From a story telling perspective, it would be shocking to see Lasciel done and gone and trapped in Hades vault for good. I just think that Lasciel's going to have a role going forward.

So, either Nic got the coin, which is the most obvious way for it to get out and one that is totally supported by the events as others have posited, the coin will escape on its own due to it's nature, Bonnie will summon "Mother" somehow at some point, or someone will go to the vault and get it. Of course, Jim is infinitely creative and may have another idea in mind, too, but those are the ones that immediately come to mind.

Much like the knights of the cross the amount of power the winter knight wields is not always the same. If Mab wants it Harry can have more power and can even be shielded from the mantles influence to a certain extend as was shown in Changes.

Slate wasnot that powerful but he was one of Maeves throw away knights so that was to be expected.

The main thing the mantle offers is power. Spiritual power with a winter nature. Too much of it and he would probably become winter sidhe and not mortal so the power is limited. The extra tricks Butters speculates about are probably tricks to get the most out of it.

Harry is a wizard so he has his own spiritual power and good ideas how to use both his mantle and his own power. The more he uses the more he heals the further he can drive his own body ignoring limits. A winter knight who is also a wizard can do so much more.

In cold days Harry lets go and he has to struggle to keep his identity. In some aspects that looks like a more powerful knight than in Skin Game when Harry has much better control of himself.

But actually skin game Harry is a more dangerous opponent.

As I was re-listening to Cold Days, I was getting annoyed with Harry always whining about how he was cursed to go bad because of the Winter Knight mantle. He has been dealing with temptation to go dark for his whole adolescent and adult life as a wizard. The difference betweeen vanilla human and wizard is probably an order of magnitude greater than that between wizard and winter knight. Perfectly fine for Harry to worry about going bad... that trait probably helped him avoid going dark as a wizard, but it was getting annoying that he couldn't see that he has the ability to avoid going dark.

Tack on being the Warden of Demonreach and knowing the Darkhallow and, far more importantly (because the temptation was greater since the shadow was living in his head) avoiding taking up Lasciel's coin, and he really should have a little more confidence in his ability to write his own future and not succumb to temptation.

I wonder if Jim is telling us something here. Harry has been getting lectures from Uriel about the importance of free will. Maybe Harry will finally get that confidence in himself someday and actually take up Lasciel's coin, but be the master of the coin, much like Nicodimus is the master of Anduriel.

It's not the fools at all. It's the people who are otherwise not foolish. It's kind of like any strongly held position. No matter what it is, some smart people disagree with it. That means, that no matter how smart you are, you are likely to be vehemently, adamantly, and proudly wrong about something. What am I vehemently, adamantly, and proudly wrong about? (That's a rhetorical question folks).

This is a very interesting post. I've never thought about it that way. Thanks.

Having worked from home the lack of space makes sense to me when combined with the house building as covering a fair amount of lost time.   When I first started working from home I would set up anywhere and it took me a while to realize I was getting almost nothing done. Then I cleaned out a space for a small office and things got a lot better.  If Jim did the same thing we wasted a chunk of time not really thinking about the fact he was getting almost nothing done on the dinning room table.  Then he may have been thinking the new house will be ready soon not worth worry about I will carry on this way.  Then the house kept having delays.   

This does not explain all of the delay but I think the lack of writing space was certainly real and cost him a good chunk of time.

Four additional years, though? Lack of a writing space was way too high on the excuse list. Hell, just say, "I haven't been in the right frame of mind for a bunch of reasons and had to take a break." I'd be fine with that. But not being able to find a place to write for 4 years? 4 freaking years?!?! I mean, come on. That's just blowing smoke and feels completely disingenuous. If he really wanted to be writing, he'd have found a space in which he could write. Get a larger apartment for God's sake. Rent a house. Four years is a long damn time to be in limbo. I can't imagine putting up with that. Maybe a year, max. I'd much rather have just heard, "Sorry folks, I had to take a break. I'll get back to writing as soon as I can!"

Yeah, that sounds pretty neat. I like the actress that voiced Molly in Bombshells and the other Molly perspective story.

The American Gods audiobook was amazing. I bought it just before the show came out on Stars, and I had no idea that when they said "Full Cast" they meant the cast of the show. That was a really neat listening experience.

In other words, as I suspected, there is absolutely no excuse not to publish a book quickly after it is done.

If we have to wait until July, then either the book isn't actually done (which seems unlikely), the editor at Penguin is absolutely buried or on sabbatical or something, Penguin wants to wait for some crazy indecipherable reason, or Penguin is incompetent.

So I've been poking around looking for more Peace Talks news, and found this from Priscillie on Reddit, 24 days ago:

So, revisions are 100% complete, Priscillie has read the finished, publishable novel. Everything is in Penguin's hands, and they're holding off on announcing a publication date for now, presumably until they decide on the best release window for it. Personally, I was hoping for a Christmastime release, and it's still technically possible, but now I'm thinking they're going to shoot for Q1 2020. We'll certainly have it within the next six months, unless Penguin decides they want to sit on it for God only knows why.

Thanks for the update. The wait is freaking killing me. How hard is it to publish a release date?

It's the "identical to his own" part that trips me up. He described Thomas's the same way.

Seems to me either (1) a mistake on Jim's part (he originally meant for Elaine and Harry to have them because Justin gave them to them, then he forgot about that and had Thomas have one, too), (2) Elaine is a third child of Maggie (ick, but, hey, DuMorne was a messed up dude, and maybe this was a way to mess with them... Elaine is pretty tall and lean, which could imply sibling to Harry... fraternal twin?), (3) Maggie was somehow involved in Elaine in another way... such as maybe Maggie isn't dead and knew Elaine's parents), or (4) those amulets were a symbol used by the group Maggie was involved in and Maggie gave one to each of her sons and Elaine's parents or DuMorne (assuming he was also in the group) gave her one.

Elaine has a pretty strong talent. Her mother may have been a wizard. Harry has never speculated, that I remember, on Elaine's parentage, just says she was an orphan.  As icky as it sounds, I suspect (2) was the plan, but maybe it will never come to fruition. Who knows.