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Finished the Alex Verus books recommended by this thread, they were pretty entertaining. The main character's powers were interesting and creatively described, though the rest of the world-building seemed less well-thought out and more made up on the fly. If I had a complaint it's that, I guess partly because of Verus's powers, there's no real mystery to the plots. The stories are pretty one-track and there's just the beginning straight to the end, with no real sideplots or red herrings or stuff like that. The first 3 books are pretty even keel, and the 4th one is markedly better. I'm also really glad Luna eventually stopped being such a petulant idiot.
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Jul 9, 2014 08:34
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Finished all the Felix Castor books over a week's vacation and I loved them. I thought the premise was rather tame and I wasn't sure if the stories could anything new with them, but it surprised me with all the moral quandaries and where it went with them. Also loved how Raymond Chandler-esque it was and how the bad guys were just humans with human motivations. Then I got to the end and notice the last book was written in 2009. Did he just give up on writing them?
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Aug 11, 2014 05:45
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mirthdefect posted:StoryBundle has a bunch of urban fantasy up now. Never heard of any of it except Twenty Palaces, look worthwhile to anyone? Long Way Down was mentioned earlier in this thread, I'm just on the 2nd book now. If you have nothing else to read it's passable. I like the covers.
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Aug 28, 2014 05:00
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I think the first one is the weakest, he tried doing the Chandler-esque prose and he doesn't quite have the touch, so there are points where you wish he'd just get on with it. The plot falters through the investigative portions, but I think it finishes very strongly. Then the 2nd book kicks it up five notches and it's pretty consistent for all the books after that.
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Sep 7, 2014 07:01
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Peter is kind of a career fuckup, but then he spends a lot of time telling the reader how clever and smart he is, and I think the juxtaposition is funny. He's certainly less competent than his supporting cast, but he's slightly more observant, and it seems to work for him. Certainly the second book was him making an long string of unfortunate decisions, though possibly under a spell.
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Sep 12, 2014 22:41
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re: Foxglove Summer Man, loving Ben Aaronovitch, learn to wrap up loose ends goddamnit 
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Nov 17, 2014 07:30
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Yeah I'm fine with the overarching story and mythology being doled out slowly, I thought that was interwoven more smoothly than in the other books. I was just frustrated because there so many dangling questions within the case itself. Like what was up the eldest daughter swapping the children in the first place, or how the one guy was father to all 3 kids, or why they suddenly decided to swap them back after 11 years. Or what the Queen's motivations for any of the stuff was. Maybe I missed a lot, I'd have to re-read, but I feel like a longer summary scene at the end would done wonders, but instead it's like he ran out of paper suddenly.
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Nov 17, 2014 09:48
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ookiimarukochan posted:Maybe it's just me but I thought that all of these questions were answered in the book? Okay so 11 years ago the Queen swapped the children when Zoe ran away with the baby. Then later the Queen takes Hannah and Nicole both, but for some reason releases them a week later, and has the unicorns chase Peter and Dominic to where they could conveniently be found, but she had swapped Nicole again. If she didn't like the not-Nicole child that makes sense I guess, but then she changes her mind and sends the unicorn to rampage into the house to get not-Nicole back? If the answer is just a faerie did it, and faeries are weird and mercurial. Then that's alright I suppose, I was just expecting a more proper police ending to the investigation, especially since the procedural aspects of the rest of the book were so strong. As for Dominic it was nice to have a character that was just gay and nobody gave a poo poo about it. Was there something else going on with him though? The journalist (under the influence of not-Nicole) singled him out specifically when she went crazy. By itself that's probably nothing, but at the end he was talking about a throne of blood, and that just got glossed over - or was that some British pop culture reference that went over my head? Molly I had always figured was some variation of bean sidhe/banshee, since in Moon Over Soho the rivers were calling her a lady of death. I thought I was following along fine up until the book just stops, but yeah not knowing a lot about British culture and traditional folklore probably hurts my understanding of the stuff. I had to look up Mr. Punch after reading the first book, for instance.
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Nov 17, 2014 22:45
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The Rook was written by a guy, but has a pretty self-reliant female protagonist, and that's definitely a fun, stupid book. Greywalker was written by a woman and has a female PI as its lead, though I found the pacing in that series to be glacial.
