This book pretty much killed the series for me and serves as an end.
Yeah, this. mostly because of character action causing me to lose interest/respect in them.
- Murph dies, removing her form the series. Annoying, but - becoming a valkyrie undermines both her shown religious beliefs and her refusal to sign on to any of the powers to be healed.
- Dresden threatens One Eye 2nd hand if he mistreats Murph...after failing to avenge her while on the spot. Blow hard.
- Gard fails to call him out on this.
- twerp who murdered Murph justified it by calling her a terrorist, so no doubt will be promoted, not punished, given the mortal decision to call the trashing of Chicago a terrorist attack.
- sword that broke rather than let Murph try and save Harry, is happy to kill Harry rather than let him avenge Murph.
- sword wielders would rather 11 million innocents die that permit the punishment of 1 murderer.
That's *one* plot....
Marcone was interesting because he was the vanilla mortal who could stand equal with supernaturals. Now he's just another coppertop.
Thomas, the schemer, just buckles to blackmail. Not, for example, waltzing in and saying "hey, I'm being blackmailed to murder you, what say you pretend to be murdered and throw me in a cell" or something similar. Justine's now full villain - when the smart thing to do, given she would probably die from child birth, would have Alfred toss her into the same cell as Thomas so that the kid can't kill her. (So finding out about Nemesis *after* already locking Nemesis up).
Molly goes cackling witch.
Ramirez goes whinny teenager.
Ebenezer's response to "Oh, I didn't kill you in a fit of fury?" is indifference.
The most significant character I still care about is Mouse. My biggest question at the end of the book was "where's Mister?" (With the Carpenters, apparently. Who I stopped caring about due to the worthlessness of the entire order).