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Khizan posted:I think that Verus and the Pax Arcana are both better than the Daniel Faust books, by quite a bit. The Faust books are good, but I don't see how they're so loved here in comparison to the other UF series. They have a distinct tendency towards "Haha! That was my plan all along!" endings and I really dislike his succubus girlfriend. She just doesn't feel... demony enough? I'd like her to be a bit more shady, seem a bit more like a bad idea. Schaefer is like Butcher, in that you should just skip the first three books, start with the fourth where he finally finds his groove, then go back and read the originals later. The fourth is also where it gets super-obvious that the succubus girlfriend has been loving with Faust's head since book one. and poo poo's gonna hit the fan once he figures it out. He's also Sanderson's android clone, down to having his own weird Cosmere thing (like name-checking two Revanche characters in the last Faust book), and probably released a new book in the time it took me to post this.
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Mar 29, 2016 09:26
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anilEhilated posted:Hell yes. Spoiler: "Craig Schaefer" is just a pen name for Brandon Sanderson, under which he writes books the Mormons wouldn't approve of. (For reals, has anyone seen them in the same place at the same time?)
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Apr 27, 2016 04:30
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Mars4523 posted:I find Harmony's actual conflicts and confrontations to be more interesting, because she doesn't have a massive Incarnate crutch to lean on. Daniel Faust is all "few sleights of hand, I love it when a plan comes together, enter Caitlin stage left to make the sky rain red". While there wasn't much of that in this book Harmony's interactions with the demonic are much more interesting because she can't just call her boyfriend to balance the odds somewhat, or even serve as a source of knowledge/resources. Harmony's organization is also hilariously inept/uninformed and in no way prepared for their jobs; in the first book I wondered how they hadn't all been killed by now and was delighted in book two's briefing when they pretty much said, yeah, their teams DO get wiped out on the regular and Linder has to find new recruits to replace the dead ones. The big problem with the series is Cody: the dude is boring as poo poo, irritating, serves no purpose on the team, and the fun Harmony/Jessie buddy-cop stuff screeches to a halt every time he opens his stupid mouth. He doesn't even feel like he fits in the setting, like he's Generic Romance Dude #438 and he walked in from a different book. Considering this is the only series that Schaefer does through a publisher, I'm wondering if it was some weird "Okay, the marketing department says you have to write in a romance angle" deal. I mostly want to know what's up with the Revanche Cycle overlaps, from name-checking the Shadow In Between and that in the epilogue "Adam" gets around the exact same way the Owl does, cutting a hole in space. Loved, loved the new Pax Arcana. It was a series I was slow to warm to, but James is really winning me over and it's becoming one of my favorites. I still haven't tried Kate Daniels but I'm really hoping for good stuff from the new October Daye, because McGuire is always a fun read even on the filler books.
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May 5, 2016 12:49
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AllTerrineVehicle posted:I think i remember reading that butcher has gotten some things wrong about Chicago that nobody who actually lives there would get wrong. IIRC, he also wrote one of the more affluent parts of the city as a crime-ridden ghetto.
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May 6, 2016 16:59
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Ornamented Death posted:This is great news, but to be fair, there were always going to be more Harmony Black books; Schaefer stated in another blog post that part of his contract was that the rights to the series would revert back to him in the event 47North didn't order any more books (he went on to say that he'll never not finish a series he's started). This just means we'll get them a little sooner since he'll be under contract to have them out by certain dates. I like James and Connolly better, but that right there is one reason I'm a fan. Dude doesn't get halfway through a series and sit on the last book for a decade because he's bored of writing and gently caress the fans. His work ethic is insane and he just wants to tell awesome stories and make readers happy. (And he actually works at trying to become a better writer and improve himself.) About the (non)spoiler, Adam is the Network guy from the RKF epilogue who gives Bobby Deal a job offer. The witches in the Revanche books have knives that cut holes in the world and let them travel from place to place, exactly the way Adam does when he shows up in Bobby's den. They also draw power from the Shadow In-Between, which in RKF is what Wehner von Braun called the realm where the Kings live.. In other words, the nonspoiler spoiler is an acknowledgement that Schaefer is doing his own Cosmere thing where all the books are connected.
