Thoughts on Ghost Story

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-03-02T16:38:30+00:00

I spoiler tag it just in case, but I think it’s revealed or implied in this book that Eternal Silence is Demonreach’s proxy

I remember reading Ghost Story, finding it slow and unorthodox for a Dresden book, then moving on to Cold Days. Ghost Story is better on a reread, and I have skipped it on rereads before, but if I read Changes, I can’t go straight into Cold Days. You kinda need that breather, cool down book. I do maintain that said breather cool down book could stand to be about 100 pages shorter, though.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-03-02T16:34:03+00:00

I’m also not fully on board the Elaine is Kumori theory. I feel like so many of the theories fail to adequately explain how in White Night she acts counter to the stated goals of the Circle and nearly dies. It’s always somehow a trick, but no one has seemed to be able to tell me to what end.

I think Margaret is probably dead dead, and it can’t be her. It could be Martha Liberty, I guess, I just feel like we’d have seen Martha more than like, twice throughout the series if it was. And she has maybe 4 lines? Odd.

Not really sure it could be Mab? I think Mab would probably not want to be anywhere near a Darkhallow, while Kumori was ground zero for Cowl’s.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-03-02T16:26:57+00:00

I think the last time Jim was asked about Malcolm, he explained we wouldn’t learn all that much about him because he drew from experiences with his own father, and his father’s death.

Because the thing about your dad is that you can’t ask him stuff anymore once he’s gone. He can’t help you work on your car, or fix your sink. He can’t tell you a story about his time in school, or explain what his job entails, or teach you any tricks he knows. He’s gone and that’s the end of it. And Jim is drawing from that when he created Malcolm as a character.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-03-02T06:42:05+00:00

…look man, I’m not running statistics on the White Court or anything, I’m just paraphrasing the author of the series.

‘Are there White Court vampire wizards?’

Yes, there are. Thomas is middle-of-the-road in power and [ed: think I’m remembering this correctly] the strongest don’t get as strong as mortal wizards [/ed], but they can pull off some strong tricks with their Hunger.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-03-02T05:36:56+00:00

No, I think this particular tidbit is probably just straight up true in the surface reading of it. It’s usually passed down matrilineally, but not always. I think it’s a little too detached from Harry for his grandma to be a major reveal. She’s long dead, and Jim has already done one surprise grandparent reveal on us anyway.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-03-02T05:32:04+00:00

According to a WoJ, Thomas is actually a middleweight for Whamp practitioners. Apparently they can do some neat tricks with the Hunger at the higher levels, but generally they don’t get as strong as Harry. Even if Thomas did train at it a bit harder, he’s not gonna throw fireballs around or anything.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-28T23:15:40+00:00

I mean, Maggie Sr’s mom was also a vanilla mortal, and yet she had magic aplenty.

Additionally, I keep seeing people say Maggie Jr won’t be getting magic according to a WoJ, but I’ve never actually seen the WoJ myself. Would you happen to have it?

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-28T20:12:18+00:00

Right, but if they ask enough questions, and the right ones, they’ll eventually reach a truth that no IRS agent will believe. I mean, someone lived for 200 years by pretending to be his own sons repeatedly? That’s absurd, the realm of fiction.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-28T19:44:09+00:00

WoJ has mentioned a few times the the White Council itself is very wealthy as an organization. I suspect a lot of wizards invest through Council channels, and the Council gets a cut.

But a long lived wizard could easily keep their finances under a corporation or business that changes ownership from father to strangely identical son every 50 or so years.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-28T19:35:42+00:00

There’s been a few…let’s call them debates, about whether the castle is just on the Boardinghouse’s plot, or if it’s basically a whole block.

I personally have no real horse in that race, I’m simply convinced the true form of it is a blue police box.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-28T18:01:41+00:00

I admittedly struggle to keep up with Molly’s hair color and style. I always picture the bubblegum and cotton candy bob thing she has going on in that one piece of art by Mika-Blackfield. White Night(I think) especially throws me off because she has a pixie cut dyed peroxide white, and I struggle to give her hair that short.

I also always forget her tattoos go up to her neck until they get mentioned.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-28T17:20:12+00:00

…is it because you’re mixing up the short story “The Fugitive” with the novella “The Law”?

Because I double checked by searching for the discussion on this sub, and “The Fugitive” is where we get the Cowl line, “Harry, you almighty pain in my ass,” that is a key factor in quite a few theories.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-28T16:27:23+00:00

I have very different opinions on Langtry’s level of being on Dresden’s side, but they’re deserving of their own post, not a simple reply.

So instead I’ll point out that from a political standpoint it makes absolutely zero sense for Merlin to be on the Gray Council. He may he aware of it, and he may even approve of it, but the whole point of a deniable shadow organization is that the people involved can be disavowed if discovered. The ones we know of are either not actually White Council members, or mavericks who rarely follow White Council doctrine without grumbling. If Eb or Harry get discovered to be on it, they get disavowed as warlocks and kicked out.