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Nov 17, 2014 22:54
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just_a_guy posted:Greywalker. I might read a summary see what its like but you seem to think its not worth the bother? I'm lukewarm about them, they're a tier below the other books you listed. It's definitely not as fun in the Dresden sense, they're more paranormal slow burn detective books, with a female lead who can see ghosts. There's no weird werewolf sex however. The folklore is that of the Pacific Northwest, though the world building is more atmospheric than fantastical. There's a soft reboot at the end of book #5, and by then the writing is more crisp and self-contained, so to be honest I wouldn't start at the first book. Track down a copy of book #6 or #7 (Seawitch?) first and see if you like it.
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Nov 17, 2014 23:22
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Skippy McPants posted:If it was his head being messed with I could buy that, but nothing like that is ever mentioned. Nobody ever even calls him on being a complete idiot for missing the obvious, but he's just a complete dunce about it. "Hey, there's a clear connection between dead jazz men and the women they were seeing. Here's one of those ladies now, and she's coming on to me real hard. Should I, a) be super suspicious and worried, or b) bang her. Hmm. Hrmmmmmmm. Part of the thing with those books is that you can't trust everything Peter says. He keeps telling the reader how clever he is and meanwhile everyone else around him, especially Leslie, is 10x more competent. He mainly gets by on pluckiness basically. That said, the jazz vampires had shown the ability to mess with people's heads so it's not that much of a leap. The actual height of his stupidity in that book is not the vampires, but the part where he tries to be clever with Abigail and manages to get outwitted by a prepubescent girl into training her in magic.
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Mar 1, 2015 07:18
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Wade Wilson posted:Read the first Felix Castor book. It was okay, but I'm a little hesitant to keep going because the end was set up to have Castor supposedly teaching a succubus that he just spent the majority of the novel cowering in fear from (and turning loose on the small time villains in the story, and not just any old succubus, but apparently some Named uber-succubus that would be on par with the Morrigan from the Iron Druid books) how to live and work among mortals rather than going back to the Hell it was summoned from. She stays a wildcard throughout. Her and Nicky are the best chararacters. If you mean a romance, no, any time he tries to start something with her, she shuts him down hard and his anguish is hilarious. Keep reading, the 2nd book is pretty nuts and I think it's the best of the series.
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Mar 17, 2015 17:55
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Benny the Snake posted:Thanks. There's also something bugging me about the whole conceit of the series as well. If each river in London has an associated diety, wouldn't their health be dependant on their respective river? Therefore, Mama Thames, Father Thames, Lady Ty, et all shouldn't have so much influence but therefore be rather sickly and diseased to do decades upon decades of human polution and negligence, right? I just don't find it very feasable that any God or Goddess of nature would hold any sort of proper influence or power in any post-industrial nation nowadays. Especially in London, the town where the Industrial Revolution first took place. Yeah they talk about a couple of rivers dying back in the industrial revolution from being rerouted into sewers.
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Mar 30, 2015 09:32
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Apoffys posted:Has anyone here read the third Bobby Dollar book? How is it compared to the first two? I quite liked the first book, but thought the second one was boring, repetitive and had an unsatisfying ending. I don't mind torture scenes as such, but a book should have something other than torture scenes in it too... It's better than the second one but not as good as the first. It's also the last in the series so I dunno, you could ride it out. I really hated the second one, I guess I could see what he was going for but it wasn't enjoyable to read at all.
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Apr 1, 2015 18:21
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The Fool posted:Anyone expecting foxglove summer to resolve or expand on Leslie's betrayal or the faceless man's plan will be disappointed. Metaplot books in the series seem to be every even book. I do like the odd numbered case-of-the-week books better though. Anyone have guesses on the Faceless Man? I thought it could be David Mellanby who's been aging backwards like Nightingale, as he supposedly shot himself in the face who would have made identification hard. The only problem is Nightingale's read of his signare doesn't match up with that, and I think he would have recognized David immediately from that scent. Aaronovitch has been careful not to put Nightingale and Faceless Man in the same room so far though, which makes me think it's someone Nightingale would have recognized. The other thing is while Peter is a bit of an idiot and often wrong about everything, if you look back, his reading of vestigia has never been wrong. When he meets Faceless in Soho he feels "the smell of roast pork, freshly mown grass, the stink of unwashed bodies, and a metallic taste, like iron", which is a huge clue, but I'm not familiar with London to figure out what.
