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I had to double check the latest dresden book since it felt like the book just.. stopped.. half way in. But nope, it's around the same length as all the rest I went back to reread some of the older stuff I enjoyed, and the latest seems to have lost the 'plucky'? Spirit the rest had. At this point I am in it just to see wtf is going to happen, but it's really wearing thin how powerful harry is, except not, except when he is. I just don't know what to believe anymore
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Sep 25, 2020 22:20
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Roundboy posted:I had to double check the latest dresden book since it felt like the book just.. stopped.. half way in. But nope, it's around the same length as all the rest Dresden's always been kind of the strongest on the block, ever since the first few books. The first several books set him up as the strongest around, but also an idiot who barely knew what he was doing (despite being a Magic Nerd whose thing was knowing magic). And his main area of no-expertise was covered when Michael showed up literally out of the blue despite being Harry's long-standing friend. Also Bob was introduced to cover his complete lack of knowledge in potions. So it wouldn't surprise me that that dichotomy of "the strongest around on most days, yet the complete underdog" held true for the rest of the series.
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Sep 25, 2020 22:26
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Ah. A bad case of the X-Files. On the other hand, the portion you spoiled was foisted on Schafer by the publisher and disappears after those first two books...
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Sep 25, 2020 22:45
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Ghost story re-read, which was the only one beside Peace Talks I have only read once. I remember not really liking GS the first time around, but it was fine now. It was kind of fun seeing Harry take things a bit more slowly and think a bit rather than just casting Fireball as hard as possible, although of course he ends up doing a lot of that too. It made me want to find and re-read the stories about Karin and Molly while Harry was deadish, but I seem to remember them not being great either. I see Evil bob isn't actually dealt with, I wonder if we'll see him again? He seems like ideal Black council material, perhaps he can hang out with Cowl.Roundboy posted:I had to double check the latest dresden book since it felt like the book just.. stopped.. half way in. But nope, it's around the same length as all the rest It does just stop, but the 2nd part is out in 3 days.
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Sep 25, 2020 23:58
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Everyone posted:So, in the opening chapters of Battle Ground, Dresden and friends battle and defeat the legendary Kracken and use one of the iconic artifacts of the Christian to secure a safe place for a bunch of people.. I don't know who or why most of the villains are in the last Dresden book or have any reason to care, which is why it is one of the weakest ones. I know who everyone is in that Verus opener and why everything is. It's the difference between a flashbang and a birthday candle. One has the context to mean something, one's just a whole lot of noise. Having read a whole bunch of pretty tight UF recently, the last Dresden book is just all the more frustrating every time I think about it.
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Sep 26, 2020 04:03
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:I don't know who or why most of the villains are in the last Dresden book or have any reason to care, which is why it is one of the weakest ones. I know who everyone is in that Verus opener and why everything is. The Formor have been in like the last 4 books?
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Sep 26, 2020 06:53
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Yeah but if you don't read any of the side stories, the Fomor are very poorly defined and nebulous. They're just sort of there as a bunch of random assholes who wanted to fill the void that the red court left. I'm assuming the side stories flesh them out further. I haven't read any so I don't know.
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Sep 26, 2020 07:09
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RosaParksOfDip posted:Yeah but if you don't read any of the side stories, the Fomor are very poorly defined and nebulous. They're just sort of there as a bunch of random assholes who wanted to fill the void that the red court left. I'm assuming the side stories flesh them out further. I haven't read any so I don't know. Pretty much. In skin game they are basically just used for a studio mandated action scene to spice up the middle of the book, and in Cold Days they don't show up.
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Sep 26, 2020 07:29
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If King Whatshisname has been established at all before he turns up in Peace talks then it would have been a lot more meaningful to discover Titanlady was his boss, but it happens in the same scene he's introduced :/
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Sep 26, 2020 12:39
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Kchama posted:Dresden's always been kind of the strongest on the block, ever since the first few books. The first several books set him up as the strongest around, but also an idiot who barely knew what he was doing (despite being a Magic Nerd whose thing was knowing magic). And his main area of no-expertise was covered when Michael showed up literally out of the blue despite being Harry's long-standing friend. Also Bob was introduced to cover his complete lack of knowledge in potions. So it wouldn't surprise me that that dichotomy of "the strongest around on most days, yet the complete underdog" held true for the rest of the series. Harry has always been open about the fact that while he might be ranked high in terms of raw power, he swings it around like a big dumb cudgel compared to people like Luccio who can wield similar levels of power but with expert precision and exponentially less collateral damage. His biggest assets have always been the whole "thinking outside the box/coming up with unorthodox solutions", and sheer dumb luck/plot armor.
