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Apoffys posted:It would be a bit odd for him to murder his friend to get a job he'd already turned down at least once. I don't completely buy it either, but if he was secretly a bad guy playing a long game, he may have found the right time to do it. Or it could be the other possibility, that someone else wanted him in that position and orchestrated it, and he doesn't realize he's being played.
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Feb 2, 2015 01:31
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My theory is that there is no Black Council as Harry imagines them, merely different groups acting in their own interests. The Circle is definitely real, but I do not believe they're responsible for everything Harry attributes to his Black Council.
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Feb 2, 2015 02:03
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Pretty sure Nemesis and the Outsiders are the actual threat. Even Harry no longer thinks of things in terms of Black Council terms any more as of Cold Days.
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Feb 2, 2015 02:12
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MildShow posted:Eh, I don't buy it. Honestly, I'd be surprised if anyone on the Senior Council is Black Council, other than maybe Cristos. I think the Merlin is actually being manipulated more than I think Mccoy is.
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Feb 2, 2015 03:39
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Wade Wilson posted:Pretty sure Nemesis and the Outsiders are the actual threat. Even Harry no longer thinks of things in terms of Black Council terms any more as of Cold Days. Yeah and the Circle are the minions in this plane
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Feb 2, 2015 03:48
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TenaciousJ posted:There's pages and pages of gender politics talk and none of the points are new. Neither is your theory about McCoy being a member of the Black Council which was a theory for as long as I've been reading Dresden but you still want to discuss it. Maybe you should not be a dick to people who are not discussing the thing you specifically want to discuss. Regardless, McCoy almost certainly has some sort of dark secret because everyone does and "was the Blackstaff" doesn't seem to have been enough to shake Harry's faith in him. There is going to be something that does that because it is just the way Butcher does things.
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Feb 2, 2015 04:21
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Oroborus posted:I think the Merlin is actually being manipulated more than I think Mccoy is. See, the Merlin is the one Senior Council member I'm sure is not on the side of Nemesis, whether willingly or unwillingly. It's too easy to go "Oh, the leader of the (ostensibly) goody guys was secretly evil all along." I think he's much more of an interesting character exactly how he is - an obstructive bureaucrat who opposes Harry and everything he stands for, but when poo poo hits the fan, they're still playing on the same team. ImpAtom posted:Regardless, McCoy almost certainly has some sort of dark secret because everyone does and "was the Blackstaff" doesn't seem to have been enough to shake Harry's faith in him. There is going to be something that does that because it is just the way Butcher does things. But it was. Harry lost a lot of faith and trust in Ebenezar when he found out what the Blackstaff is and does. He may have regained most of it, but not all of it. MildShow fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Feb 2, 2015 |
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Feb 2, 2015 04:24
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Cool, I'm glad I'm a dick to specific users by saying a certain topic has been talked to death!MildShow posted:See, the Merlin is the one Senior Council member I'm sure is not on the side of Nemesis, whether willingly or unwillingly. It's too easy to go "Oh, the leader of the (ostensibly) goody guys was secretly evil all along." I think he's much more of an interesting character exactly how he is - an obstructive bureaucrat who opposes Harry and everything he stands for, but when poo poo hits the fan, they're still playing on the same team. I agree with you about the Merlin. Someone doesn't want Harry and the Merlin to see eye to eye, ever, or the council might be more effective.
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Feb 2, 2015 04:35
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Picked up The Rook based on recommendations from this thread, but 5 chapters in it's still damned slow. Does it pick up soon or does it keep slogging at this pace?
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Feb 2, 2015 04:55
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OptimusWang posted:Picked up The Rook based on recommendations from this thread, but 5 chapters in it's still damned slow. Does it pick up soon or does it keep slogging at this pace? Yeah, I just started reading it myself, and I feel like I'm in infodump hell right now. I like the premise enough to keep reading, though.
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Feb 2, 2015 05:12
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TenaciousJ posted:Cool, I'm glad I'm a dick to specific users by saying a certain topic has been talked to death! So is the one you brought up. So are literally half the conversations in this thread because we get new readers fairly often and that means subject matter that came up before comes up again, especially in the time period between books where there is nothing new to discuss unless the author drops some info. Mysteriously you didn't pop up to whine about things that were 'talked to death' during any of those conversations. OptimusWang posted:Picked up The Rook based on recommendations from this thread, but 5 chapters in it's still damned slow. Does it pick up soon or does it keep slogging at this pace? It picks up a bit but I wasn't super-thrilled by The Rook in general so YMMV.
