Jim could have given Lara a second reason for giving her demon an extra heavy feeding.  Extra feeding for her demon should also give Lara more vampire mojo if she got into a serious fight and needed to heal quickly, without having to immediately feed again.  In this scenario Lara's blues eyes don't make her less dangerous, they make her more dangerous.

So when Lara gets annoyed with Harry at her party, when she gives Harry the kiss, he has the same reaction we saw in the book, but this time Lara pulls back in sudden pain as blisters break out on her lips and the skin closest to her lips.  Then Lara gets a determined look on her face, the blisters disappear, her eyes are still blue, but a lighter shade of blue than before and Lara kisses Harry a second time and he's powerless to stop her.  When Lara again pulls back in pain; maybe she curses, but again she heals herself and her eyes are now dark grey.  Harry is all but on his knees at this point.  Then Lara tells Harry pretty much the same thing she said in the book, but somewhat modified.  Lara tells Harry that she understands he is in pain, that he isn't at the top of his game, but she needs him to focus on the task at hand.  Both of them are in danger, and if she needs to do so, Lara can enslave Harry without taking him to bed in order to get him to do his job.  Lara gets more energy with sex included, but it isn't necessary when her main goal is just to gain control of someone.  Lara tells Harry that just a couple more kisses will do the trick and she could do that right now, but she doesn't want that.  Lara tells Harry she doesn't want to offend Winter and she thinks Harry will be more effective "if you can think for yourself." 

This way we could have had a more dangerous Lara and avoided Mab's clunky explanation of how true love protection can fail.  We know it was going to fail if or when Lara and Harry get married. I don't think much was achieved by having it fail in this book.  Plus, the reversal of fortune when Harry unknowingly addicted Lara to Winter would have hit that much harder.

Yeah, at the end of Battle Ground (which is like a week after the Battle of Chicago), Lara is wearing gloves, clearly she doesn't know that the true love protection is gone. When they go on their first date, however, she has feed well, so she was preparing for... whatever she needed to do, either try to start seducing Harry and being "available" to it, or to be ready for a fight.

So, this scenario you're proposing would have made much more sense to me.

I really don't appreciate how muddy JB made the concept of the true love protection in this book, or how it felt like a clumsy but deliverate attempt to mess with the memory of what Harry and Murphy had. I feel it was unnecessary.

This is a minor point but I think it's funny.  Well, maybe more confusing than funny.

I've seen a video that came out sometime after Battle Ground was released; probably in 2021, where Jim answered the question, "When did you decide to kill Murphy."  And you are correct, Jim said it was around time Turn Coat was released.

However, there is a new interview video that was recorded a few days before TM was released where Jim was asked the same question.  Jim's answer: "I always planed to kill her off."

I have no idea which answer is true; and theoretically, they could both be lies or both be partially true.  Example: Jim could have made the decision to kill Murphy off after he finished writing Blood Rites; or any other novel before Turn Coat, in which case both statements are false.  On the other hand, Jim may have always known he was going to kill off Murphy but he didn't decide which novel it would happen in until after Turn Coat was released.  In that case both statements contain part of the truth.  I would guess the second scenario is probably the correct one, but only Jim knows for sure.

Yeah, I remember the interviews from around 2023 where he would say that he knew he was going to kill her like 10 or 15 years ago.

In a recent AMA he was asked what was the biggest change he made to the overall story, and he said that it was murphy's death.

Then in some recent meet & greet or something, someone reported that Jim said that he knew she was going to die in book 10, that'd be Small Favor, but that he was feeling it out since Grave Peril, when we see the Sight of her.

So, all slightly different versions.

I went through alternating between hope and despair about this (as a Murphy fan) since Battle Ground, I always felt that thematically, and considering all the build up around her character, Butcher did what he did because it was the only way to power her up to be able to stand at the end with Harry.

Then, when I heard those first interviews post BG when he was very dismissive of the few questions he got about Murphy and happily saying "well, sometimes people die", plus the shoehorning of Lara into that space (that extends to 12Months IMO), made me think that nope, we've lost her forever.

But then with these more recent comments, and other people that attended his events reporting (again) that he said that "her story is not over yet", I think that maybe indeed she is and was always meant to be one of the characters that make it to the end, but he realized early on that he would need to power her up eventually. It's a two for one situation, you give Harry what he wants and needs, you torture him (just like Jim likes) and then at the end you give him back an ally who's now capable to stand beside him.

But who knows... 12 Months left me even more on the limbo than Battle Ground did about the direction of the series, tbh.

Harry's usually way better about exhausting every avenue at his disposal. Here he didn't really even try.

Maybe that was the point. That Harry was pretty thoroughly defeated by Murphy's death?

Exactly, Harry is usually better about exhausting all avenues. That's why it was so weird to me that this guy that tried and tried and tried to find a solution for Susan's problem, wasn't going to even ask Vadderung —who he apparently can just call up on the phone— about Murphy's wellbeing, I mean, he could have just ask, I'm not even talking about trying something else, like ask for the details of the process or hell, even try to negotiate something. And it's not that he should have, just that's more according to his character.

The same thing with the Thomas situation. I liked the drama of it all. But you are right, it was pretty much as if Harry didn't even try anything. And then, he was also just fine handing over his Nephew, his own blood to these other people to be raised —and Lara is just fine giving away her grandbaby as well— For always having a speech about "family" that was weird. No wonder Thomas was upset with Harry, and personally, he should have stayed mad. Though, tbh, I'm not buying the act yet, I think we should expect something else from Thomas, he's not over his anger toward Harry.

I think we're supposed to believe that Harry not trying to find a loophole for Murphy's Einherjaness is meant to be a sign of maturity or something, the same with the Thomas situation. Either that, or Harry was really really completly broken. Maybe it would have been read more like that if we'd seen Harry try to do something regarding Murphy's death and failing miserably (of course) and that would seep into everything else.

