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Darkrenown posted:Actually, why does Bianca have such a killboner? If I remember right she thinks Harry killed one of her workers, but why would a rather old vampire care so much about a human - especially when it risks getting into a fight with the White Council which is at this point the undisputed magical heavyweight champion of the world? Now the Red Court are planning to challenge this, but if she knows about the coming war it's all the more reason not to kick it off early and if she doesn't know about it then why is the risking starting something with the Council? I think the implication in Storm Front and Grave peril was that the confrontation between them in book 1 was lingering. She held a grudge or Harry had seen through her pretenses or something. The plot of Grave Peril just being about bait for creating an excuse for war is better than reconciling anything from the first book with later stuff.
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Oct 9, 2016 23:01
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Grave Peril shows you that Bianca explicitly cared for Rachel.
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Oct 10, 2016 00:25
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Rygar201 posted:Grave Peril shows you that Bianca explicitly cared for Rachel. Or whatever her name was.
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Oct 10, 2016 00:37
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Considering Bianca's elevation in the court, I think that even with the Accords in place there's a lot that can be done to hedge her bets about Dresden's fate. The yuppie vamp girl getting burned by Michael's faith could be construed as an assault on the vampires, or perhaps Harry overindulged and just got careless and wandered into a restricted area and thus violated his guest rights. A bit of weregild for the "unfortunate accident" or an "overzealous servant" would probably smooth things over, considering Harry's then-status as the Council's pain in the rear end. The Merlin would have probably been glad about that before the war kicked off.
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Oct 10, 2016 04:39
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Darkrenown posted:Actually, why does Bianca have such a killboner? If I remember right she thinks Harry killed one of her workers, but why would a rather old vampire care so much about a human - especially when it risks getting into a fight with the White Council which is at this point the undisputed magical heavyweight champion of the world? Now the Red Court are planning to challenge this, but if she knows about the coming war it's all the more reason not to kick it off early and if she doesn't know about it then why is the risking starting something with the Council? Couple of reasons. The first and most obvious is that Bianca cared about the minion that Harry "caused" her to kill. I took it to be implied that Bianca was grooming her to take up the fangs or something. She might have also been Bianca's lover, or a favored pet. Whatever. Something. The second is that he, a human, slapped her across the face with a ray of sunshine. In her house. As a well-to-do vampire on the rise, she couldn't ignore that. The other vampires would make fun of her. The third is... well. Look at Bianca's character. She was very confident, pretty, polished, refined. She lived in a very nice house, ran a business, etc. Not only did Harry defy and disrespect her, but he also shredded her flesh mask. He made her an ugly monster that did an ugly thing, and there was nothing she could do about it. There are other, less personal reasons. She no doubt had plans for Chicago. Harry thwarts plans in Chicago. Harry could inform the White Council of her movements. Harry has contact with a known Knight of the Cross. Plus, Bianca was close to Ortega. She probably knew things were kicking off soon-ish, and maybe she wanted to make a name for herself. It might even be something Ortega had encouraged just to see how the wizards would react. In hindsight, Grave Peril is kind of funny. Both Harry and Bianca make a couple assumptions that come back and bite them on the rear end, hard.
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Oct 10, 2016 05:29
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Didn't Ortega at one point specifically call out that the reds wanted to bide their time, but Bianca and others were impatient and trying to escalate? She wanted a war, and Harry is predictable. The fact that he saw her in an ugly way doing ugly things, and that her pet died "because" of him is just a bonus.
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Oct 10, 2016 06:07
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I think the reds were always going to go to war. They were just waiting until their power had built up enough. But there were two factions, remember. When the opportunity came to react to Harry's slight against them, they retaliated hard. It could very well be that the Red King himself was in one of his more manic junkie moments and decided to launch an attack soon after instead of biding his time, or maybe the immediate response faction won out over the patient side of things.
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Oct 10, 2016 07:35
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:The second is that he, a human, slapped her across the face with a ray of sunshine. In her house. As a well-to-do vampire on the rise, she couldn't ignore that. The other vampires would make fun of her. Well at that point she was attacking a wizard of the white council already, which is a big step. Still, several of the mentioned points make sense. I should re-read these..