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May 18, 2016 19:28
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Wheat Loaf posted:I realise that Larry Correia is a bit of a piece of a work these days with all that Sad Puppies stuff and associating with men like Vox Day, but is his Monster Hunters series any good? I was reading the back cover in the bookshop and it looked like something I might enjoy (I've never really looked before because it had a Baen logo on the spine, and I associate Baen with military SF which I'm a bit take it or leave it on these days). It's about rugged individualist conservative action heroes who don't need any stinking government and will monologue about it at every loving possible opportunity...except they're fully funded by government grants and make their entire living off of tax money. And Correia shows every sign of being blissfully unaware of the contadiction he, himself wrote. Also, there's lots of hot steamy sex, if you're the kind of person who jacks off to elaborate descriptions of guns. And I say this as someone who owns and likes guns. Even for me, that poo poo is absurd.
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Jul 27, 2016 04:12
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Daric posted:I started listening to Library at Mount Char and I'm about halfway through and still have no clue what's going on. Keep going, it all comes together beautifully. Or doesn't. I'm still not sure. I think the book broke my brain a little.
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Aug 1, 2016 16:53
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gerg_861 posted:I thought that the nerfing of Verus' "toys" was pretty funny. I don't know if I've ever seen an author so obviously decide "oops - this is a bit broken" as Jacka did with the air elemental. She is a major force, and one of Verus' "friends" in the first few books, and then he's just like "oh well, she's gone". The super-effective, simple-to-make potions in the first couple of Dresden books got nerfed, too, iirc (though simply by having Harry and Company forget that they ever existed).
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Aug 1, 2016 23:24
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anilEhilated posted:I've been looking this up and it looks interesting - is there a suggested reading order? If you read The Keep and The Tomb, that sets up the Adversary Cycle and introduces Repairman Jack, so you can jump off into the rest of the Repairman Jack series from there. Alternately, if you really dig that series, just read everything up to Reprisal and stop at Nightworld, since Nightworld is the big apocalyptic ending that happens after the Jack books.
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Aug 17, 2016 12:24
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anilEhilated posted:Oh, it turns out I actually read The Keep before, had no idea it continued into anything. Got myself The Tomb, will see where it goes from there. Amusingly enough, there is no tomb in The Tomb. IIRC, his publisher slapped the title on, because they wanted the series to all have "The (Whatever)" titles, and just arbitrarily chose it.
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Aug 17, 2016 15:59
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Ornamented Death posted:Repairman Jack is a libertarian ubermensch. Yeah, it's not Larry Correia bad (but what is?), but boy, Wilson sure wants you to know how Jack can solve problems better than that mean old government can.
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Aug 17, 2016 22:17
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Because Schaefer's gonna Schaefer, The White Gold Score (the Faust novella he wrote because he felt bad people were gonna have to wait a whole year between books, then gave out as a freebie before putting it on sale) is free again for the next couple of days on Amazon. It's set between the first two books, but IMO it pretty much reads fine as a stand-alone. Magic, guns, violence, cocaine, fun.
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Sep 1, 2016 14:50
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Mortanis posted:I'm strongly leaning toward OUR Harry Dresden being the evil goatee-wearing version in Mirror Mirror. It makes way more thematic sense that Alternate Harry comes across, meets our Harry and is horrified by all the lovely things that our Harry has done - killing Susan, becoming the Winter Knight, picking up a coin, all the torture and killing and so on... It also lets our Harry see how much better of a person he could have been, which is huge fuel for his angst-fires. That would be the freakin' best, especially if there's a lot of buildup with our Harry preparing to meet Ultimate Evil Harry. Then the dude comes through and he's a saint. (Bonus points if Harry's friends all like Alt-Harry more than the real one.)
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Sep 20, 2016 22:43
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Magres posted:I think that'd honestly just be depressing. Harry has hosed up but he tries his best and it'd be a lovely book to spend a few hundred pages rubbing his nose in all of the times he wasn't good enough (because he was put in a situation where it was completely impossible to be good enough). That could be a decent growth moment though, if he starts beating himself up and then has to come to terms with the fact that sometimes, in the heat of the moment and with limited information, people (including him) just make lovely decisions and you have to live with it and move on. Like he ends up looking at alt-Harry and going, "Hey, I hosed up, and I can't be that guy -- but I can be the best Harry I can be."
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Sep 20, 2016 23:27
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Evil Harry is actually a reanimated Tyrannosaurus Rex. Wearing a hat. When asked how he managed to squeeze through the portal he will respond "parkour, bitch."