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May 16, 2015 10:42
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I think the TV series distilling down the premise to 'Wizard PI' case-of-the-week was a smart move for the format and really should have worked. The casting was good (casting a short Murphy never would have worked with a 6'4 male lead) and the hockey stick staff was ace. Unfortunately the writing was just all over the place and you never got a sense that it was the same people behind producing one episode to the next.
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May 25, 2015 02:01
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The binder becomes less exposition and more a vehicle for jokes later on.
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Jul 26, 2015 22:08
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Rygar201 posted:I wouldn't be surprised at all if there was a car stand for Kindle on Amazon (free one day shipping with AMAZON PRIME!) http://www.amazon.com/AutoExec-Wheelmate-Steering-Attachable-Surface/dp/B00E1D1GY6 The customer reviews and images are the best.
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Sep 19, 2015 17:05
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I'm a big Raymond Chandler fan so I really enjoy the Felix Castor books. The prose is certainly a step above Dresden, and it sticks to wallowing in the noire detective muck instead of transitioning into straight fantasy. In that tradition, everyone's a hard-nosed rear end in a top hat, including the protagonist. It's a series about an exorcist getting rid of ghosts and demons, but themetically, the most evil fuckers are always just normal humans with understandable human motivations. Father Gwillam and JJ especially.
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Apr 15, 2016 20:28
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Stiletto was good, though unevenly paced. I think if he had trimmed out some of Myfanwy's bits and a good chunk of the third act, it would have been a much better package. The new characters are good though, Felicity's awesome and Odette grew on me. It's not as good as the Rook but the signature farcical bureaucracy and ridiculous violence are still there. I really don't understand how anyone in the Checquy manages to survive past the age of 35.
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Jun 25, 2016 23:43
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Megazver posted:Stiletto is digressive, but that's how I like it. The only bit I'd cut was the last action sequence in the church. Like, I have no idea why that was even there? It did nothing for the plot and it revealed nothing about the characters. We're a few chapters away from the climax, the bomb is ticking and all of a sudden we spend several chapters on this mission that turns out to be entirely unrelated to anything else previously. Myfanwy was all ominously 'oh take her with you but let her know we want her to come with you' but then, unless I am dumb and am missing something obvious, this didn't actually develop into anything? I thought maybe it'd turn out to be a Lady Farrier dream and they implanted a bomb into her arm while she was under or something, but nope. You could safely cut it out and nothing in the narrative would change. Completely agree about the church bit. The big terrorist attack and Felicity's Grafter fight should have fulfilled that role of the big action scene in the 3rd act, the church fight was useless. The point of it was to show the final development in Odette and Felicity's friendship, but I think it had already arrived way before that, so the whole thing seemed extraneous. Especially since it didn't even tie back into the Grafter plot.
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Jun 27, 2016 02:24
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I think he's said he didn't want to lock himself into naming all his books after chess pieces. The part in The Rook where the whole chess thing is explained in 1 page, followed by 10 pages explaining how dumb it all was, remains one of my favourites.
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Jul 19, 2016 19:01
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So the thread was recommending Mercy Thompson/Patricia Briggs. I'm like 120 pages into the first book. The prose is fine, but so far it's been wall-to-wall alpha dominant werewolf werewolf alpha werewolf dominant alpha alpha. Please tell me it gets better.
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Sep 19, 2016 01:29
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Okay well sounds like I should truck on till the second book.
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Sep 19, 2016 03:44
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:I haven't read the series yet, but I'm always hungry for good werewolf stuff. What about it don't you like? Does it fall into the typical "Alpha is Alpha ( it is always capitalized ) because Alpha is the strongest!", along with a whole lotta dick swinging? I don't know what's suppose to be typical for this stuff but the werewolves seem to be mostly macho violent misogynists, but are also dreamy-looking and compete with each other for the submissive heroine. The one exception happens to be her gay werewolf best friend. So I don't know. I think I'm feeling whatever women feel when they have to suffer through male writers penning lousy female characters, except the other way around.
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Sep 19, 2016 06:41
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It's a fictional book, he can make up anything he wants, he chose to make this up.
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Jan 20, 2017 20:25
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Well, think about it: Well he beats her twice in the book, the second time she gets pepper sprayed in the face which would put anyone down, and both times she pulls a vanishing act with no explanation. That's my only major wtf with the book.
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Apr 6, 2017 18:19
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Mac is also a dog
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Jul 1, 2017 19:23
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Proteus Jones posted:I really hope this show doesn't end up like the game. Really neat premise, undelivered promises, and not enough gas in the tank to keep long term engagement going. The writing and the world building is so cool and weird though, even if the rest of the game is bleh.