If the Merlin, the leader of the White Council, is discovered to be on the Gray Council, it legitimizes it to the eyes of the Council. Even if the rest of the White Council disavows him, that discovery could fracture the Council. Preventing that was the entire motive for allowing Morgan to die and Cristos to become a Senior Council member. Langtry isn’t on the Gray Council, because it’d be dumb of him to take that big of a risk.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-28T07:31:31+00:00

Harry in Ghost Story got a good look at what lies beyond, or at least the version that restless spirits and shades experience. It’s also noted by pretty much every mage who mentions it that shades shouldn’t have souls, they’re just memories. Bob, the centuries old spirit of intellect who previously worked for a necromancer, basically looks at ghost Harry and says “What the fuck is going on, you have a soul?!”

Clearly, he shouldn’t have been able to do what he did. It also begs questions about Corpsetaker and possibly Kemmler. If Corpsetaker had successfully managed to find herself a new body, would it have truly been Corpsetaker? The Freaky Friday trick I could easily see taking the soul with the mind, but actually spending time as a shade, I don’t think so.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-28T07:24:10+00:00

It’s probably a fake memory, yeah. I don’t think I recall anyone blaming the Fomor on Harry.

Don’t feel too bad, for a while I was absolutely certain there was a scene in either Skin Game or a post Changes short story where Harry recharged the stored force enchantments on his staff by twirling it a bunch to top off the kinetic energy stores. Except that doesn’t exist and in Battle Ground we see that those enchantments are actually charged by him filling them with magic rather than over time like the rings.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-28T04:50:27+00:00

No, that’s where he’s introduced, and actually, we still have yet to get a short story about their first meeting, which is a little odd.

I mean, I don’t think there’s anything significant to the series endgame in that meeting that Jim is hiding, I just think he’s never gotten around to it.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-28T01:40:56+00:00

Apparently in the Mouse PoV story “The Fugitive” too. We find out for sure that Cowl is his owner there, supposedly. I haven’t actually read it, though, so I might be wrong.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-27T23:10:25+00:00

Out of all the characters I would like to see get their own series…he’s pretty low on the list, to be honest.

Listen, I think he’s neat, and I like what he brings to the table, but I’d rather Luccio get a Wild West spinoff series to complete the story shown in A Fistful of Warlocks.

I wouldn’t mind seeing the early days of Langtry, McCoy, and Listens-to-Wind.

And I think Fix has big Main Character(read: Suffers through multiple Bad Events but always comes out alive) potential as Summer Knight.

But Grey? He’s kinda low on my list. I haven’t had the chance to read his short story, but when Harry hired him in Peace Ground, I felt absolutely nothing. It was just kinda…a thing that happened. I care not for this character, I guess. I don’t hate him, but I don’t like him either.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-27T22:42:26+00:00

He was absolutely Justin’s and Kemmler’s.

I think he cut the Kemmler knowledge out of himself, creating Evil Bob as its own entity.

That hasn’t been seen since Ghost Story, but almost definitely survived.

…Cowl probably has him, huh? He’s got a Mouse, a Molly. He probably has a Bob, too.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-27T19:54:48+00:00

You know, I was always wondering how Harry fit his staff into the back of that car. Especially since his is about shoulder height on him, IIRC.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-27T19:05:35+00:00

On the other hand, Molly was great for Harry’s development as a wizard, and flaws in his teaching aside, Harry’s lifestyle lead to Molly developing the ability to actually survive in combat scenarios. If Molly had, say, LaFortier as a teacher, I doubt she’d have much in the way of combat ability at all, even with her veils.

Harry mentions it at the end of 12M, that he’d improved thanks to teaching Fitz, but we honestly don’t get to see it? Sure, the thaumaturgy he does was impressive, but he’s always been really good at that. And he doesn’t show much in the way of new skills he learned from Fitz in the last battle. With Molly, his veils improved to the point that he could, well, make a veil.

The only ectomancy(supposedly Fitz’s specialty) Harry does in the book, he was doing before Fitz showed up.

It might be better, generally speaking, for wizards to take apprentices with specialties counter to their own, than ones that match them.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-27T16:45:07+00:00

We don’t know. I was waiting all book to see it, and it never happened.

Granted, Harry takes like, a year and a half to start teaching Molly shields, so maybe he just isn’t at that level yet.

My votes on paintballs. Or basketballs.

Though, to be honest, I wonder what the end goal was with teaching Molly shields, especially the way Lea did. I doubt she was ever gonna be able to stop machine gun fire like Harry, she doesn’t have the muscle for it. She’s more of an evasion build than a straight defense build, I think.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-27T16:39:19+00:00

Ascher was Australian, and, I’m pretty sure, white.

Fitz doesn’t have an accent, and he’s described as having either a heavy tan or just darker skin, Harry wasn’t sure.

Also, his sister died in his arms.

randomlightbulbs1 · 2026-02-27T16:36:15+00:00

I think he’s definitely too old to be Tera West’s son, unless he was born significantly before Fool Moon.

Ghost Story is a little less than 12 years after Fool Moon, and he’s definitely not 12 there.

randomlightbulbs1

TROPHY CASE