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Feb 2, 2015 05:15
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It all depends on how much you care about the story of letters being left behind. It makes me worried about the second book, because the contact/similarities between the old and new character really makes me love that book.
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Feb 2, 2015 05:53
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SystemLogoff posted:It all depends on how much you care about the story of letters being left behind. One of the things that bugged me about Anthony Ryan's second book after Blood Song. He dropped the framing device and I think the book suffered for its loss.
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Feb 2, 2015 12:01
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navyjack posted:One of the things that bugged me about Anthony Ryan's second book after Blood Song. He dropped the framing device and I think the book suffered for its loss. Actually, the framing device was still sort of there - at least, it was still a story being told between that scholar and someone else. I think what made the second book suffer was the switch from a singular POV character to multiple POV characters, with one being completely new to the story.
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Feb 2, 2015 13:27
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I really don't know how O'Malley can continue the series without that neat narrative device of past Thomas' letters. It was a neat time capsle effect, and I don't think it could be replicated quite the same.
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Feb 2, 2015 18:02
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Benny the Snake posted:I really don't know how O'Malley can continue the series without that neat narrative device of past Thomas' letters. It was a neat time capsle effect, and I don't think it could be replicated quite the same. I actually have hope for this, mostly because the latter half/third of the book has very few of those letters. I noticed that on a re-read. The letters slowly dwindle away. The whole idea of the book is that, by the end, Thomas doesn't need the letters anymore.
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Feb 2, 2015 18:13
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I don't know why or how but McCoy in my head is Cotton Hill and there's nothing anyone can do about it
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Feb 3, 2015 01:14
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Loving Life Partner posted:I don't know why or how but McCoy in my head is Cotton Hill and there's nothing anyone can do about it 
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Feb 3, 2015 01:24
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Loving Life Partner posted:I don't know why or how but McCoy in my head is Cotton Hill and there's nothing anyone can do about it No he is clearly Uncle Jesse. Which kind of makes the Merlin into Boss Hogg, which I am stil on the fence about.
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Feb 3, 2015 05:31
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OptimusWang posted:Picked up The Rook based on recommendations from this thread, but 5 chapters in it's still damned slow. Does it pick up soon or does it keep slogging at this pace? docbeard posted:Yeah, I just started reading it myself, and I feel like I'm in infodump hell right now. I like the premise enough to keep reading, though. Yes, it picks up considerably.
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Feb 3, 2015 15:53
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Mr.48 posted:Yes, it picks up considerably.
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Feb 3, 2015 15:57
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I dunno, the premise grabbed me right from the start.
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Feb 3, 2015 16:00
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Metal Loaf posted:I just finished Neverwhere. It was really good. I went through it a little bit at a time, then powered on through the last half dozen chapters this afternoon. It's too bad Gaiman doesn't like sequels, because it's an interesting world he created here, one I think it would be fun to explore. I like both Aaronovitch's and Cornell's series (in fact I like them both more than the Dresden Files), but Cornell's books definitely have a much darker bent to them: Rivers of London has sexy jazz vampires, London Falling has children being sacrificed by getting boiled alive....
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Feb 3, 2015 16:01
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Mr.48 posted:I like both Aaronovitch's and Cornell's series (in fact I like them both more than the Dresden Files), but Cornell's books definitely have a much darker bent to them: Rivers of London has sexy jazz vampires, London Falling has children being sacrificed by getting boiled alive.... Also the reveal in Severed Streets that every single human being is going to go to Hell when they die, there is no escaping it.
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Feb 3, 2015 16:17
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Do the Daniel Faust books get any better? They were pretty highly recommended earlier in the thread but the first few chapters of the first one are pretty awful
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Feb 3, 2015 17:37
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Do the Daniel Faust books get any better? They were pretty highly recommended earlier in the thread but the first few chapters of the first one are pretty awful They remain mediocre. If the idea of oceans 11-esque plans all coming together (cue the Sinatra with the reveal), they're reasonable enough, but the character depth and development are lacking at best. Some things I find particularly jarring, like the Succubus and Faust's interactions.