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Sep 27, 2016 18:30
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Up Circle posted:why is everything of importance located in chicago?? Well, it's the city Butcher is super-familiar wit---waaait no it isn't. (For reals, though, it is a huge transportation hub -- air, water, and rail -- so it makes sense as a city where various supernaturals who have to travel by different means would find it convenient to get together. Also, centrally located.)
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Sep 28, 2016 01:04
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Wolpertinger posted:The latest Daniel Faust book, The Castle Doctrine, came out at the beginning of the month - just finished reading it, the series is as good as ever. A whole lot of plot points that have been building up for quite a few books now all finally pay off simultaneously. I'm real interested in where he's going to go from here with both series. I haven't read the second Harmony Black book yet but it seems at this rate that the two series are going to have to collide apocalyptically despite having split off into unrelated plots because of the whole prophecy/story with the Thief and Paladin I'm not sure if it will, at least, because of that -- the Faust books seem to play heavily on "gently caress being special/called/The Chosen One," and just because the story says only the Paladin can kill the man with the Cheshire smile, doesn't necessarily make it so. That said, Schaefer's said there will be a reunion at some point, and hinted at a team-up. I'm kinda hoping there's a big setup for a showdown between Harmony and Cheshire, only for the dude to encounter Faust in a back alley somewhere. Preferably with a baseball bat. I'm mostly curious about the last-book revelation that the guy is being played by Naavarasi. Naavarasi's been a manipulator since the second she showed up, but always in an over-the-top, telegraphing every move because of her ego style. Now I'm kinda wondering if THAT was a ruse all along and she's a lot smarter than she acts. And I really want to know what Kirmira asked her just before she snapped his neck. It's possible she's been the Big Bad of the series all along.
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Oct 12, 2016 12:28
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Wolpertinger posted:Despite the fact that the series will almost guaranteed not play the prophecy straight, Cheshire seems to have the ability to completely rewrite reality around him so honestly a role in the Story is probably the only way to avoid having him retroactively kill you off several years ago the moment you enter the same room. I wouldn't be surprised if they pull a switcharoo and find a way to move the roles around a second time so someone Cheshire completely does not expect is suddenly the Paladin and has the ability to kill him at a crucial moment. Yeah, if he gets his hands on you, you're apparently done (or you're going to wish you were done, in the worst way). Or even in the general vicinity -- there was the bit in the opening of book four or five when he changes the decor in his lobby (and his receptionist's gender) just for the gently caress of it. Just getting close is gonna take a major scam. A lot's going to depend on what Faust's new power upgrade can actually do. That, and whether the first Revanche callback in the book (of the two I spotted) is hinting at something that's gonna happen in the Faust books, or if it's a setup for a spinoff. The Owl is a powerhouse, or at least her last incarnation was, and I don't see her siding with Cheshire. Anything and anyone that gets in the way of her finding Mari is going to get annihilated.. There's also the bit with the Kings, which had to be hinting at something. Daniel's done business with the King of Worms twice now, and when Ecko tried to call on Worms to destroy him, the king wouldn't do it. We still don't know what the kings ARE, but I'm thinking Worms wants Daniel to be his missionary, like Ecko was in ancient Egypt. That said, necromancy really doesn't seem to fit Daniel's style.
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Oct 13, 2016 15:09
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vulturesrow posted:Just started reading the Harmony Black books. Digging the first one so far. What I really like about the way Schaefer has handled her to this point is that he doesn't make her sympathetic to Daniel Faust at all. I think there was probably a real temptation there in the Faust books to make her "one of the gang" but he, wisely in my opinion, didn't give in to that. She is a true idealist (although you could say Faust is one too in his own twisted way). The way it is shaking out it seems like her and Daniel will have to come to some kind of détente to combat the enemy but I don't think they'll ever be close to being friendly. Sets up a lot of good tension in the writing. The issue with Harmony is that she knows less about Faust than we do. If you look at the books from her perspective, she's 100% justified in coming at him with everything she's got: all she knows is that he's a murdering thief who hangs out with demons, and the last thing he does is push her into working out an immunity deal for Meadow Brand just before she finds out Meadow's a hardcore serial killer. WE know that everything Faust does has a reason, but from Harmony's view, dude's a loving psychopath. And IIRC, Harmony openly admits she knows she's not even mad at him in specific, she just has a massive hate-on for chaos, and Faust -- to her -- is a living breathing symbol of chaos. She's actually upset when she thinks Faust died in prison, because that offends her sense of justice and she has enough presence of mind to suspect she got played. Considering how she loosens up by the end of her own second book, I'm really hoping for a grudgeful team-up at some point. Hell, I'd be fine with doing it superhero-style, letting them fight first, just because I want to see how Jessie does against Caitlin. (It'll probably be the hackers who end it, considering it's been heavily implied that Kevin and Pixie are friends and WoW guildmates.)
