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I'm not reading this thread since it has spoilers. However, my friend gave me all the books she has and I've been ripping through them as fast as my eyeballs can go. They're hokey, stupid, full of sarcastic humor from Harry (and occasionally Bob), page-turning-ly good action that never freaking stops, and I just love them because they're right up my alley. Oh, and they're absolutely chock-full of D&D ideas. I really didn't like Fool Moon because while the plotline for the various categories of werewolf (especially the loup-garou) was rather creative, I just... didn't like the werewolves. They're not so bad when they show up in later books, though. Maybe I'm just tired of werewolves.  Summer Knight was one of my favorites (until I read Dead Beat) simply because I love the whole twist that Butcher's put on the Faerie Courts. I'm pretty much planning to rip off this entire mythology wholesale for my next D&D game. I just finished Dead Beat and it instantly turned into my favorite book of this series as soon as I read that Harry looked up at Sue in the museum (near the end) because I knew what was coming next and it promised to be badass, and Butcher didn't disappoint. The one thing I don't like about this series is just how beat-up and close-to-death Harry comes in every single book, usually multiple times during the same book. He takes such a punishment and bounds back with ease, or runs out of mana and still finds more reserves to draw upon at a plot-critical point. At this rate, I'll be incredibly surprised if he actually does manage to die permanently (not like when Susan revived him in Blood Rites). I hope Thomas makes it, but I have a suspicion he won't.  I also want to know who Harry is going to give Shiro's cane-sword to!Must read more. Must find missing books on eBay.
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Sep 21, 2012 20:00
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daggerdragon posted:I'm not reading this thread since it has spoilers. However, my friend gave me all the books she has and I've been ripping through them as fast as my eyeballs can go. They're hokey, stupid, full of sarcastic humor from Harry (and occasionally Bob), page-turning-ly good action that never freaking stops, and I just love them because they're right up my alley. Oh, and they're absolutely chock-full of D&D ideas. Haha, this guy. This guy, right here.
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Sep 21, 2012 20:16
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daggerdragon posted:I'm not reading this thread since it has spoilers. However, my friend gave me all the books she has and I've been ripping through them as fast as my eyeballs can go. They're hokey, stupid, full of sarcastic humor from Harry (and occasionally Bob), page-turning-ly good action that never freaking stops, and I just love them because they're right up my alley. Oh, and they're absolutely chock-full of D&D ideas. You're my new favorite person. Even if you don't read the thread yet, I want you to post your thoughts after every book.
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Sep 21, 2012 20:27
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ConfusedUs posted:You're my new favorite person. Even if you don't read the thread yet, I want you to post your thoughts after every book. I'm seconding this. It is absolutely essential that you post your impressions of each book as you finish them. Absolutely essential.
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Sep 21, 2012 23:52
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The Walker posted:I'm seconding this. It is absolutely essential that you post your impressions of each book as you finish them. Absolutely essential. I sent him a PM and he agreed to do it.  We had a guy do this in the last thread and it was a lot of fun. He would make all these crazy predictions about things like who gets a sword...it was pretty great. He had a pretty good track record too. He got more things right than wrong.
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Sep 21, 2012 23:54
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ConfusedUs posted:I sent him a PM and he agreed to do it. Did you tell him about the Dresden Files RPG? He mentioned stealing the mythos for his next D&D game so he should at least check it out.
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Sep 22, 2012 00:10
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Yay we get another Newbie Dresden Rodeo!  
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Sep 22, 2012 00:12
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Starting Proven Guilty tonight!  I'll get back to you when I'm finished with it.Also, I'm a girl.  ConfusedUs posted:I sent him a PM and he agreed to do it. Butcher isn't M. Night Shyamalan, but he does throw a few curveballs here and there. Clinton1011 posted:Did you tell him about the Dresden Files RPG? He mentioned stealing the mythos for his next D&D game so he should at least check it out. ORLY?! *Googles*
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Sep 22, 2012 00:13
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404GoonNotFound posted:If there's one thing I really miss from the early books, it's the potion mixing scenes. What ever happened to those anyway? Hell, in Changes (IIRC) the Merlin shows up strapped for bear with two potion bandoliers and he still doesn't go into more detail about them. They disappeared because they were essentially a giant Chekhovs gun / deus ex machina who's only purpose was to save harrys arse for one exact purpose later in the book / be a plot purpose. It's poor writing basically.