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Oct 10, 2016 13:04
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Darkrenown posted:Well at that point she was attacking a wizard of the white council already, which is a big step. Still, several of the mentioned points make sense. I should re-read these.. You ever know someone who no matter how bad they gently caress up, it is always someone else's fault? That is basically Bianca. Harry "made" her kill her minion, Harry "made" her attack him, etc.
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Oct 10, 2016 14:50
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Vicissitude posted:The yuppie vamp girl getting burned by Michael's faith could be construed as an assault on the vampires, or perhaps Harry overindulged and just got careless and wandered into a restricted area and thus violated his guest rights. These two though should be covered under the Accords. Michael made no aggressive move, the vampire grabbed him and got hurt. I'm sure there's some other creature somewhere that's dangerous if you grab it, Mab probably rightly assumes it's your own dumbass fault for grabbing someone without their permission and getting hurt. Next time don't grab people willy nilly. Same with the wandering around, if you don't want them going there, put up a sign or a rope. Otherwise you invited them in, it's on you to make sure they don't go somewhere they're not supposed to. It just seems like what NerdyMcNerdNerd said, a couple of misunderstandings and poor judgement calls that led to poo poo kicking off.
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Oct 10, 2016 19:37
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Russad posted:Didn't Ortega at one point specifically call out that the reds wanted to bide their time, but Bianca and others were impatient and trying to escalate? Ortega was there. Based on the pecking order, he could have stopped her, or persuaded her that it wasn't the right time. At the same time, the White Council wasn't at all prepared for war. They weren't prepared for much of anything, and had a somewhat insular reputation. He probably thought it wouldn't escalate to the point that it did, like Bianca likely assumed Dresden had nowhere near the power that he did. They even offered Dresden a chance to walk away at the end, no harm, no foul. It was a bunch of political posturing and slights meant to humiliate Dresden, and make the Council look bad. I could just be giving Butcher a lot more credit than he deserves, but he puts a lot of effort into his plot and setting up why people do the things they do.
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Oct 10, 2016 22:06
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I don't know, Butcher made it clear in Storm Front that when Dresden hit her with sunlight and took her mask from her it fundamentally shook her, adding onto the fact that that caused her weakness to the point to kill someone she valued, and the final parting words of a slip of paper with "revenge" on it. She bided her time and let that hatred grow until she was in a position to kill Harry without consequences, that's why she made him break the accords by saving Lydia. "He died doing the right thing"
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Oct 10, 2016 23:11
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Wasn't so keen on Johnny Alucard compared with the previous three. Wasn't bad or anything, just didn't enjoy it as much. It will be interesting to see how book five concludes the series, though. I reckon it'll be the reborn Dracula, having gone to all that trouble to come back from un-death and rebuild his empire at the end of history, losing all his money when the banks go under in 2008. 
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Oct 10, 2016 23:50
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Speaking of vampire books, whatever happened to the Chris Cséjthe (Half/Life) series? The last book came out 2007 and the writer was apparently working on a final one. William Mark Simmons' webpages looks like a crazy man's from 1990 though 
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Oct 11, 2016 01:37
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Finally knocked out the next in my big re-read of the series, Death Masks. I think it's still a good book, but looking back I don't know if I'm all that fond of Nicodemus as a villain. He has the same polite, affable evil gig as Marcone, and less to show for it despite his power. My take on him from the later books he appears in is that Nicodemus looks like a viable big bad evil guy for the series, and in another series probably would be the guy behind everything, but despite his power and what he is Nicodemus in the Dresden Files is actually a middling threat, one repeatedly played hard by the real super duper bad guys and he later seems to confused and embarrassed to realize that no, he's just a recurring middleweight villain rather than the arch-villain of the series. Shiro is a great character and I regret that he's a one-book wonder, but part of what makes him a great character is why he's also only in this book. The Archive/Ivy is also a recurring character I'm fond of, and she gets her start here. One thing sticks out to me from knowing the rest of the series: mordite. It's described as congealed anti-life, and it comes from Outside. Knowing what a big deal Outside becomes later in the series, I'm wondering if its use by the Archive here isn't significant - and that Hades has a crown made of it.
