Morgan shows up on Dresden’s doorstep and asks for his help. Things degrade pretty much exactly as you might expect from there.

We do get a third part in the trifeta of styles from the previous two books: mystery to action to political thriller. There is still plenty of the first two, but now we’re dealing primarily with the fallout of a politically motivated murder.

Two things that we learn quite a bit more about in this book are the home of the White Council in (under) Edinburgh and more about that island in the middle of Lake Michigan.

For the former, it’s interesting to get a bit more of an insight into just how powerful the senior council can be–while at the same time showing how they’re all still human.

In the case of the latter, we get just about as many new questions as we get answers, with a number of characters surprised at just how crazy Dresden is and with hints coming from all over the place about how that island is more interesting/important than we know even now.

We also finally get the start of answers about the Black Council. We’re still nowhere near to finding out who is in the core of that particular conspiracy, but it’s starting to come to the fore. I do hope that it doesn’t take until the planned series finales in a dozen books for more large parts to come out into the open…