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Sep 26, 2020 15:00
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the_steve posted:Harry has always been open about the fact that while he might be ranked high in terms of raw power, he swings it around like a big dumb cudgel compared to people like Luccio who can wield similar levels of power but with expert precision and exponentially less collateral damage. Plus various powers keep trying to forge him into a weapon. Justin/Outsiders/McCoy (while he doesn't seem to be trying exactly I have to imagine being tutored by the Blackstaff helps you out in a fight)/Mab/Fallen/Odin/Angels which has to be adding a few bonus rolls to his skill checks. I wonder why the Outsiders are so interested in recruiting him? I have to imagine starborn could perhaps also be extra good at summoning Outsiders in as well as banishing them since if they just wanted to avoid the latter killing him would have been a lot easier.
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Sep 26, 2020 15:13
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Darkrenown posted:If King Whatshisname has been established at all before he turns up in Peace talks then it would have been a lot more meaningful to discover Titanlady was his boss, but it happens in the same scene he's introduced :/ Yeah this was very confusing.
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Sep 26, 2020 16:28
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30 TO 50 FERAL HOG posted:The Formor have been in like the last 4 books? But they don't mean anything. They might as well be the villains of the week on the A-Team for all the emotional investment we have in them. If you replace the Fomor with any of the antagonists that Dresden has an emotional and identity-based conflict with, the book becomes immediately stronger. This could have been done with McCoy, but I didn't really like the way it was done in this book. It just didn't hit right and I'm not sure why. It felt like it should have been more satisfying. Anyways. Look at Harry as a character. He's at his best when he has something to be righteously angry about, someone that's wronged him or his allies. You could pick out any number of great 'gently caress yeah' moments from the series, and they usually involve Harry punching an established villain square on the jaw. If it's not the climax of the book, even just a basic Save The Cat moment like the xenomorph at Splattercon can be a very effective fist-pump moment. And that's probably why Peace Talks sucked, and why people have a big bone to pick with Ghost Story ( and to a lesser effect ) or Skin Game. In Ghost Story, there isn't really a 'direct villain or opposition for most of the book. In Skin Game, it isn't so much the focus of the book, so it distracts from one of Butcher's main strengths as a writer. We know what the Fomor are, we know what they're doing, but we don't really care. Harry doesn't really care, either. He never focuses on them like Marcone, or Nicodemus, or Slate. And we don't care either, because we haven't really seen them do poo poo, and upping the stakes by introducing Freiza and Queen Kooler doesn't really work because the stakes of the fomor weren't clearly established before the stakes were raised.
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Sep 26, 2020 17:34
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I honestly forgot the Fomor were even still a thing. Like, I thought they had been dealt with/contained already.
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Sep 26, 2020 17:40
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:But they don't mean anything. They might as well be the villains of the week on the A-Team for all the emotional investment we have in them. Agree. We could have cared about them though, imagine if Formor King dude could have been built up for a bit, perhaps he's the one sending goons after Molly in GS, maybe have him do something impressive during the Formor part of Skin game causing Harry and co to flee or making a good showing against the Fallen etc. Establish him as one of the big bads of the Formor, and the one who is focused on Chicargo/North America. Then you focus on him for most of Peace talks, forget the dark elves mess (which seems pointless unless it somehow pays off big time in BG), he's in town for the Peace talks but he's also up to no good to gain leverage for them. He captures Thomas and tortures him, and uses the threat of killing him to deter Harry and Lara from supporting the "good guys" at the talks. Instead they mount a rescue and foil his schemes, seeing more of the horrors the Formor inflict on the people they have been taking, and maybe their ties to the Outsiders, in the process. The book seems to be wrapping up - they defeat but don't kill King Formor dude but they are pretty stoked and ready to score major points at the peace talks which they now think are in the bag, THEN you get the Queen Kooler moment and the drama that follows OH poo poo.
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Sep 26, 2020 18:43
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the_steve posted:I honestly forgot the Fomor were even still a thing. Like, I thought they had been dealt with/contained already. I knew they were still around but I figured maybe they were being saved for the final trilogy or something. I'll go back and look at Book 14 but I still don't recall any direct conflict that Harry had with the Fomor. Really the only direct conflict I recall with them came in "Even Hand" the Johnny Marcone viewpoint shirt story. On the one hand I kind of get the low-key approach with them. From the end of book 3 through book 12 we've been dealing with the massive world war between the Red Court and the White Council. Jumping immediately into another conflict like that would have been kind of exhausting. Still it does kind of feel like we're going from low-key Cold War to "The missiles are flying, God Bless America!" in a really short time. That said, I don't think this is really supposed to be the start of a war, exactly - at least not a war with the Fomor. As I read it, the Fomor plan to wreck/destroy Chicago and basically out the supernatural to the mortal world. At the point they'll then retreat to their mostly inaccessible home areas while a terrified, pissed-off humanity and the rest of the supernaturals tears chunks out of each other. Then they'll rise to kill/conquer the (exhausted, depleted) winner.