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Oct 11, 2016 03:25
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I like that Nicodemus basically has a reverse villain buildup. He starts off as this terrifying super-beast and every successive book makes him more and more pathetic until you reach Skin Game where he's getting played by everyone involved, basically is a giant fuckup and looks like a worthless loser who gets owned by a nerd pretending to be a Jedi. Butcher really seem to be building up the idea that Nicodemus's eventual defeat won't be death (which honestly would have happened already) but redemption and part of that is breaking him down from mythological superbeast to a kind of sad pathetic guy who got used by the monster inside of him and thinks he's bigger than he is.
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Oct 11, 2016 03:28
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Cythereal posted:Finally knocked out the next in my big re-read of the series, Death Masks. I think it's still a good book, but looking back I don't know if I'm all that fond of Nicodemus as a villain. He has the same polite, affable evil gig as Marcone, and less to show for it despite his power. My take on him from the later books he appears in is that Nicodemus looks like a viable big bad evil guy for the series, and in another series probably would be the guy behind everything, but despite his power and what he is Nicodemus in the Dresden Files is actually a middling threat, one repeatedly played hard by the real super duper bad guys and he later seems to confused and embarrassed to realize that no, he's just a recurring middleweight villain rather than the arch-villain of the series. I dunno, I don't think it's a factor of him being a "middling threat" so much as he is legitimately getting broken down and gradually weakened over the course of the series. In Death Mask, he's only stopped more than defeated, and he manages to kill his arch nemesis and take steps to corrupt the guy who stopped him that time. Second time out, the only reason he completely loses is because he had no idea Dresden had overcome Lasciel's shadow (which everybody up till then figured was impossible) and still, takes a Knight of the Cross out of the picture. It's only in Skin Games that he really gets taken hard, and well duh, he's up against MAB (with backup from Uriel, Marcone, and possibly the Archive and Hades) at that point. You walk into a cunning trap that a being of equal power, influence, and cunning (but more allies) has had a good while to prepare for you and you are in general going to get your clock cleaned. Wouldn't surprise me if Mab had been discretely cutting at his power base or even just building his stress up well before the novel started too; she seems like the type to both enjoy gradually tormenting an enemy further and further, and pragmatic enough to bleed a target before going in for a solid blow. Even then, he STILL wrecks Fidelacchius (lightsaber recovery not expected), messes up Murphy, drat near kills off Michael's family, and gets away with the Holy Grail. I think he's demonstrated he is plenty dangerous in the series given he's managed some very permanent harms to Dresden and company, and he shows a gift for getting at least partial victory from the jaws of defeat. He's just starting to run into stronger opposition who are powerful enough to start causing him permanent harm during their clashes as well.
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Oct 11, 2016 04:59
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MadDogMike posted:I think he's demonstrated he is plenty dangerous in the series given he's managed some very permanent harms to Dresden and company, and he shows a gift for getting at least partial victory from the jaws of defeat. Even with Harry finally doing some serious strategic pre-planning things still almost went bad for everyone.
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Oct 11, 2016 05:16
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Dresden sort of has his thing for derailing evil in surprising ways. I'd been going through skin game again this weekend (with Marsters masterful narration as I road tripped) and the scene where Uriel confronts Nicodemus is still one of my favorite in the series. Micheal in full paladin glory is so satisfying. The small exchange where Micheal calls Uriel his friend and the affect on the Arch Angel of feeling the love of such a humble man. That exchange is one of the most beautiful of the series to me. And really, once that happened Nic should have just packed up, but he had to much hubris. Other things that occurred to me. In Harry's first dream I think all the multitude of slightly am different Harry's are him getting the first hints of what's coming for Mirror Mirror. And, purely speculation; Near the end of the series Harry, rather than loving with temporal magic like Merlin or the Gatekeeper, will find a way to use the actions of Paralell Harry's to work together to cast a spell that affects them all into being able to all simultaneously act in all the realities. In the moment of need there will be a Harry at everywhere he needs to be, and each will affect all the other worlds. And much like Merlins creation of the Well by creating a spell across great spans of time, Harry will be able to cast a much greater spell by coordinating at different locations across different dimensions.
