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mistaya posted:What I don't understand with Thomas is he actually did walk back the creepy rape stuff by having him run the Salon, and then trashed that with the Nagloshi torture scene, for... no real reason I can see. I think the reason why he dropped it is because it became a solved problem. Thomas has a no-cost no-effort solution to being a vampire and it was pretty clear Butcher had no idea what to do in that case.The Magic Threesome Rule is basically a second attempt at forcing Thomas into a status quo that isn't Rape All The Time but doesn't deny the ability to angst about his tragedy.
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Oct 16, 2016 17:02
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And knocked out Proven Guilty. It's another one of my favorites alongside Dead Beat, in large part due to Molly's plot. I don't really like Molly in general, as she seems to be a sinkhole for many of Butcher's worst writing qualities, but she has an interesting role to play in this book except for her damsel in distress bit, and it's a kind of plot I think is long overdue - showing why the Wardens are so brutal enforcing the Laws, and that it's not just the Wardens being magical gestapo. This is the first book in the series to seriously explore the nature of [one kind of] black magic and its effects, both on its victims and on its wielder. No, the Wardens are not perfect and they have throughout the series so far been rather quick to kill someone for murder rather than performing a proper investigation or recognizing self-defense. But this book shows just how dangerous and seductive black magic can be - and just as importantly, why someone would use it with the best of intentions. Beyond that, this book introduces the concept of the Black Council and starts to tie together seeming monsters of the week from previous books, marking the series' progression into a new arc after the interlude and refresher of Dead Beat. This book also features a lot of Michael and Charity, who are two of my favorite supporting characters in the series so extra points for that. In particular, we finally learn Charity's backstory here and everything about her behavior clicks into place.
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Oct 16, 2016 17:33
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Cythereal posted:she has an interesting role to play in this book except for her damsel in distress bit, and it's a kind of plot I think is long overdue - showing why the Wardens are so brutal enforcing the Laws
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Oct 16, 2016 18:03
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Zore posted:Re-read the early books, they were really rapey with people getting hooked on their drug-saliva and prostituting themselves for it. I saw it more as the red court was representing the horrible stuff that comes with addiction and corruption. The people under red court influence were willing to do anything to get their next fix. In the later books we see this kind of thing is endemic to the red court as the vampires themselves stratify based on control and power. Those who can't control their feeding are mocked and despised as we see from conversations with Oriana and the later scenes from Changes.
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Oct 16, 2016 19:10
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Just started reading the Harmony Black books. Digging the first one so far. What I really like about the way Schaefer has handled her to this point is that he doesn't make her sympathetic to Daniel Faust at all. I think there was probably a real temptation there in the Faust books to make her "one of the gang" but he, wisely in my opinion, didn't give in to that. She is a true idealist (although you could say Faust is one too in his own twisted way). The way it is shaking out it seems like her and Daniel will have to come to some kind of détente to combat the enemy but I don't think they'll ever be close to being friendly. Sets up a lot of good tension in the writing.
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Oct 17, 2016 05:42
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mistaya posted:What I don't understand with Thomas is he actually did walk back the creepy rape stuff by having him run the Salon, and then trashed that with the Nagloshi torture scene, for... no real reason I can see.
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Oct 17, 2016 16:51
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I think that post was referring to butcher's decision to regress Thomas being unnecessary, not claiming that there wasn't a good in-universe reason
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Oct 17, 2016 17:51
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Finished White Night, not much to say about it. It's unremarkable filler except for the bits with Lash. Something's occurred to me, though. Butcher's said that the last book in the apocalyptic trilogy will be called Empty Night and we'll find out why exactly that's a curse in the Dresden-verse. Here's the thing: the only people who use "empty night" as a curse are vampires, more specifically the White Court. It is something to think about.
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Oct 17, 2016 18:14
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Cythereal posted:Finished White Night, not much to say about it. It's unremarkable filler except for the bits with Lash. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Empty Night somehow referring to the Oblivion War stuff from Thomas's short story?
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Oct 17, 2016 19:52
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AllTerrineVehicle posted:I think that post was referring to butcher's decision to regress Thomas being unnecessary, not claiming that there wasn't a good in-universe reason Not sure I agree with that personally. I think having Thomas regress helps highlight the immense difficulty for Thomas to keep his feeding to a minimum both from a physical perspective and a mental perspective. White Court differs from Red Court in that they don't attach any special significance to controlling your hunger and in fact Thomas is explicitly criticized for that that by his sister. I actually thought the fact that he was able to control himself that much was a bit glossed over
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Oct 17, 2016 20:21
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vulturesrow posted:Not sure I agree with that personally. I think having Thomas regress helps highlight the immense difficulty for Thomas to keep his feeding to a minimum both from a physical perspective and a mental perspective. White Court differs from Red Court in that they don't attach any special significance to controlling your hunger and in fact Thomas is explicitly criticized for that that by his sister. I actually thought the fact that he was able to control himself that much was a bit glossed over The only reason Thomas is still even alive is because he's Harry's half-brother. Harry himself would have killed Thomas long before now if not for that.