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Oct 18, 2016 04:12
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The big problem with Harmony is the incredibly forced romance, which is why I'm looking forward to book three -- since Schaefer's done everything but say outright that the publisher made him write it in, and that he's been given free reign as of book three to tell the story he wants to tell. So I'm predicting Cody's stuffed in a refrigerator by chapter three. Okay, not "predicting" so much as "hoping".
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Oct 18, 2016 04:58
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vulturesrow posted:Just curious, where did you find reference to that? I'd love to read what he had to say about it. I have to say though that I don't totally hate the romance piece, I think it helps humanize her a little bit, but I wouldn't be upset if he Cody gets the axe, literally, either. There was a blog/fb post from a few months ago, when he was writing book three. I'll have to find it, but iirc he went from acknowledging that a lot of readers really hate Cody, to an oblique comment about how the publisher has given him free reign over the storyline (implying, at least how I read it, that he was pretty much told to shoehorn a romance in there.) I don't object to Harmony having a romance (and Schaefer's getting a little better at writing them -- the Revanche books were a huge improvement there, and the Daniel/Caitlin relationship is a lot less lulzy than it was in the early Faust books), but Cody just doesn't bring anything to the table beyond being Deputy Beefcake. Hell, I'd rather see her hook up with Fontaine, though there's no way to make that not-creepy given the guy wears dead bodies as suits. (Also, making a bet, based on Castle Doctrine: what brings Faust and Harmony back together won't be the Enemy, at least at first. Nadine's gonna plan something twisted and sadistic, because she's all butthurt about her kid being humiliated, Daniel's going to find out about it, and try to save Harmony's life. Which would be a great way to build detente between them and show Harmony that Daniel isn't all that bad. Well, he is, but not that bad.)
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Oct 18, 2016 13:19
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I didn't think a short-story anthology called "Full Metal Magic" could actually make me introspective about a goddamn thing, but there it is, breeding deeper thoughts than it deserves. It's a collection of stories from a dozen indie urban-fantasy writers. It's largely dogshit. In trying to figure out why, I realized the common theme: half of these people are telling the exact same loving story. Insofar as I can tell, they read one Dresden novel, watched Supernatural and/or Buffy, and decided to write UF. Half the stories in this book could literally be about the same faceless dude: he's a Joss Whedon wisecracking badass mage with a sexy vampire or werewolf girlfriend who he has lots of hot sex with (and he has to tell you just how amazingly hot the sex is, god, you wouldn't believe the hot sex this guy has). And the wisecracks aren't funny, and the sex isn't hot. It's like they all bought an urban fantasy template and played Madlibs with it. "SCOWLY GUY meets a MONSTER from CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY, and makes a DEADPAN QUIP before killing it with MAGIC MACGUFFIN." That said, I liked Pippa Dacosta's story enough to check out more of her books, despite pinging every one of the above points. She's actually got good writing chops. (As opposed to some of the contributors, like "Al K. Line," who is the poster child for why people shouldn't self-publish. I've read better stories from high-schoolers. It's embarassingly bad.) I picked it up for the new Faust story, because I'm a Schaefer fanboy. Worth the 99 cents. And way, way better than his collaborative story in Urban Allies, which kinda sucked. It's a flashback story about the heist-gone-bad that happened before the first book, set into a narrative about Faust driving a dumbfuck heroin dealer out into the desert to kill him, and it's short but a lot of fun. Faust at Peak rear end in a top hat levels. My one complaint is that it introduces a really cool new character only to kill them off (not a spoiler, it's established that he was the only one who walked away from that heist), and they would have made a great addition to the regular cast. Then again, it's Schaefer, so this is probably a setup for their return five books from now.