There's also a point to be made about how much of Harry's mental/emotional state actually was about Murphy and how much it was about his shame over his actions right after. I felt we spent more time with that actually, than with Harry lamenting the future he lost with Murph. But well, that's another matter.

But my point is that these things are important maybe in what Harry didn't do with the situation with Etri, I remember thinking that the matter just disappeared from the page rather quickly. And then they just hand the baby away. Yes, they know that he's going to be treated as a prince, but still. On the other hand, Harry is mostly comfortable with offshoring parenting Maggie for a long while, so maybe is not a big deal for him. But isn't this kind of thing what Dresden fights Eb about, that he will make the choices for his child? And he ultimately brings her home with him, that's the "resolution" for the Maggie situation in this book. Harry just took that choice from Thomas, in a way.

It does matter though, that is why Harry was not protected when he was with Luccio. He Loved her but she did not.

I would have said that he cared about her, but didn't love her. I don't remember him even thinking he might. That's around the same time as he realized Karrin had some deeper feelings for Kincaid besides horny, so he was on the rebound, IMO. Actually the whole Kincaid situationship is a big "tell me you like Harry Dresden without telling me you like Harry Dresden" moment for Karrin and the same can be said about Luccio, she was basically Wizard Murphy.

But I do agree that the lore so far is not exactly that true love is ilogical, what it is is a mutual communion, a mutual coming together in mind, soul, body, but it is mutual. But sure, once it has settled can be disturbed, not the love itself, but the mark it left, by the action of just one individual. Now, before 12M, the disturbance had to be physical, that was what we knew, now, it can be, let's say spiritual too.

Still, the more I sit with this book, the more in awe I am at the five stars reviews. I think parts of this book were good, the grief part is well done. But there's a lot about the lore that is ... meh, either out of nowhere or soft-retcon, there's a lot of ilogical decisions made, and a lot of stuff that feel like Jim just needed to "fix" *cough Justine cough* in order to move on to the book he really wants to write: MM.

And the more I sit with this Lara/Harry/Murphy/True Love™ situationship, the more it feels like Jim just wants to push the narrative into a direction where there is a romance between Harry and Lara or at the very least, there is the titillating possibility of a sexual partnership, and so he just had to fix the whole Ture Love™ thing in whichever way he could, and this was his best.

This makes me concerned about where the series is going. I've been worried since Battle Ground, tbh, and this book did not soothe me. Why? Because to me this is an important part of the series. I know that the romantic life of our protagonist is not the main reason why most people read these books, and it's not even mine, but I'd said is not unimportant. For a guy like Harry who is very much about "where his heart is" his sentimental life is important, as it is his choice of romantic partner and his struggle to find them or keep them. I genuinely think that part is lacking in the series (we can do romance without going into paranormal romance territory) and my wish would always be that we get to see Harry actually fighting to win and keep the person he loves, he has never done that, and I thought it'd be with Murphy, but oh well...

Wait, where did you see that?  I might throw my hat into that particular ring...

There was a form.

About 2 months ago, I actually got an email inviting me to apply to be a beta.  The email said betas were being sought for MM.  I don't know why I got the invite; maybe because I signed up for Butcher's newsletter.

In any event, I completed and submitted the form quickly and haven't heard anything since except the sound of crickets.

Yep. It came to those who are subscribed to his newsletter. I applied as well, haven't heard anything yet either. I don't know what the criteria of selection would be, tbh.

I imagine the NDA would come after you pass whatever bar they set up.

I've been wondering if all of his self loathing makes a difference here. He doesn't think he deserves anything good, let alone love. Maybe that makes a difference.

That's what Mab's explanation was about.

Jim said Harry didn't know about Maggie. That suggests that knowing about Maggie would change his emotional stance enough to break the protection.

Now that is an interesting point. Harry definitely feels way different about Susan after he learns about Maggie, so I think you might be onto something. And indeed, in that case Mab's explanation could, potentially (though I'm still not 100% on board) maybe work.

I thought it was so Harry though, when he asked Mab if she was saying that death defeats love, because it's obviously a Princess Bride reference. I think, of all the excuses, like Harry here, I don't want to believe that death changes the protection, though. That's so depressing. I'd say Harry's self-loathing, his (IMO) self-centerness in his grief, his guilt, and how belief tends to work in the Dresden universe would be slightly more convincing a reason for why the True Love™ protection goes away. Though still a cheap excuse. If that were the case though, if Harry starts to feel better about it, if he embraces Murphy's memory, would the protection return? Probably not.

I will say this, too, that I found a bit hard to digest in this book: I don't have a problem with Harry grieving, I'll start with that, it was necessary, it is raw and it is painful. I wished we had seen a little less of "Karrin is dead and oh how much this hurts me" and more "Karrin is dead and that's unfair because Karrin was x, y and z" I mean, he tells us more times how wonderful Michael is in any of the books than he thinks about Murphy in this one, when it'd be the appropriate book to do it. There's a lot of things that you feel when you lose someone, yes, guilt, anger, denial, but also longing, and the memories of the best about them replay in your head making you miss them more, want them more. I felt there wasn't enough longing or enough memories. And I still can't believe we didn't learn when her birthday was in a full year of story.

Well, my experience is different. I never believed Harry loved Murphy, at least not True Love, so I was surprised when he actually burnt Lara. I always thought their love was the love of a dear friend or sibling. More than many romantic loves, granted, but not True Love.

Hm, I'm shook. I would understand to some level the "they were better friends than lovers" that some readers feel about them, regardless of my shipping heart, but I don't think they ever read as siblings or just friends. Interesting.