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Sep 22, 2012 00:19
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daggerdragon posted:Butcher isn't M. Night Shyamalan, but he does throw a few curveballs here and there. What about him have two wizardry negative traits. One being him blowing ipods and game gears the other being his inability to lie about anything. From what we know wizards only suppose to have one of these negative traits and they change over time maybe his mom made a deal for him to have a space wizard magic power? Though honestly I've only picked up on this on my latest re-read of the series.
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Sep 22, 2012 01:28
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daggerdragon posted:ORLY?! *Googles* The Dresden RPG is fantastic. The Fate system provides the best way to play a Dresden-style character that I can think of, and the sourcebooks themselves just ooze charm. Volume 2 even has a short story penned by Butcher himself that takes place in a town less than 10 minutes from my house.
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Sep 22, 2012 02:22
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Tithin Melias posted:They disappeared because they were essentially a giant Chekhovs gun / deus ex machina who's only purpose was to save harrys arse for one exact purpose later in the book / be a plot purpose. It's poor writing basically.
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Sep 22, 2012 02:48
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I'm on Chapter 22 (Harry and Murphy meet a maybe-vampire Crane and his toady lawyer) and I'm bored. I keep waiting for something different to happen. The big bad is a phobophage scaring people to death, metaphorically and literally, and the Winter Queen is gearing up to go after the Summer Court instead of focusing on the mutual threat that the Red Vampires trampled all over Faerie. You know, like they haven't been at war with each other for eons... I saw this plot point coming when Harry learns that Winter isn't doing anything while Summer is gearing up for war (and doing nothing too). I have a suspicion that Thomas being weird has something to do with his new job... perhaps he's working incognito for the White Court? Nelson still has some part to play. I'm not going so far as to say he's the one dredging up the phobophages, but it's not outside the realm of believability. I'm aware they can't all be "riding the zombie dinosaur" levels of awesome, but this book is really coming across as a filler book. I'll shut up and read more.
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Sep 22, 2012 03:14
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Well that book I think was written as a way to keep the series going, so its purpose was to be crammed full of plot points and mysteries that would only be relevant in later books. So yeah, kind of maybe a little forgettable.
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Sep 22, 2012 03:22
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Wow, Thomas, you're a cold-hearted bastard. I like him. 
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Sep 22, 2012 04:27
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I wish the books were new to me too 
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Sep 22, 2012 05:05
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wargames posted:What about him have two wizardry negative traits. One being him blowing ipods and game gears the other being his inability to lie about anything. That's not a wizard flaw, he's just a poo poo liar.
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Sep 22, 2012 06:30
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Oh god November 27th? I should have started my read-through later, I just finished a week ago. Also I saw this posted in the cosplay thread in pyf, and it needs to be posted here cause goddamn it is awesome.
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Sep 22, 2012 06:49
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... I change my vote. Lily now gets the Most Awesomest Person Ever award. ... no, the Gatekeeper. ... Michael!  ... Michael, seriously? You're telling Harry the only way to get rid of Lasciel is to give up his magical power? This is only book 7 out of what, 26, and it's titled The Dresden Files so obviously Harry keeps his power. No, I'm not metagaming, why do you ask? Okay, now I'm just laughing my rear end off at "You'll go blind." ... back to Thomas Say what you will, Butcher has a way around a happy ending that ties up all the loose threads while still leaving plenty dangling for cliffhangers. Example: Mouse is not a dog-dog. I'm interested in seeing what he really is. Harry now has an apprentice. A female teenage apprentice who's in the exact same spot that he was when he was a teenage apprentice. This ought to be interesting. I still have no clue who gets Shiro's sword, and it's bugging me. WHO GETS IT?!?! I really like the lore behind Amoracchius likely being Excalibur, though. That's a pretty neat tie-in to Arthurian mythology. All right, the book came out satisfactorily, even if it was slow getting going over the first half. Jesus Christ, did I just finish a 479 page novel in eight hours?
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Sep 22, 2012 06:59
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Injun Joe is the Most Awesomest Person.
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Sep 22, 2012 07:06
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daggerdragon posted:Jesus Christ, did I just finish a 479 page novel in eight hours? One of the main reasons I re-read these books so many times is that Butcher's writing style lends itself to skipping over sentences/paragraphs in parts, at least for me. I find a new nugget of awesome every time I read them.
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Sep 22, 2012 07:12
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DJ_Ferret posted:One of the main reasons I re-read these books so many times is that Butcher's writing style lends itself to skipping over sentences/paragraphs in parts, at least for me. I find a new nugget of awesome every time I read them. I do the exact same thing! I've lost count of how many re reads I've done due to always having the books strewn around my house/car/work and close at hand.