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Oct 22, 2016 03:55
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Megazver posted:Ben Aaronovitch is doing an AMA over at /r/fantasy. He'll start answering questions in a couple of hours, I believe. I like his books, but wow, that was one of the poorer /r/fantasy AMAs in a while. He basically popped in, answered less than half of the questions, and updated his OP with "sorry, I have to go do stuff, find me at an in-person Q&A."
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Nov 5, 2016 02:24
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Magres posted:drat, I just started Daniel Faust by listening to the first audio book at work. I'm 25 minutes in (Daniel is talking to a guy down in the storm tunnels under the city) and just got to the line "Nah man, that kid? She's still down here. And she ain't happy about it." and god the willies real hard. I hope the books stay this good, they're making me think of something akin to a grittier, darker Dresden Files. Prepare yourself, the first book has a really bad case of insta-romance, which Schaefer has said he regularly kicks himself over -- he was going for something (something spoilery which becomes a plot point around book four or so), and wasn't a good enough writer to pull it off yet. That gets course-corrected pretty fast, and a few books in, the central relationship is solid (as are all the other ones -- Faust's whole supporting cast is awesome.) And yeah, you're in for a treat, each book more or less gets better than the last one. You can also look forward to body horror, cannibalism, kinky sex, cold-blooded torture (performed on and by the protagonists), heists, more heists, and heroes who will not hesitate to shoot their problems in the face. Weirdly, especially by the most recent book in the series, a Dresden parallel occurred to me: Daniel Faust is almost the guy Jim Butcher thinks Marcone is. Like Harry's always going "that Marcone is such an evil gangster!" but we generally just see Marcone being a polite middle-manager and protecting children. You know Marcone must do some heinous poo poo, considering he's a crime boss, but Butcher keeps most of it off the page (presumably for reader sympathy). Faust explicitly blackmails and murders people all over the drat place. And it's Schaefer, so when you finish the last book, well, you haven't, because he just wrote another one five minutes ago.
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Nov 11, 2016 22:11
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Magres posted:Look at goodreads, it has a Book #1.5 - should I be looking at actually reading that before Book #2 or is it more of a 'prequel to the later books that occurs mid-series, chronologically' kind of deal where I should be reading the books in release order and just enjoying the trip back down memory lane? It's chronological, it's just not part of the overarching storyline so you can read it whenever; I'd read it after book one. Definitely read it before Castle Doctrine, because two characters introduced in 1.5 (and IIRC aren't in any of the other books) make a reappearance. And yuuuuuuup, welcome to the Faustverse! Wait 'till you meet Naavarasi in book two...
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Nov 11, 2016 22:21
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at when Faust watches a certain set of videos for research. That was real, real hosed up.
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Khizan posted:The better parallel to Marcone is Nicky Agnelli, really. If Dresden got to see Marcone having people tortured with a drill a few times as an example, he'd seem a lot more of the Evil Ganglord and a lot less Goldhearted Gangster. This is true. Daniel actually tries to get the Twins to not kill anyone they don't have to. Nicky gives them power tools and car batteries.
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Nov 14, 2016 00:14
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GET INTO DA CHOPPA posted:Considering neither Chicago, Las Vegas nor the demon courts have mentioned any council, and Dan pointing out that trying to form a council is the easiest way to get yourself killed in a world where dying comes easily, I doubt there's a council. IIRC, there's a comment at one point that someone tried to start a council and got found in an alley with their junk cut off and shoved down their throat, so yeah. The closest thing to a White Council is probably Vigilant Lock, which is a very sad thing because Vigilant Lock is loving terrible. That's not a meta-complaint, I'm enjoying the Harmony spin-off so far, but in-universe holy poo poo are they out of their league. Like, the "foremost defense against occult threats" has four teams, and by the start of Red Knight Falling one is perpetually out of the country on shady business, one is embedded inside Appl-- *cough* Diehl Innovations and can't do anything else, and one just got lined up and shot execution-style. And they have so few resources they can't even spend the time or manpower to do anything about it. (And the prologue to Red Knight makes it pretty clear they're either being manipulated for nefarious reasons or just facing bureaucratic meddling on a staggering level.) It's half Delta Green, half Paranoia.
