Presumably I’d be farther into this journey if I stopped messing around on the Internet and actually picked up the books. But I’m enjoying myself, taking it slow and remembering why this series is so good. I’m in the middle of Book 7 now, Dead Beat, and it’s the one where the veneer created by all the wisecracking drops away to reveal that these stories are deep and complex and frightening, just like their hero. Of course it starts off funny, but then it’s all going toe-to-toe with necromancers, finding out that Bob is scary, being tempted by a beautiful demon, etc. The first chapter of Dead Beat is like this perfect distillation of the series, actually.
And Waldo Butters turns out to be the man. He is just so awesome. I’m going to quote you the best line in the entire series, which happens to be spoken by this man. He’s asking to become one of the people “in the know” about magic/the hidden magical world. Harry is trying to avoid telling him, because the magical world is kind of ugly and terrifying. He tells Butters that it will screw up his life to be told.
“Screw up my life?” He stared at me for a second, and then said, deadpan, “I’m a five-foot-three, thirty-seven-year-old, single, Jewish medical examiner who needs to pick up his lederhosen from the dry cleaners so that he can play in a one-man polka band at Oktoberfest tomorrow.” He pushed up his glasses with his forefinger, folded his arms, and said, “Do your worst.”
Waldo Butters is a classy, classy guy.
And this is the book where Harry finally figures out that Murphy is a girl. And boy does that get complicated. Murphy is even cooler than Butters. And I just realized that Butcher has been foreshadowing certain events surrounding Murphy since the first book. Before he ever introduced Michael and Shiro and Sanya, he’s been setting Murphy up. You’re evil, Butcher. Pure evil.
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