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Sep 22, 2012 08:09
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They're the most skimmable books I've encountered.
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Sep 22, 2012 08:11
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Logan 5 posted:Also I saw this posted in the cosplay thread in pyf, and it needs to be posted here cause goddamn it is awesome. On the topic of DF cosplay, a quick word of advice to guys planning to dress up as Harry: don't wear a hat. I know you think you're doing it ironically, but when every single guy that cosplays as Harry wears a hat ironically, it loses something.
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Sep 22, 2012 20:23
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daggerdragon posted:I still have no clue who gets Shiro's sword, and it's bugging me. WHO GETS IT?!?! Man, how many sword-years has Harry cost the Church at this point?
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Sep 23, 2012 01:28
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Poopy Palpy posted:Man, how many sword-years has Harry cost the Church at this point? How much is a sword-year in regular years? Do they age like dogs?
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Sep 23, 2012 06:35
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For our new reader's benefit I'm going spoileriffic Nope, daggerdragon, seriously you don't want to read thissince Harry has kept two of the swords for several years he has two years of 'cost' for every literal year so he's cost roughly 26 sword years inactivity, but he's probably killed enough monsters to break even, or after changes massively over. Though I'd have to throw out that being the curator might effect him, make him show up where and when he's needed? I suppose that's something else to add. If he did go totally power crazy next book he could probably still dual weld those swords, even though being the knight does inherently corrupt him. He would be better off having Murph, Sonia, or even Danial backing him up than wielding the swords himself.
Dr. MonkeyThunder fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Sep 23, 2012 |
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Sep 23, 2012 12:46
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Dr. MonkeyThunder posted:If he did go totally power crazy next book he could probably also dual weld those swords, though being the night does inherently corrupt him. No seriously daggerdragon stay out of this If Harry did that, the swords would be tarnished and lose their power. There could then be no successors to Shiro and Michael. We can't have that... can we?  And I don't care, I'm still betting on Murphy wielding one of them (probably Fidelacchius) in the future. And maybe it would be interesting if Molly ended up meeting a guy who ends up becoming the other successor, to kind of follow in her parents' footsteps a bit.
root beer fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Sep 23, 2012 |
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Sep 23, 2012 15:21
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Pseudonym posted:No seriously daggerdragon stay out of this ... And I don't care, I'm still betting on Murphy wielding one of them (probably Fidelacchius) in the future. And maybe it would be interesting if Molly ended up meeting a guy who ends up becoming the other successor, to kind of follow in her parents' footsteps a bit.
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Sep 23, 2012 16:32
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Not reading spoilers, nope, but thanks for that! I get enough spoilers off the back synopsis of the books. I started White Knight last night and I'm about 1/3 of the way in. I knew Thomas (excuse me, Toe-Moss ) was a good guy, but now I'm really curious about his job. He's either some sort of vampire nightclub bouncer (maybe for Marcone, who pays him in sexy tidbits to eat?) or a hitman for the White Court. Or both. Or probably neither.I'm not all that impressed with Molly-as-apprentice. She's just a huge, huge liability for Harry right now, and I'm surprised she survived the year between books. She's also inconsistently portrayed - she can create a glamour that Harry can't even sense, which apparently takes a lot of fine control, but she can't even telekinetically hold up a couple beads on a string? The entire conversation with Luccia not having the capability/fine control to be able to make the silver Warden swords anymore is really pushing me towards thinking that Harry just might be the next Knight of the Cross. After all, Shiro's cane-sword is silver... Maybe Luccia gets her blacksmithing power back and reforges Shiro's sword for Harry or something. :P It could be a good catalyst to get Lasciel out of his head... or has the reverse effect that he can't wield the sword without extreme pain, a la Mord-Sith. Conjecture is fun! Magic is srs bizness.
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Sep 23, 2012 16:40
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daggerdragon posted:.She's also inconsistently portrayed - she can create a glamour that Harry can't even sense, which apparently takes a lot of fine control, but she can't even telekinetically hold up a couple beads on a string? That comes down to different talents. Remember, Molly was able to cast a glamour while completely untrained and still unaware that she even had magical talent. That and I would imagine that moving the beads takes a different skill set entirely than the glamour, despite them both being magic. To give a real world analogy, I'm a customer service representative at a grocery store. I can use the cash registers really well, including some undocumented workarounds, but if you sat me down in front of the accountant's terminal, I'd have no clue what I was doing.