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Oct 11, 2016 05:21
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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
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Oct 11, 2016 13:15
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I kind of dig Nicodemus. I feel like he's kind of a subversion of the usual blackhat mastermind type of villain, in that he actually has legitimate motivation. He seems like a real person with real objectives, which is a lot more intriguing than a "I do evil things because I am a demon, check out my bitchin' mustache" kind of character. I also like that even though Nic's got the juice, he's still shown to be very much a mortal thing that can be killed. Those kinds of characters are irritating as hell when nobody can even dent them. Skin Game was kind of neat for how you got to see Nic. You see him lose something important and human. You see his "faith" get tested. You see him fail. Going to guess that he's being set up for a sympathetic death, maybe one of those things where he realizes he's been played by someone to pursue what he thought was a noble goal.
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Oct 11, 2016 14:40
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Darkrenown posted:Actually, why does Bianca have such a killboner? If I remember right she thinks Harry killed one of her workers, but why would a rather old vampire care so much about a human - especially when it risks getting into a fight with the White Council which is at this point the undisputed magical heavyweight champion of the world? Now the Red Court are planning to challenge this, but if she knows about the coming war it's all the more reason not to kick it off early and if she doesn't know about it then why is the risking starting something with the Council? I'm pretty sure Dresden attacked her with that light handkerchief too.
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Oct 11, 2016 15:08
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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 Just got around to reading the Daniel Faust series thanks to the recommendations in this thread and I absolutely love them. Going to have to read those Harmony Black books now. NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:I kind of dig Nicodemus. I feel like he's kind of a subversion of the usual blackhat mastermind type of villain, in that he actually has legitimate motivation. He seems like a real person with real objectives, which is a lot more intriguing than a "I do evil things because I am a demon, check out my bitchin' mustache" kind of character. I also like that even though Nic's got the juice, he's still shown to be very much a mortal thing that can be killed. Those kinds of characters are irritating as hell when nobody can even dent them. Yeah this is perfectly said. I really think Nicodemus is one of the best written characters in the series, not just villains. That said, its pretty cool how Butcher's writing gets stronger and stronger as the series goes along and how he fleshes out the characters which are rather flat early on.
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Oct 12, 2016 07:44
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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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Azuth0667 posted:I'm pretty sure Dresden attacked her with that light handkerchief too. I think it was also a big sign of weakness, in changes we learn that vamps that can not control their blood lust are trash. So not only did he wound her, make her kill her lover but he also embarrassed her in front of her entire court. The resentment led to bianca holding her lovers spirit there which drove Bianca mad.
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Oct 12, 2016 16:05
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When is the next book coming out? I just read all the Bigfoot stuff and I'm ready for some more Dresden but I feel like I finished the previous one years ago.
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Oct 12, 2016 16:50
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Daric posted:When is the next book coming out? I just read all the Bigfoot stuff and I'm ready for some more Dresden but I feel like I finished the previous one years ago. Well, this thread was posted when the last book came out and that was in 2014. Can't be long now, maybe summer of 2017, spring of 2018.  Rivers of London has been holding me over in the mean time. Action scenes aren't as good as Butcher's, but the writing in general is pretty good. Audio version is high quality. If I got a discount for buying the print after buying the audio, I probably would have gotten both. Shame that the US title and cover are so stupid looking. I had to check and make sure I was buying Rivers of London, and not some lovely thriller.
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Oct 12, 2016 17:22
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So. Blood Rites. It's a White Court book, and that means it's bad. Butcher, in my opinion, falls flat on his face and is just embarrassing when he tries to write about anything involving sex and sexuality. And here we are with a book focused on succubus/incubus stuff. Parts of the book aren't bad - Kincaid and Ebenezar get some neat parts, Inari is an interesting one-shot character aside from the part where a 15-year-old tries to boink Harry, and it's the introduction of Mouse - but the rest of the book is awful. I'm not a fan of Thomas in general, and everything to do with Murphy in this book - which seems to be Butcher remembering that Murphy's a woman and rather dramatically overreacting to having written her well before - is godawful and best forgotten about. It's a fairly important book to know the events of (Lara taking over the White Court, Thomas' relation to Harry, the reveals about Ebenezar and Harry's mom), but in its own right Blood Rites sits at the bottom of the Dresden Files so far in my re-read.