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Aug 15, 2017 20:45
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Wheat Loaf posted:Have been thinking, did anyone else feel like Hanging Tree a) walked right up to the edge of leaning too heavily into pop culture references; b) and jumped over; or c) didn't at all? Not being British I didn't understand 98% of them, so it seemed fine.
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Aug 20, 2017 19:37
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Didn't the Twilight lady license The Rook books for TV adaptation
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Aug 31, 2017 22:28
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Khizan posted:I also feel like the Felix Castor series by Mike Carey hits most of the same notes as the Daniel Faust series does, only better in basically every single way. Reasons I really like the Castor books: - Carey is a good writer and his prose is a cut above. There's some rough spots where the execution is not great, but for the most part it's clear he has that Chandler tone in mind and is able to get most of the way there. - The premise is rote (PI noire, but with a guy hired to stamp out ghosts) but almost immediately he flips that on its head and starts ramping up the existential internal conflict in a convincing way. - Castor has a pretty lovely ability; he can play a flute to exorcise ghosts. That's it. His power doesn't ramp up, he's not great at fighting or anything else, he's just kind of a drunken rear end in a top hat with a weird superpower that's in demand. - Juliet is actually a cool succubus character and her interactions with Castor kinda darkly funny. - Castor deals with demons and ghosts and zombies, but the worst people in the books are always the humans. Humans are really evil and lovely. Even Castor's allies. Butcher tries to write that sort of thing with Marcone and fails miserably, but there's no such issue here. It's not really gory but it doesn't flinch from the dark stuff. Everything feels really grimy and yucky like you're dredging the depths of human nature.
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Dec 23, 2017 23:06
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I really like Stiletto with the exception of the Myfawny POVs, they felt extraneous, and she actually worked better from the eyes of the other two characters. Also the ending dragged on for one battle too long. Other than that it's a really good follow up.
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May 7, 2018 20:44
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Inspector 34 posted:When is the next Rivers of London due out? I just finished up all the main books (are there short story collections like Dresden has?) last week and I'm hunting for something to read now. You all seem to like the Alex Verus series. Maybe I could give them a shot. Or possibly the 2nd Sandman Slim book. For now I've started rereading The Wheel of Time, but only until I figure out what to read instead. I think it's November this year.
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Jun 29, 2018 04:13
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Wxhode posted:New Alex Verus dropped today. It was pretty good. It was more of a deep dive into the political stuff, so a lot of the fight scenes were pretty vestigial and didn't contribute much to the narrative, but that's ok.
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Jul 6, 2018 19:53
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Female characters in Verus tend to get pretty beat up. Partly it's because a lot of the cast is female and it's a violent series, but, like, I think the only Verus ally who *hasn't* been badly injured and then had Alex rescue them, at this point, is Variam. And I'm counting Arachne. Sonder maybe. Now that I think about it there is a wide pattern of having to 'rescue' women, even the Deleo thing. At least it's not Dresden I guess?
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Jul 25, 2018 05:59
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Ornamented Death posted:That's because Schaefer mostly misses all the usual traps UF writers fall prey to when they introduce succubi into the story. Caitlin is written as a monster first and a girlfriend second. Been a few years since I read the first book, but that was absolutely not the impression I got while reading it. Doesn't Faust meet her while she's enslaved by some bad men, white knights her out of there, and suddenly she falls in love with him or something? I remember eyerolling so hard at that whole thing. Best succubus is Juliet from the Castor books, she's always an breath away from snapping everyone's neck at any given moment, and any romance stuff is played for laughs.
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Dec 21, 2018 08:46
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I liked Lies Sleeping okay, but Aaronovitch as a writer is getting worse at just... explaining things. I don't know if I'm suppose infer stuff between my awful pre-existing knowledge of British folklore, the comic book spinoffs I didn't read, or whatever else, but the series generally feels less than self-contained. I still don't understand what the hell happened in Foxglove Summer for example.
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Dec 28, 2018 03:06
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That seems to miss the mark on how unabashedly bonkers dumb the book revels in being.
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Mar 9, 2019 12:46
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I don't know anything about the metalore stuff, but I finished Ghosts of Gotham and really enjoyed it. Although I preferred the parts before the supernatural stuff started happening.
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May 29, 2019 09:17
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