Thus, the two Le Fey boys are living together in Harry’s tiny basement apartment and it’s not exactly the easiest thing to deal with. In case you’ve forgotten by now, Thomas, Harry’s older brother, has basically been cut off and booted out of the White Court mansion-now headed by his older sister, Lara Raith, who is behind the scenes controlling their father, Lord Raith-and is broke due to spending the last of his fortune to pay off Jared Kincaid for the job Harry hired him for in Blood Rites. We open Dead Beat with a case of sibling rivalry. But to be fair, this is still a good novel and the next one coming up, Proven Guilty, is chockful of awesome Harry/Murphy content, so let me get over myself and dive into the madness once again. I tend not to pay as much attention to the Murphy-less Dresden Files novels because that’s my favorite dynamic. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember it very much because I am shipper trash and this is the book with no Murphy in it. I’m a little funny about Dead Beat, personally. It’s reckless and it’s going to make them miss out on so much rich story and so many vital character interactions as well as just some plain great novels.

So I just want to put my two cents in here and say that while Dead Beat is considered a game changer for the books and one of the first big turning points, do not ever tell someone to start in the middle of the goddamn Dresden Files. The White Council and the Senior Council.Wanna know why? Let me give you just a taste of the incredibly important things/people that happen either for character reasons or for plot reasons that have consequences or payoff that continues through the rest of the season: Don’t you dare tell someone new to franchise to skip the first six books. I will fight Jim Butcher himself over it. I violently disagree with anyone who has ever told new readers to start at Dead Beat. If you’ve read my recaps, you’ve seen the utter bombs that have dropped in the series prior to this book. That’s the dumbest, wrongest, most irresponsible “advice” I’ve ever heard.

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