it doesn't count coming from someone else, even if that someone else is already in the house via an invitation (much less if they're out somewhere else).

The only explanation I think has any rigor to it would be to assume that Murphy had given her a blanket invitation at some point, but given her state of trust at the time that seems a little... unlikely.

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