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Sep 26, 2020 22:14
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Everyone posted:I knew they were still around but I figured maybe they were being saved for the final trilogy or something. I'll go back and look at Book 14 but I still don't recall any direct conflict that Harry had with the Fomor. Really the only direct conflict I recall with them came in "Even Hand" the Johnny Marcone viewpoint shirt story. Harry fights Formor at the start of Skin game, and kinda in Ghost story - they are attacking Molly and he briefly processes her to cast a few spells. They have mostly been active while he was dead though.
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Sep 27, 2020 02:36
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Darkrenown posted:Harry fights Formor at the start of Skin game, and kinda in Ghost story - they are attacking Molly and he briefly processes her to cast a few spells. They have mostly been active while he was dead though. Molly also goes up against them in Bombshells.
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Sep 27, 2020 04:03
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I think it's odd that people hate ghost story so much. It was my favorite for the simple fact that it is the only one that didn't seem like a copy/paste of the template used for every other book. And then on a re-read it turns out it is another copy/paste. But I still find it more interesting because it's a different view of everything.
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Sep 27, 2020 16:37
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I hated Ghost Story when it first came out because the villain was a re-hash and it seemed like it didn't really have anything to do with the overarching story besides resurrecting Harry. Those things are both true (minus some details involving Evil Bob) but I've grown to like it quite a bit over the years.
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Sep 28, 2020 02:48
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I think my favorite was dead beat. The latter books are not as good, ghost story, skin game, etc, not had the same draw to me.
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Sep 28, 2020 08:04
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His Divine Shadow posted:I think my favorite was dead beat. The latter books are not as good, ghost story, skin game, etc, not had the same draw to me. Yeah, Dead Beat was peak Dresden for me ( I mean "peak" as in the most enjoyable).
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Sep 28, 2020 08:19
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I've just about finished book 2 of Harmony Black, Red Knight Falling. It rules. Without getting too into spoilers, there's a lot of stuff that borrows from some from Lovecraft and Stross, Cold War and things from beyond the stars. I also really appreciate how the book gives a lot of development and focus to the team she's on. They have their own little individual arcs and a collective arc as a team, and I'm honestly kind of bummed that Verus and Dresden didn't have more of this. Even her love interest becomes more of a character and details that were basically unimportant in book 1 become relevant, and stay present throughout the book even after the task Harmony brings him on for is accomplished. Would recommend all in all. If you have Kindle Unlimited, it's there, and the audio version is as well.
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Sep 28, 2020 17:11
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His Divine Shadow posted:I think my favorite was dead beat. The latter books are not as good, ghost story, skin game, etc, not had the same draw to me. For me Cold Days comes closest to Dead Beat in terms of enjoying it, but DB is still the clear winner. It has everything: Scary, powerful foes that have clear differences in outlook and tactics, Harry inviting in the Wardens (and having to hide a bunch of poo poo because they'll kill his rear end if they find out), Harry becoming a Warden, learning that Bob has a Dark Past, a "gratuitous sex scene that set up a plot payoff eight books later, some actual moral ambiguity among the bad guys (Cowl's apprentice uses Necromancy to save some random guy's life), Harry joyriding an undead T-Rex, Morgan plays a polka drum while Butters saves Luccio's life
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Sep 29, 2020 03:43
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rip kumori, forgotten by the author and never mentioned again
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Sep 29, 2020 03:56
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I dunno, the payoff in Changes really hit home for me. That's my fave by a good margin.
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Sep 29, 2020 07:28
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Battle Ground is out, reading now. About 1/3 of the way through. Much better than Peace Talks, since it plays to Butcher's strengths. So far, however, it feels like he's shotgunning cool set pieces at the expense of any kind of real story. There's also lore info-dumps that feel like they would have worked better being slowly revealed over the last 10 or so books as opposed to being plopped into the story now. It's almost like it's stopped being fun for him and he's in a race to end the series. And it shows. In terms of sheer wanton mayhem, it will probably be tops in the series. But strangely enough, it kind of makes things a little tedious to read (think the battle at the end of Summer Knight, but going on and on and on). Now, there's still plenty of space left for things to take a swerve, but so far I'd put it at the middle of the pack in the series. Proteus Jones fucked around with this message at 07:33 on Sep 29, 2020 |
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Sep 29, 2020 07:29
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Proteus Jones posted:Battle Ground is out, reading now. About 1/3 of the way through. I just finished it and I agree for the most part. I actually enjoyed the constant ramping up of non-stop action. It kind of reminds me of the Sanderson Avalanche in a good way. Once it gets rolling it has a LOT of momentum. I do think that the “kitchen sink” approach weakens it overall, and I just hate the fomors and whasshername as antagonists because I dgaf about them at all. There were at least two “holly fukc” moments, which is always nice, but the overall effect is to be that Harry is starting a New Game+ on Legendary and I don’t know if I have the strength for it.
