The Dresden Files/Small Favor

Book #10 in The Dresden Files.

No one's tried to kill Harry Dresden for almost an entire year, and his life finally seems to be calming down. For once, the future looks fairly bright. But the past casts one hell of a long shadow.

An old bargain has placed Harry in debt to Mab, monarch of the Winter Court of the Sidhe, the Queen of Air and Darkness-and she's calling in her marker. It's a small favor he can't refuse...one that will trap Harry Dresden between a nightmarish foe and an equally deadly ally, and one that will strain his skills- and loyalties-to their very limits.

It figures. Everything was going too well to last...

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Tropes associated with Small Favor:

• Always a Bigger Fish:Harry is running like hell to get away from Magog and off the island. The giant gorilla-from-hell-Fallen Angel is about to catch him when Eldest Brother Gruff shows up and literally blasts a hole through Magog just so that he can get to Harry.
• Armor-Piercing Question: "Where is your blasting rod?"
• Back-to-Back Badasses:Harry and Michael.
• Book Ends: Early in the book, Harry asks Murph for a donut, in order to make a point. At the end he asks Eldest Gruff for one to call in his favor from Summer...and so that Eldest Gruff won't kill him.
• Break the Cutie: Ivy.
• Chekhov's Gun: Inverted, when the absence of any mention of Harry's blasting rod becomes a significant plot point later, when he realizes that Mab took it away from him and blocked his memories of it, making all of his friends very suspicious of him for most of the book.
• CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable: Averted when Dresden apparently spits up fishy aquarium water during the process.
• Demonic Possession: The Knights of the Blackened Denarius act as hosts for the Fallen.
• Eternal Love: Nicodemus Archleone and Polonius Lartessa, although their relationship may be a warped version of this trope.
• Eye Scream: Mab found what is probably the only way to get Harry to stop making smartass comments. It was not pretty.
• Gatling Good: Hendricks, to the tune of The Ride Of The Valkyries.
• Get It Over With: When Harry defeats the gruff at Union Station, it tells him to finish it. Twice. Whereupon Harry says he does not kill unless necessary, much to the shock of the gruff, who had assumed he was actually in Winter Court.
• Hannibal Has a Point: As truly terrible a person as he is, even Harry finds it hard to argue against Nicodemus when he talks about how the Black Council are disrupting things and causing trouble for everyone, or when he talks about how the Red Court needs to be destroyed.
• Hope Spot: A particularly devastating example occurs for Michael of all people in Small Favor. After the battle in the aquarium that resulted in the deaths of several Denarians, with their coins being subsequently collected, Michael realizes that combined with the other Denarians that they know are in the area, along with the Denarians who have already been defeated and their coins collected he, Harry and the others are within a hair's breadth of defeating the entire order of Denarians and putting an end to their war with the Church once and for all. Unfortunately, Harry is forced to use the coins they captured to barter for a meeting so that they can have a chance rescue Marcone and Ivy, during which the coins are stolen by Thorned Namshiel, setting the good guys almost all the way back to square one. And that's not even counting what happens to Michael himself.
• It Was a Gift: after Harry talks with Jake (who is the janitor -- really), Jake vanishes, leaving behind a copy of The Two Towers, which opens on some — interesting passages.
• Kill Me Now or Forever Stay Your Hand: When Harry notices that Michael has been giving him sideways looks for the entire story he has Michael place his sword at his (Harry's) throat and tell him (Michael) to either cut or reveal where the sudden distrust comes from.
• Mundane Wish: Subverted, when Harry "wastes" his single wish, which could make the entire Summer Court of Faerie do whatever he wants of them, on a doughnut. The point, however, is who he commands to get his doughnut. Namely, the Implacable Man Mage Killer after his head, who now abandons his deadly mission to find one particular doughtnut.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: The Gruffs really do not want to kill Harry, but are loyal to Court and Queen. (Fortunately, in that order.)
• Offhand Backhand: Ivy pulls off one of these, vaporizing a Denarian jumping at her back without even looking at it.
• Screw Destiny: Harry notices that Gard was staring at Michael in a foreshadowy way and decides to alter his actions to prevent what he thinks is coming. Uriel later reveals that, despite current appearances, Harry did change things for the better, since if he had acted differently, both he and Michael would have died on the island instead of Michael only being injured.
• Sand in My Eyes
• Snowball Fight: The beginning of Small Favor has one involving the entire Carpenter family and Harry.
• Telepathic Sprinklers: Averted, since Harry did it. Specifically, since all the sprinkler heads are the same he used thaumaturgy to heat them all up at once.
• Touched by Vorlons: Harry gains Soulfire thanks to the Archangel Uriel.
• Training from Hell: Harry uses a family snowball fight at the Carpenter house to teach Molly how to create a defensive shield. Charity comments on this and Harry remarks that it's good training. Charity asks if that's how Harry was trained and Harry replies that Justin used baseballs.
• Unreliable Narrator: Harry's usually pretty straight with the readers, but on this occasion it's played with when he leaves out a minor, but significant event in the plot because he had his memory of it blocked. Also used as a handwave for inconsistencies from early in the series, such as one minor character whose name changes in between books (Harry heard it wrong the first time), or when Butcher gave Wrigley Field a parking lot that it doesn't have in real life.
• Unstoppable Rage: Harry unleashes Pyrofuego in a beam of destruction that blasts straight through one of the Denarian's hearts, and even apparently negating their Healing Factor.
  • A little before this, the Denarians attempt to turn Harry's Unstoppable Rage against him by showing him the tortured body of Ivy, which they knew would push him to an unthinking fury and break his promise, which in turn would unmake the Sword he had promised in exchange for her. Fortunately, Harry figures out the plan just before his rage gets the better of him, mostly because he had already been manipulated into almost getting the sword destroyed and is not dumb enough to make that mistake twice.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: The Denarians play a mean game. Harry and Michael note on several occasions that the Denarians seem to plan things out so that no matter what happens they can still come away with some advantage. Fortunately, in Small Favor Harry proves that he is also becoming quite an adept player of Xanatos Speed Chess and manages to play the Denarians to a draw at the end of the book.
• You Are Not Alone