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War Cry is a five issue The Dresden Files miniseries set in between Dead Beat and Proven Guilty.

Four months after the White Council's military arm, the Wardens, were nearly destroyed in Sicily and the Congo, leading to White Council Black Sheep Harry Dresden being drafted, he and a few of his younger colleagues are dispatched to a small house in the middle of nowhere staffed by a small detachment of one of the White Council's allies, the Venatori Umbrorum, who they must protect. Protect from what? Well, as it turns out, the answer is an army of Red Court Vampires led by Baron Bravosa, who is intent on getting something inside the house, something the Venatori are protecting and something, crucially, that Harry knows nothing about. And if he doesn't find out, it could cost him his life. Or worse.

Tropes appearing in War Cry include:

  • Affably Evil: Baron Bravosa puts on this façade, but as with all Red Court Vampires, he's really just Faux Affably Evil.
  • Badass Bookworm: The Venatori, previously described by Dresden as 'the Masons with Machine Guns'.
  • Big Damn Heroes: Thomas. Ischenko also.
  • Black Cloak: The individual who charged Taylor with custody of the shoggoth wore one, so she never saw his face. Harry wonders if it's Ebenezar. Readers familiar with all books to date may suspect either Cowl or Peabody, whereas those reading War Cry in its chronological place will be convinced it was the former.
  • Body Horror: The Baron's flesh-mask jaw gets blown off halfway through the siege, and he spends the rest of the story with his hideous vampire mouth exposed beneath the tattered remnants of his cheeks.
  • Brown Note: The insanity-inducing psychic wails of thousands of devoured sentients trapped within the shoggoth sets some characters at each others' throats.
  • Classical Elements Ensemble: The four Wardens each favor a different element as a battle weapon. Harry wields fire, Yoshimo calls up wind, Wild Bill manipulates earth and stone, and Ramirez's green disintegration-rays are associated with water's erosive effects according to Word of God.
  • Crazy Enough to Work: A staple of Harry's plans. It's evidently rubbed off on Wild Bill too.
  • Distant Prologue: One of the comics shows a Shoggoth - possibly the same one - unleashed on Hammurabi's Babylon.
  • Eldritch Abomination: It turns out that what the Red Court are after is a shoggoth, a supernatural WMD, which could, according to Harry, destroy New York inside a day, by eating. So he gives it to them.
  • Foreshadowing: In the opening flashback to Sicily, Luccio carves up an Outsider mook with multiple mouths on its tentacles. The shoggoth is a huge fleshy mass of nothing but tentacles with multiple screaming mouths.
  • Handicapped Badass: Harry's still operating with just one effective hand.
    • Wild Bill ends up having his hand broken.
    • McGuckin stands up to the Green Beret despite already being wounded.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: McGuckin
  • Humanoid Abomination: Red Court Vampires, under their flesh mask.
  • Immortals Fear Death: Discussed by Baron Bravosa. He points out to his newly turned assistant that while humans age and die, and must therefore take risks to accomplish their goals in the limited time they have to work with, vampires only die if killed and can thus afford to be far more cautious and careful, as they have time to spend in abundance.
  • Late-Arrival Spoiler: The epilogue clearly spells out Peabody as the traitor on the White Council, something anyone who's read Turn Coat already knows.
  • Male Gaze: The female members of the Venatori are all Hot Librarians.
  • The Mountains of Illinois: The terrain of the Venatori safehouse-come-battlefield is hilariously mountainous for what should be the outskirts of Iowa.
  • Newcomer Saves the Day: Wild Bill, who wasn't there for Dead Beat and is evidently the greenest of the Wardens, manages to overcome his injury and elevate the house via earth-magic so it won't be overrun. This also puts it safely out of reach of the shoggoth when Harry unleashes the Kraken on the Reds.
  • The Quiet One: Yoshimo, who speaks formally and seldom, and who calmly bids a shrieking Red Court vamp to "Silence" as she slices it in two.
  • Shout-Out: Unleash the Kraken!
  • Too Many Mouths: The Outsider mooks in the Sicily flashback and the shoggoth
  • Unreliable Illustrator: A flashback showing the history of Harry and Thomas' relationship shows Thomas sitting on the couch in Harry's living room and making a mess... with a remote in one hand as he watches a flat-screen TV, when Harry's apartment doesn't have electricity and wizards tend to make most modern electronics breakdown immediately. Possibly Thomas rigged it up on an extension cord in Harry's absence, back when he was still getting the hang of no longer being rich and didn't appreciate how costly it'd be for Harry to walk in and short the thing out.

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