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Nov 19, 2016 03:21
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Wheat Loaf posted:I don't tend to be especially keen on steampunk, or most things ending in "-punk". The word's been overused to the point of meaninglessness. Early cyberpunk was called that because it actually had a punk-rock ethos; somehow it became a catch-all phrase for "sci-fi what has cyberspace and cyborg arms in it." Same for steampunk (Victorian filth and squalor, fighting the corrupt aristocracy? Nah, just glue some gears on your hat and wear goggles.) I'm not sure if it was a deliberate watering down (publishers wanting to jump on a bandwagon and use the -punk thing for marketing), or people just not getting why the genres were coined that in the first place.
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Dec 14, 2016 13:30
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Wheat Loaf posted:I haven't read Daniel Faust or Harmony Black yet so I had a look on Craig Schaefer's site to see what order they go in, and he has a third series called Revanche, which he describes as different from his usual style but recommends reading before the fifth Daniel Faust book. Is that part of the Faust setting? You won't miss anything if you skip the Revanche books (but IMHO they're pretty drat good, just different from his UF and staggeringly depressing in parts, he wrote it as an experiment to push himself/learn new writing skills), but there are a couple of "oh, huh, that's interesting" moments in Faust 5 if you've read 'em -- like, a certain new character is a kind of creature from the Revanche. I suspect it won't matter later this year/early next year because he's announced a new trilogy and it's almost certainly going to be about bringing a couple of the Revanche characters into our world, so everything's gonna get explained for new readers anyway. Schaefer is generally good about recapping stuff.
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Jan 7, 2017 02:53
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Cythereal posted:He's also said in an interview that this is why he's never introduced a major Muslim character or gotten Islamic mythology/religion involved in the series - he doesn't know much about it, doesn't know many if any Muslims who would be comfortable talking about it, and decided it would be better to not bring it up in the Dresden Files if he's not confident he can handle it tastefully and well. On one hand, I applaud him for not half-assing stuff like that and wanting to be respectful. On the other, isn't research kinda a thing writers are supposed to do? I mean, if he wanted to include a Muslim character (and if he doesn't, that's cool too, but if he did), how hard would it be to go to a freaking mosque and ask the imam a few questions? This is the same guy who decided to put his series in Chicago and proceeded to learn absolutely nothing about Chicago, so Butcher has kind of a track record of this stuff.
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Jan 8, 2017 15:34
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mistaya posted:That said I feel like the Faust books do a really good job with having POC, a gay couple, and women in the Main Cast that aren't tropes. I have only read three so far but it's the first UF series I've read in a while that feels like it really embodies the city and the people who live there and couldn't be set in Anywhere, USA. Yeah, the Faust/Harmony stuff is good with representation in general; it's "hey, these are people who happen to be POC or GLBT (or both, in Jessie's case)" instead of "hey! Look! Representation bingo!". There was a bit in the Revanche when Owl almost goes tropey-predatory-lesbian, but that's swerved when it turns out she's legitimately in love with Mari, and just as desperately lonely and broken as Mari is. Oh, and Mari is just as ax-murdery batshit crazy as the Owl is. Perfect match. That ended up being one of his better romances, along with Felix/Renata. Dude started out pretty bad at romance angles, but he's improving a lot.
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Jan 8, 2017 20:00
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Finished Glass Predator, the new Harmony Black book. In the space of three books, the series has morphed from "demon hunters hunt the monster of the week" to "conspiracy/spy thriller with magic in it," and I would have been happy with the former but this is even better. The romance angle is kicked to the curb where it belongs "gently caress you, Cody.", Harmony continues to become a more likeable protagonist (and gets a massive personal problem to wrestle with), and Jessie is hilarious. The overlaps with the Faust series are fun, too, like finding out what the demons-only meeting at the start of Castle Doctrine was about. And I can't wait to see Faust's reaction when he finds out Harmony "borrowed" his car. The Revanche nods are in there, too, and stuff is definitely escalating. Mari Renault has come back to life and somebody gave her a badge and a gun oh jesus why would you do that why would anyone do that. And the Owl graffiti has gone viral. At this point we've gotta be headed for a Mari/Owl spinoff. Or I just really really want there to be one.
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Apr 2, 2017 16:27
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It's Marie Reinhart, the detective at the bank in NYC. Beyond the name, she's described like Mari (ragged hair, mismatched clothes), and IIRC her partner tells Jessie that she treats her job like she thinks she's on a holy crusade. Agreed on the dude telling them where he was going, that was lulzy. The NSA thing I was fine with, because Burton IS an amateur. Dude's not a spy, he's a tech geek who got promoted into a job he's not remotely capable of doing, and the only reason he wasn't replaced with somebody competent is because he made sure he was the only person who could operate the system. (Which raises the question of why he wasn't pulled aside for a friendly waterboarding session until he gave up the info, but still.)
