Blood Rites recap

Thomas Raith brings Harry a paying case: an entropy curse is killing the women around film producer Arturo Genosa, and Harry goes undercover on the production to stop it. Meanwhile the Black Court sorceress Mavra is hunting Harry, and he answers with a daylight raid on her nest alongside Murphy and the mercenary Kincaid - a victory that costs him his left hand, burned nearly useless. The curse case winds into the White Court itself: Lord Raith, the White King, is behind the killings, and the target was always Harry - Raith murdered Harry's mother Margaret LeFay and wants her children dead. The revelation at the book's heart: Thomas is Harry's half-brother, Margaret's son, and has been quietly protecting him for years. In the Raith stronghold, Margaret's death curse is shown to have left Raith powerless; Harry and Thomas defeat him, and Lara Raith takes over the White Court behind her father's figurehead throne. Harry also learns his mentor Ebenezar is the Blackstaff, the Council's sanctioned killer. Harry ends maimed, estranged from Ebenezar, and in possession of a brother - and a puppy, Mouse.

Previously: Harry Dresden fought the Order of the Blackened Denarius - fallen angels in silver coins led by the two-thousand-year-old Nicodemus - recovered the stolen Shroud of Turin, and stopped a plague curse, at the cost of the old Knight Shiro's life; Harry keeps Shiro's holy sword in trust, and secretly carries the shadow of the fallen angel Lasciel after covering her coin with his bare hand to save Michael Carpenter's young son. The Red Court warlord Ortega tried and failed to kill Harry in a formal duel, so the vampire war grinds on. Susan Rodriguez, half-turned and fighting the Red Court with the Fellowship of St. Giles, has left for good. Among Harry's stranger acquaintances: Thomas Raith, a White Court vampire who has inexplicably helped him more than once; the Archive, a little girl who is the sum of written knowledge; and her lethal mercenary bodyguard, Kincaid. The Black Court sorceress Mavra escaped the fall of Bianca's court and has not forgotten Harry.

After a flaming escape from demon-summoned monkeys with a stolen litter of Foo dog puppies - one of which quietly stays with him - Harry takes a case from Thomas Raith: someone is killing women connected to Arturo Genosa, a good-natured adult film producer going independent, using an entropy curse - malicious magic that arranges lethal accidents. Harry goes undercover on Genosa's set as a production assistant to find the caster before the next death. Meanwhile Kincaid brings a warning: Mavra of the Black Court has assembled a scourge of vampires in Chicago, and Harry is its target. Rather than wait to be murdered, Harry starts planning something audacious: hit the nest first, in daylight, and wipe it out.

The curse strikes again on the set despite Harry's wards, and his list of suspects - Genosa's colleagues, ex-wives, and fiancee - refuses to resolve; the magic involved is coming from more than one caster. The trail brushes against the White Court itself: Harry meets Lara Raith, Thomas's formidable elder sister, and learns how deeply the Raith family's power runs through the entertainment world. For the Black Court problem, Harry recruits his raid team - Murphy, told the whole truth and in without hesitation, and Kincaid, hired at mercenary rates - while Ebenezar McCoy arrives from Missouri to stand with his old apprentice. Harry also keeps colliding with questions about his own mother, Margaret LeFay, whose past seems to touch this case in ways he cannot yet read.

The daylight raid on Mavra's nest is a brutal, costly success: the scourge is destroyed in the dark beneath a shelter full of hostages, though Harry's left hand is horribly burned - crippled past what healing can promise - and Mavra's own destruction is never confirmed. In the aftermath Harry learns a truth that cracks his oldest loyalty: Ebenezar McCoy is the Blackstaff, the White Council's secret, licensed assassin, permitted to break the Laws of Magic he raised Harry to hold sacred - it was he who annihilated Ortega. Reeling, estranged from his mentor, and running out of suspects on the Genosa case, Harry presses on and discovers the curse is tangled with the White Court's succession games - and that the true design is aimed not at Genosa but at something much closer to Harry himself.

The revelation lands: Thomas Raith is Harry's half-brother. Their mother, Margaret LeFay, bore Thomas to Lord Raith years before she met Harry's father, and she died by Raith's hand - the White King has been quietly exterminating her line, and Thomas has spent years secretly shielding the brother who did not know him. Margaret left each son a hidden memory to prove the bond, and for Harry - orphaned his whole life - the discovery rearranges everything. The entropy curse, too, resolves: the killings around Genosa were driven from within the White Court's schemes, worked through mortal casters, with Genosa's planned marriage the trigger. Knowing Raith will never stop hunting them, Harry and Thomas choose to take the fight to the king in his own stronghold, the Deeps.

In the Deeps, Lord Raith springs his trap - and it fails against a truth he has hidden for decades: Margaret LeFay's death curse stripped him of his power to feed, leaving the White King a hollow figurehead sustained by reputation alone. Harry and Thomas survive the confrontation, and it is Lara Raith who ends it, seizing her moment: she leaves her broken father on the throne as a puppet and takes the real power of the White Court into her own hands. Arturo Genosa's curse is finished and he marries his fiancee. Harry ends the book with a maimed hand, a fractured trust in Ebenezar, a growing puppy named Mouse, and - strangest of all - a brother: Thomas, cut off from his family's wealth, steps into Harry's life for good.

The entropy-curse case and the White Court's games prove to be one story: Lord Raith, the White King, was behind the killings around Arturo Genosa, and the deeper design was aimed at Harry himself - Raith had murdered Harry's mother, Margaret LeFay, years before, and meant to finish her line. The book's great revelation stands: Thomas Raith is Harry's half-brother, Margaret's son, and has been secretly protecting him since they met. In the confrontation in the Raith stronghold, Margaret's death curse is revealed to have stripped Lord Raith of his power to feed; Harry and Thomas survive him, and Lara Raith seizes the moment - she leaves her broken father on the throne as a figurehead and takes control of the White Court from behind it. Arturo's curse is ended and he marries his fiancee. The cost: in the earlier daylight raid on Mavra's Black Court nest - carried out with Murphy and the mercenary Kincaid - Harry's left hand was burned to near uselessness, a lasting maiming; the scourge was destroyed but Mavra's own fate went unconfirmed. Harry has also learned that Ebenezar McCoy is the Blackstaff, the Council's licensed assassin, and their relationship is left raw. Thomas, cast out of his family's support, ends the book moving into Harry's world - a brother neither of them knows how to have yet.