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Oct 12, 2016 18:07
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Well, this thread was posted when the last book came out and that was in 2014. Can't be long now, maybe summer of 2017, spring of 2018.
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Oct 12, 2016 18:53
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Cythereal posted:So. Blood Rites. It's a White Court book, and that means it's bad. Butcher, in my opinion, falls flat on his face and is just embarrassing when he tries to write about anything involving sex and sexuality. And here we are with a book focused on succubus/incubus stuff. Parts of the book aren't bad - Kincaid and Ebenezar get some neat parts, Inari is an interesting one-shot character aside from the part where a 15-year-old tries to boink Harry, and it's the introduction of Mouse - but the rest of the book is awful. I'm not a fan of Thomas in general, and everything to do with Murphy in this book - which seems to be Butcher remembering that Murphy's a woman and rather dramatically overreacting to having written her well before - is godawful and best forgotten about. I honestly think Blood Rites is the second worst book in the series, just barely beating out Fool Moon. Barely. It does, however, have the best opening line of the series. Too bad it's all downhill from there.
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Oct 12, 2016 19:42
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ConfusedUs posted:I honestly think Blood Rites is the second worst book in the series, just barely beating out Fool Moon. Barely. I like Fool Moon okay. It's serviceable filler and not actively bad like Blood Rites.
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Oct 12, 2016 22:07
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I don't hate Blood Rites, but it begins the unfortunate foray into the uncomfortable territory of Wraith House. Butcher could have replaced the porn set plot with, I dunno. A play. Or a movie. It would have been a lot less awkward for everybody. The best scene of the book was probably the first one. What does Blood Rites even set up? He-Who-Walks says hi, Mouse and Thomas appear, and Laura ascends to power. I feel like I'm missing stuff, but I'm drawing a blank. I guess... bloodline magic and unusual death curses? Would probably pick Fool Moon over Blood Rites, maybe Storm Front. The writing is better in Blood Rites, but everything that happens in the other two books is much more interesting.
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Oct 12, 2016 22:30
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:What does Blood Rites even set up? He-Who-Walks says hi, Mouse and Thomas appear, and Laura ascends to power. I feel like I'm missing stuff, but I'm drawing a blank. I guess... bloodline magic and unusual death curses? Bit of exploration of the vampiric Courts beyond their brief introduction in Grave Peril?
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Oct 12, 2016 22:37
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Blood Rites established that Thomas is Harry's brother and how Harry's mother died which is pretty significant. Edit: Also the whole "Harry gets his hand burned" thing.
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Oct 12, 2016 22:38
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I honestly forgot the hand thing was even in Blood Rites. I thought it was in something else.
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Oct 12, 2016 22:43
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It also has the best opening line and the second best line in the series: "For my next trick: anvils!" It's a crap book, though.
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Oct 13, 2016 01:20
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Harry fucks up his hand. He learns that Thomas is his brother. Introduction of Mouse. Harry learns Ebenezar is the Blackstaff. Harry specifically makes an enemy out of Mavra. Kincaid is revealed as more than just a human mercenary. IIRC, Harry learns that Lash has given him access to Hellfire. There's a lot of plot points in Blood Rites even without getting hard into the Raiths and the White Court.
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Oct 13, 2016 01:51
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StonecutterJoe posted: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. 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.
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Oct 13, 2016 03:00
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it was the start of KinPhy
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Oct 13, 2016 04:27
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The best thing about Blood rites were the poo-flinging demon gorillas who combine Voltron style into a super gorilla. We need more of these rather than super porn vampire actresses. Well ok, maybe the gorillas weren't exactly the only good thing about the book but it's pretty close.
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Oct 13, 2016 15:06
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