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thousands dead, tens of thousands injured

even without knowing what happened, does anyone think there's any way the mortal world will be able to explain something this major away?  Will this be the straw that draws the Librarians out into the open?  Brings the government out against the magical community? or are they

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one of the faces Harry got into afterwards?

it appears that the Carpenters survived fairly well, who do we think didn't?

The vampire courts are therefore attempts by various nefarious powers to maintain their influence on Earth/ through humans. I think of the vampire courts as 3 successive iterations - each moving further away from humanity & mortality, getting cruder but vastly gaining in strength. Whamps were the first version, Reds were the second & Blamps were the third.
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• Drakul, progenitor of the Black Court's name means son of a dragon.

FWIW, someone asked in a Q&A a while ago what Drakul Sr. was a scion of, and the WOJ was that he's something completely inhuman that got trapped in human form. His scion, Dracula, was attempting to do something that sounded a heck of a lot like an ascension ritual in an effort to impress his father when something went wrong and he turned himself into the first blampire.

As for Goodman Grey, I suspect his origins owe more to a naagloshii divining that the best way to hurt some poor woman was to make her carry a monster's child than out of an attempt to create a free-willed servitor. The naagloshii are beings that shirked their duty and purpose - they're scary powerful in comparison to a wizard, but miles down the power scale from beings like the Mothers that need a knight or scions to get things done on earth. The skinwalkers don't even seem to have much in the way of objectives beyond feeding on pain. Shaggy only even left his home territory at all because he was acting as mercenary muscle for the Circle.

They probably don't "cultivate" because unlike the Ramps, they don't have fangs, but regular human teeth -- so instead of a couple little holes to suck from that can heal up with relatively little non-feeding blood loss, they bite out a chunk of your throat. Plus, no venom, so their victim isn't sedated and they either have to kill them to keep them still or just do it incidentally in the struggle.

Well, a Renfield would willingly cut their arm to feed their master and bandage it up after a sub-lethal feeding if a Blamp really wanted to order it. Don't need addictive venom when you can just obliterate the thralls' free will.

So I figure the actual death matters in some way to the Blamps' feeding.

I just found a little gem on the Upcoming Works page of Jim's website. http://www.jim-butcher.com/faq/upcoming-works As of December 6, 2018 Peace Talks is up to chapter 36 in draft form!

The last 3 books had 51-53 chapters. So if Peace Talks is around the same length, the draft is now 68-70% done!

I'm not into complaining about it not being ready yet ... but why the hell was he giving public statements that it was almost done months ago, if he just hit the two-thirds mark last week? He doesn't owe anybody a book on any schedule but his own, but at least do the fans the courtesy of not being misleading about it.

The backstory about Mother Winter being the original and Mother Summer being the second to fill the role wasn't from the books, it was a WOJ in response to someone asking about succession among the Mothers and Queens. His answer was that the first Mother Summer wasn't killed at all, she just got tired of the role and retired, passing on her mantle.

Some people have speculated that MW being the original might mean that the Winter mother mantle is the shard of the original unitary mantle that Hecate chose to keep for herself. I like the theory, but it's unsupported so far.

And as for Lea, the WOJ is that she built her personal power from the ground up, mostly by bargaining with humans to her advantage over the centuries. Judging from Sarissa there's no particular reason an unmantled sister would start with great personal power, but there's no solid reason yet to guess at Lea having a particularly more significant bloodline than any other Sidhe.

The Stone Table may very well have been in play around the events of Hastings, though.

Dresden may persecute himself for "murdering Susan Rodriquez" - but he didn't actually do that. If he had, the Bloodline Curse wouldn't have wiped out the Red Court. "Susan" was gone already when he killed the vampire she'd become.

If "Susan was already gone" were true, would a vampire really have laid down on the alter to willingly die as a weapon against all the other vampires? That was pretty clearly still Susan making the choice.

I doubt Uriel could or would have told Harry what happened to her afterward, though. Not being allowed to know for sure seems like another one of the Rules.

It makes one wonder if Goodman Grey could pull if off?

I'm not still not sure how evil he is when he's not taking 'paying the Rent' jobs. The Monster LLC spinoff will be interesting if it ever happens.