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Sep 29, 2020 08:52
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navyjack posted:I just finished it and I agree for the most part. I actually enjoyed the constant ramping up of non-stop action. It kind of reminds me of the Sanderson Avalanche in a good way. Once it gets rolling it has a LOT of momentum. Well, figure there's probably at least two years until Book 18 since Aeronaut 2 is supposed to come out next. I think I might be looking forward to that even more than 17 now. And maybe with writing he'll be freshened up for 18. And hopefully he'll get some competent editors/beta-reader because some of that crap in Peace Talks read like fanfic.
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Sep 29, 2020 08:59
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Having finished it, yeah. They weren't two books. It was one book cut in half, and we just got the awesome second half of a dresden book where poo poo hits the fan. The entire book was non stop action. It was kinda exhausting to read but in a good way. If you excuse the awful editing in peace talks (battle ground definitely benefited from the extra time in the editing room) and consider the two books as one long book it is in my top 3 I think.
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Sep 29, 2020 10:07
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I ran through Peace Talks again over the weekend so it's nice and fresh in my head--glad to hear Battle Ground feels like the good payoff to that one
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Sep 29, 2020 14:44
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Yeah. So far it’s a huge improvement. Listens to Wind calling Eb a redneck while shifted into a raven actually made me laugh out loud.
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Sep 29, 2020 14:55
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Proteus Jones posted:Battle Ground is out, reading now. About 1/3 of the way through. OK, so I finished earlier this morning. Mostly unchanged. Still too much "here's some last minute lore so I can Zerg rush the last few books to wrap things up". Definitely neat scenes and action sequences. There were some good quiet moments. But honestly, it just didn't all mesh for me. Even taking into account Peace Talks being the first half, this one just didn't feel like a complete story. It was just Battle for Chicago told in extreme detail. And don't get me started on the Justine is He Who Walks Beside thing. Even though we saw it being clumsily telegraphed in Peace Talks, it still felt shoe-horned in and tacked on in a "I almost forgot about the meta narrative" from Butcher One thing I did like was how he dealt with killing off Muphy. I'm not necessarily happy he did it, but it was pretty much signaled early on in the series and thank god it wasn't a cliche'd frdiging. It was just a dumb accident. And rather than giving Harry the determination to do what needs to be done, it ended up almost crippling him. So count me being pleasantly surprised at how it was handled. While the friction in Peace Talks between he and McCoy felt manufactured and soap-opera levels stupid, I thought the White Council cutting him off at the knees through expulsion is nice complication. Ramirez turning his back on Harry seemed a bit out of character, but with everything that's happened in the book and historically I'll allow it.
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Sep 29, 2020 17:56
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Finished Battle Grounds after a nice reading binge. It's fun- it's probably not a GREAT book, but it's just a giant moving action sequence through 90% of it with a lot of callbacks and character stuff. I definitely found myself smiling through a lot of it, even if it was in a 'popcorn action flick' sort of way. Moving forward, I think I like the idea of him being cut off from the Council and using the example of Marcone's empire to consolidate his own power and protect Chicago. I think there's potential for some good stories to be told there. And frankly, I had a massive smile on my face through the entire section with Molly at the Carpenter's house at the end, that was just well managed after a big ol' stressful book. I mean, this still was half a book, no changing that. But I had a lot of fun reading this half that I definitely didn't with Peace Talks. There were some legitimate belly laughs at times, and some page-turning action. Worth it, to me.
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Sep 29, 2020 19:22
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Please use spoiler tags for discussion of the new book.
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Sep 29, 2020 20:04
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Overall it feels a lot like book 3, a season opener for the second main arc of the series.
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Sep 29, 2020 20:38
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Definitely the other half of a book. I will say that by putting all the buildup in Peace Talks and having all the payoff be in Battle Ground the pacing is just hosed. Really would have been better served by spreading some stuff out a bit.
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Sep 29, 2020 20:46
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Happy to hear that the new Dresden book is decent. I'm gonna reread Peace Talks (aka part 1 of the new book) before reading part 2.
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Sep 29, 2020 21:27
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Battle Ground's real surprise was making me care about Marcone as much as Dresden does for once. That's one common prediction that came true.
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Sep 29, 2020 22:01
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I'm about halfway through Battle Ground and weirdly enough, even though it's markedly better than Peace Talks it's leaving me tired and utterly disinterested in reading any more Dresden books in a way that Peace Talks didn't. Like, it's nothing we haven't seen before, but Harry's constant martyr complex, the weird sex poo poo, and the world's constant need to have his friends and allies constantly suspect him have all just gotten to be too exhausting. I get that they're primo levers, but I really wish Butcher took some time to learn some new storytelling skills.
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Sep 29, 2020 22:24
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