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Feb 3, 2015 20:29
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Just read through Turncoat. SPOILERIFIC impressions incoming, please let me know if I'm not getting something: There's a murder mystery involving the council. You'd think this a chance to play with the genre a bit, maybe change up the format, but it's a perfectly formulaic Dresden book. I'm pretty sure the bit where they gather forensic evidence doesn't play into the solution at all? The council characters are all so brilliant and well developed that not a single one of them can be lost. Instead, the murderer is the one guy we've never seen before (Was he in some sidequel / comic or whatever?) and who was a dick to Harry from the very start. I kinda had him pegged as a red herring if only because he was such an obvious suspect. (Well, as obvious as someone with no personality or motivation can be) When preparing to reveal this guy as a traitor in the middle of a huge room packed to the brim with innocent bystanders, Harry prepares by not preparing in any way whatsoever so as to make the reveal a surprise to everyone involved. (Correction - he actually reveals the traitors identity to his mentor, one of the most powerful wizards in existence - who in turn does absolutely nothing to prepare for possible resistance). When the traitor manages to kill forty to fifty (!!!) wizards, the notion of "this might be kinda sorta entirely my fault" doesn't even blip on Harry's mental radar. Butcher is kinda terrible at establishing the rules for his world, and the bit where Harry and Luccia discuss why the council doesn't do more to curb abuse of magic is... terrible as usual. The logical leap from "a suggestion we slightly expand the scope in which we police magical abuse - something we already to" to "then we'd have to invade the United States" is baffling. As is the notion that such an inevitable step would break up the council, since members retain loyalty to their nations, but WWII (or any war whatsoever) would not, is... what am I not getting here?
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Feb 3, 2015 20:52
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Velius posted:They remain mediocre. If the idea of oceans 11-esque plans all coming together (cue the Sinatra with the reveal), they're reasonable enough, but the character depth and development are lacking at best. Some things I find particularly jarring, like the Succubus and Faust's interactions. Mostly the actual writing is dire for me so far. The character just kinda pinballs around locations and all the dialog reminds me of the kind of stuff I wrote when I was 16. The talk with the half demon guy right at the start is a good example.
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Feb 3, 2015 21:07
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Xander77 posted:The logical leap from "a suggestion we slightly expand the scope in which we police magical abuse - something we already to" to "then we'd have to invade the United States" is baffling. It's more "If we should have intervened and destroyed Germany in WWII for their unquestionably evil bullshit(which was Harry's idea), then we should have intervened and destroyed America back when the US was doing their unquestionably evil Trail of Tears bullshit" and Harry's response to this was basically "But America's not the worst and I'm an American and of course I wouldn't attack America!". Luccio's point was that most all wizards feel that way about their country and that that's why the White Council doesn't take sides. It would lead to dissension and desertion and the White Council would splinter, and that's a bad outcome for everybody. lovely as it is, the White Council is a major stabilizing influence in the world.
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Feb 3, 2015 21:44
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Xander77 posted:Just read through Turncoat. SPOILERIFIC impressions incoming, please let me know if I'm not getting something: Peabody's been in the background- mentioned, but in the background- a few times. His innocuousness is played up for a reason- bureaucrats are a mild annoyance at best in terms of attention paid. I'm pretty sure accusing the guy in front of the entire senior council minus maybe one or two (I can't remember, it's been a while) was plenty of precaution, and given the mind-bendy nature of the guy's work, Harry couldn't trust that he wouldn't hear him warning others about what he was going to do. Harry can hardly be held responsible for the guy dropping that much freaking mordite in the room. The leap wasn't from "slightly expand the scope in which we police magical abuse" to "invade the US." The leap was from "We should be world police" to "well, then the US would not have survived the mistreatment of the natives, which would have alienated the wizards from that country," and on and on. Wasn't WWII mentioned as being a particular strain, and the Council's neutrality being the only thing that held it together?
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Feb 3, 2015 21:54
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The part about Harry that always bothered me was what a dick he was to everyone who didn't buy that magic is real. He is a part of a huge conspiracy to hide the whole supernatural world and could at any moment convince pretty much anyone beyond any reasonable doubt that magic was real but nah. Look at these sheeple, how can they be so blind! Ugh... Skeptics. Yeah you don't get to have that kind of an attitude when you could just fart out a few fireballs but choose not to.
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Feb 3, 2015 21:58
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apostateCourier posted:Wasn't WWII mentioned as being a particular strain, and the Council's neutrality being the only thing that held it together? I think the Council spent most of WWII trying to stop the Kemmlerites, who'd sided with the Nazis, right?