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Sep 23, 2012 16:59
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jivjov posted:The Dresden RPG is fantastic. The Fate system provides the best way to play a Dresden-style character that I can think of, and the sourcebooks themselves just ooze charm. Volume 2 even has a short story penned by Butcher himself that takes place in a town less than 10 minutes from my house. I played in a weekly game of this for over a year. Seriously, go look and give it a shot if you can.
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Sep 23, 2012 16:59
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MasterFugu posted:except for the fact that all 3 Knights so far have been descended from Kings. It's more likely that Daniel will take up the sword than someone Molly meets. besides, Molly isn't exactly in the best shape right now, but who knows? perhaps Mister Ferro will reappear? Everyone is descended from kings. That's how ancestry works. If you told me that both of your grandmothers were married, told me the names of the men they were married to, then told me you were descended from at least one, I would believe you. The odds are good enough, despite them not being as high as the odds that you are descended from Charlemagne, and that's just one king. http://humphrysfamilytree.com/ca.html The only thing special about being descended from kings is that so far the knights have both known that and known which king they are descended from. Either that or Jim Butcher is bad at statistics and doesn't realize everyone is descended from Charlemagne, much less any king at all.
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Sep 23, 2012 19:23
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Wait, where are you getting 26 years from? By my reckoning it should be roughly 10 years in between Death Masks and Cold Days for Fidelacchius plus 5 years in between Small Favor and Cold Days for Amoracchius, giving a total of 15 years. This assumes that no one has taken up either sword since Ghost Story ended.
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Sep 23, 2012 19:31
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Sword speculation Murphy will get the katana sword because I swear she had a katana in her apartment, she likes martial arts, and she used that sword already at the conclusion of Changes. Thomas will wield the sword of love because it thematically fits with his struggling against his incubus nature, also his father was the White KING.
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Sep 23, 2012 19:41
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Just finished White Knight. Well. I had expected Lasciel to last longer than she did. However, I'm pretty sure she's not gone and she'll be back in full glory, gunning for Harry. I really like Marcone. He may be a self-serving dick, but he's a self-serving dick with mercenaries with submachine guns and high explosives, and everybody loves explosions! Okay, I was way off-base about Thomas's job, but hey, being a sexy hair stylist works for him, too. Ahh, Toe-moss. Sneaky, conniving, White Court vampire Thomas somehow finding a way to keep tabs on his supposedly-estranged sister.WHO GETS THE DAMNED SWORD, ALREADY?!?! Harry needs some new toys, not just souped-up versions of his old ones. Little Chicago was a step in the right direction and pretty ingenuous and creative. White Knight was definitely a lot better than Proven Guilty because it didn't take half the book to get started. Granted, the first half of the book was Harry chasing after a red herring, but it all tied in neatly by the second half, and it spread out the action and plot development a lot better. Now to find my Sony Reader's charging cable (or buy a new one) so I can load up the e-book for Small Favor... I'll be back!
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Sep 23, 2012 19:55
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Pseudonym posted:No seriously daggerdragon stay out of this I don't think he's corrupted enough for that, even if he was it would go back to normal after he was done. mister posted:Wait, where are you getting 26 years from? By my reckoning it should be roughly 10 years in between Death Masks and Cold Days for Fidelacchius plus 5 years in between Small Favor and Cold Days for Amoracchius, giving a total of 15 years. This assumes that no one has taken up either sword since Ghost Story ended. I guessed and I thought he had them longer.
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Sep 23, 2012 20:02
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daggerdragon posted:Just finished White Knight. Oh man, you have Small Favor, Turn Coat, then Changes. You're in for a hell of a ride.
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Sep 23, 2012 20:30
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fermun posted:Oh man, you have Small Favor, Turn Coat, then Changes. You're in for a hell of a ride. Is it going to be as badass as riding a freaking zombie dinosaur??? I certainly hope so!
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Sep 23, 2012 21:06
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daggerdragon posted:Is it going to be as badass as riding a freaking zombie dinosaur??? I certainly hope so! "Nay, but with sprinkles 'pon it, and frosting of white." "Don't plan to bind or banish you, old ghost. Just gonna kick your rear end up between your ears." "I have this problem with buildings..."  Seriously though, White Night, and Turncoat are two of my favorite books in the whole loving series.
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Sep 23, 2012 21:14
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