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Apr 2, 2017 17:17
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Mars4523 posted:Huh, well that was a twist. After two months without a day off, he posted that he rewarded himself with a two day vacation. Which for normal people is called 'a weekend'. He went to NYC and spent half of it meeting with his publisher and doing location research for another book. He calls airplanes 'sky office'. I'm pretty sure the dude's not healthy.
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Apr 16, 2017 03:34
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These excerpts mostly remind me that I really enjoy the Laundry novels, but I wish Charles Stross would write in past tense. Present tense irks the hell out of me for some reason (I know it's a perfectly valid way to write, it's just a personal dislike that I can't back up with reasons) and it's a testament to Stross's skill that I generally stop noticing it partway into each book because I'm so caught up in the story. As opposed to Chuck Wendig, who I just bounce right off of every time I try to read his stuff.
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May 7, 2017 15:16
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ImpAtom posted:Is it a worthwhile buy? I mean 99c so I assume so... Definite maybe. Cashwise, gently caress yeah, it's 99c. Timewise, depends. On one hand, it's different from his UF stuff (he wrote it because he had a story he really wanted to tell and he wanted to push himself outside his usual style and learn to be a better writer), so if you want more of his UF, this ain't that. That said, I think it's the best thing he's written. And we will get nothing else like it from him, because it was a total flop (he's said he sells something like forty copies of Faust/Harmony books for every copy of a Revanche book.) It's also Robin Hobb levels of depressing at points which may or may not be a minus.
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May 27, 2017 02:41
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biracial bear for uncut posted:It kind of falls apart when Harmony beats down an Incarnate when in previous books it's established that if you're anywhere near one of those it takes an awful lot of luck to escape with your life. Except...that doesn't happen? In the Nadine fight, it's Jessie who goes hand to hand (while Harmony shoots at her from a safe distance) and it's established from book one that Jessie is faster, stronger, and can soak way more damage than a normal human. She still gets beaten down, and the second Nadine gets close enough to touch Harmony, the fight's over. Harmony literally never gets a punch in.
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Jun 13, 2017 12:27
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hatelull posted:Oh nice. Just in time to fill my lull in summer reading. Quick synopsis leading up to the new book: Nicky, the old crime boss of Vegas, is still on the run from the feds, so Jennifer rallied the various parts of the city's underworld to form a new syndicate with her at the top. Daniel stepped up to be her right-hand man. The Chicago mob tried to move in, Daniel and company killed the gently caress out of them and then drove to Chicago to kill even more of them, making it clear who runs the city now. Meanwhile there's this mystical sideplot with the First Story, a story repeating itself over and over through time, and the characters in it are doomed to endlessly reincarnate on different parallel worlds. The Enemy, the ongoing big bad and the Story's villain, is trying to hunt Daniel down. At the end of the last book it turned out that Naavarasi, the Rakshasi queen, has been manipulating everybody and might be a lot smarter than she always looked. Daniel and Caitlin are still together, but Nadine tried to give Daniel proof that Caitlin's manipulating him. He's ignoring her because jesus, it's Nadine talking. I'm about halfway through the new one and yeah, this is the good stuff. Action, squicky body horror, and some really funny bits. Also, unless it came up earlier in the series and I forgot, we have confirmation that vampires do not exist in the Faust universe. And there's another Revanche Cycle nod in the first chapter, the only crossover thing I've spotted so far. Well, that and Faust finds out what happened to his hemicuda.
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Jun 28, 2017 15:59
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Sounds like he's just stressed and isn't really feeling it at the moment. Hope he feels better. Yeah, last time I moved I was useless at work the entire time from the stress, and that was just dealing with realtors and the bank, not contractors who are apparently massive fuckups along with it. AND getting divorced and remarried. AND living with my new wife's family. Butcher has to be under some ridiculous strain. I want the new book but I can understand him not getting it done (as opposed to George "poo poo, can't write, football is on" Martin).
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Jul 3, 2017 18:15
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Just finished the Last Policeman trilogy and god drat that was depressing. The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers. It's just kinda light and fun.
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Jul 24, 2017 22:34
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