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Feb 3, 2015 22:44
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apostateCourier posted:I'm pretty sure accusing the guy in front of the entire senior council minus maybe one or two (I can't remember, it's been a while) was plenty of precaution, and given the mind-bendy nature of the guy's work, Harry couldn't trust that he wouldn't hear him warning others about what he was going to do. Harry can hardly be held responsible for the guy dropping that much freaking mordite in the room Dresden had already warned McCoy and a couple of wardens though, but all they did was gather evidence. The sensible thing would have been for them to just ambush Peabody and debate the issue when Peabody was under control somehow. Dresden couldn't have known that Peabody would have a jar of mordite on his desk, but he should have realized that a cornered traitor would do *something* nasty if given half a chance. They picked the worst possible way of revealing him as a traitor, and the only reason to do it like that was to make it more dramatic. General Emergency posted:The part about Harry that always bothered me was what a dick he was to everyone who didn't buy that magic is real. He is a part of a huge conspiracy to hide the whole supernatural world and could at any moment convince pretty much anyone beyond any reasonable doubt that magic was real but nah. Look at these sheeple, how can they be so blind! Ugh... Skeptics. Yeah you don't get to have that kind of an attitude when you could just fart out a few fireballs but choose not to. That always annoyed me as well. Dresden goes to a lot of trouble to "promote wizardry" by appearing on TV, printing pamphlets and advertising as a real wizard, but refuses to do the slightest bit of magic to prove that he's an actual wizard. It's also odd that the council allows him to carry on like that, given that they're rather fond of secrecy.
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Feb 3, 2015 22:50
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I just assume that the council gave him an off-screen warning prior to the start of the books to not use any magic in any way that could reach a large group of people. Or hey, maybe Dresden has tried before but it always gets explained away within a week ex. the toad rain in Summer Knight. Either way it would be nice if he just had a throwaway line explaining why he hasn't just shown people magic in an effort to get them to believe by now.
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Feb 4, 2015 00:55
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sirtommygunn posted:I just assume that the council gave him an off-screen warning prior to the start of the books to not use any magic in any way that could reach a large group of people. Or hey, maybe Dresden has tried before but it always gets explained away within a week ex. the toad rain in Summer Knight. I know on Larry Flower show and all other tv related stuff the reason is he destroys all the cameras by doing something simple with magic. So they can't really record him.
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Feb 4, 2015 00:59
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General Emergency posted:The part about Harry that always bothered me was what a dick he was to everyone who didn't buy that magic is real. He is a part of a huge conspiracy to hide the whole supernatural world and could at any moment convince pretty much anyone beyond any reasonable doubt that magic was real but nah. Look at these sheeple, how can they be so blind! Ugh... Skeptics. Yeah you don't get to have that kind of an attitude when you could just fart out a few fireballs but choose not to. I totally agree. It was especially bad in the first book with Butters. I don't know if it's fair, but it made sense to to me when I learned that Butcher comes from a fundamentalist Christian background. Oh, of course he's able to simultaneously sing the praises of having faith and call people sheep for wanting evidence before they change their beliefs.
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Feb 4, 2015 03:24
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apostateCourier posted:I'm pretty sure accusing the guy in front of the entire senior council minus maybe one or two (I can't remember, it's been a while) was plenty of precaution, and given the mind-bendy nature of the guy's work, Harry couldn't trust that he wouldn't hear him warning others about what he was going to do. Harry can hardly be held responsible for the guy dropping that much freaking mordite in the room. I'm pretty sure accusing him in front of all of assembled wizards was to placate the factions who would think the senior council or the merlin were sweeping it under the rug to save the councils lap dog (morgan). The Merlin even brings it up in the conversation with Harry early in the book that knowing who did it (or didn't in the case of Morgan) means nothing, the proof to all the members of the council that it was someone else had to be irrefutable and that person must be caught or it would mean nothing and Morgan would hang. Given Harry's personality it makes sense he would stand before everyone and produce his evidence at the trial to ensure all knew without a doubt whodunit and why it wasn't Morgan.
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Feb 4, 2015 05:42
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sirtommygunn posted:I just assume that the council gave him an off-screen warning prior to the start of the books to not use any magic in any way that could reach a large group of people. Or hey, maybe Dresden has tried before but it always gets explained away within a week ex. the toad rain in Summer Knight. The way the Loup-garrou evidence was handled suggests that there is a group working behind the scenes to keep the public skeptical.
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Feb 4, 2015 21:19
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Metal Loaf posted:I think the Council spent most of WWII trying to stop the Kemmlerites, who'd sided with the Nazis, right? I think that's got less to do with the fact that they're Nazi allies, than that they're necromancers, which a) the Council will not permit and b) lets the Council rightly claim that they're not taking sides in the mere mortal war, but stomping out a magical evil. Also I think that might have been Kemmler himself they were trying to stop; dude took a lot of killing.
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Feb 4, 2015 22:15
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Kemmler was WW1
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