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Oct 17, 2016 20:40
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vulturesrow posted:Not sure I agree with that personally. I think having Thomas regress helps highlight the immense difficulty for Thomas to keep his feeding to a minimum both from a physical perspective and a mental perspective. White Court differs from Red Court in that they don't attach any special significance to controlling your hunger and in fact Thomas is explicitly criticized for that that by his sister. I actually thought the fact that he was able to control himself that much was a bit glossed over I think Thomas regressing like that is weird only because butcher seemingly took pains to get rid of the rapey bits as much as he could, and then walked it back Mostly i just think butcher lacks the finesse to deal with it successfully. Actually just thinking it over now, it seems like there's a bit of incongruity with how the white court houses feed. Whats-his-name was feeding on fear at splattercon, but as far as I know nobody was afraid of him specifically and he was chowing down on the ambient fear. Yet apparently the Raiths need somebody to be lusting after them specifically? Couldn't Thomas potentially hire himself out as protection at one of Marcone's brothels and siphon off some of the ambient emotion?
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Oct 17, 2016 22:20
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Butcher keeps walking it back and forward. Like I said before, Thomas is currently in magical threesome loophole land the Justine's pregnancy is probably a way to give him angst without reverting back to rapetown
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Oct 17, 2016 22:22
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AllTerrineVehicle posted:I think Thomas regressing like that is weird only because butcher seemingly took pains to get rid of the rapey bits as much as he could, and then walked it back Yeah, but he wants hot woman lust, and not middle-aged doughy dude lust.... Well, to guarantee his source of lust he should be running his own brothels, so I'm kind of glad Butcher didn't go down THAT road.
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Oct 17, 2016 22:25
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The salon doesn't have to mean Thomas is a solved problem. he's still involved in the venatori, there's still court politics and his guilt and relationship issues with Harry and Justine. He even had another solution with his open realtionship that still had room for drama.
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Oct 18, 2016 02:13
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vulturesrow posted:Just started reading the Harmony Black books. Digging the first one so far. What I really like about the way Schaefer has handled her to this point is that he doesn't make her sympathetic to Daniel Faust at all. I think there was probably a real temptation there in the Faust books to make her "one of the gang" but he, wisely in my opinion, didn't give in to that. She is a true idealist (although you could say Faust is one too in his own twisted way). The way it is shaking out it seems like her and Daniel will have to come to some kind of détente to combat the enemy but I don't think they'll ever be close to being friendly. Sets up a lot of good tension in the writing. The issue with Harmony is that she knows less about Faust than we do. If you look at the books from her perspective, she's 100% justified in coming at him with everything she's got: all she knows is that he's a murdering thief who hangs out with demons, and the last thing he does is push her into working out an immunity deal for Meadow Brand just before she finds out Meadow's a hardcore serial killer. WE know that everything Faust does has a reason, but from Harmony's view, dude's a loving psychopath. And IIRC, Harmony openly admits she knows she's not even mad at him in specific, she just has a massive hate-on for chaos, and Faust -- to her -- is a living breathing symbol of chaos. She's actually upset when she thinks Faust died in prison, because that offends her sense of justice and she has enough presence of mind to suspect she got played. Considering how she loosens up by the end of her own second book, I'm really hoping for a grudgeful team-up at some point. Hell, I'd be fine with doing it superhero-style, letting them fight first, just because I want to see how Jessie does against Caitlin. (It'll probably be the hackers who end it, considering it's been heavily implied that Kevin and Pixie are friends and WoW guildmates.)
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Oct 18, 2016 04:12
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The salon was never going to be a long-term solution the way things are going. It's a slow gain that requires working a 9-to-5 and keeping a consistent schedule while tying him down to a public location he cannot defend without completely blowing his cover. It's a cover that would work beautifully if Thomas didn't associate with Harry and didn't have all the corresponding obligations and enemies, but he does have them and it just wouldn't work out long term.
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Oct 18, 2016 04:24
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I would have been happy if about midway through, Thomas had slid into the same ballpark as Kincaid. Someone that pops up when it is important, or to do things, but someone that we don't know everything about. I'm not a prude by any means, I just dislike that part of Thomas and some of the Raithy-er things about the book because... well. Bad opinions and bad writing about sex is practically a goddamn cornerstone of fantasy and urban fantasy. It sucks. It sucks when sexual peril is used to show a bad man do bad thing, and it sucks even more when you get the sense the author was hard at the time. How many people went, "Aw, come on, Jim," when Ascher revealed why she broke the laws of magic?
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Oct 18, 2016 04:25
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StonecutterJoe posted:The issue with Harmony is that she knows less about Faust than we do. If you look at the books from her perspective, she's 100% justified in coming at him with everything she's got: all she knows is that he's a murdering thief who hangs out with demons, and the last thing he does is push her into working out an immunity deal for Meadow Brand just before she finds out Meadow's a hardcore serial killer. WE know that everything Faust does has a reason, but from Harmony's view, dude's a loving psychopath. And IIRC, Harmony openly admits she knows she's not even mad at him in specific, she just has a massive hate-on for chaos, and Faust -- to her -- is a living breathing symbol of chaos. She's actually upset when she thinks Faust died in prison, because that offends her sense of justice and she has enough presence of mind to suspect she got played. Harmony Black has a lot in common with Murphy from the Dresden Files, and is absolutely justified for almost the exact same reasons. But Schafer did a lot better in getting that point across than Butcher.
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Oct 18, 2016 04:31
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The big problem with Harmony is the incredibly forced romance, which is why I'm looking forward to book three -- since Schaefer's done everything but say outright that the publisher made him write it in, and that he's been given free reign as of book three to tell the story he wants to tell. So I'm predicting Cody's stuffed in a refrigerator by chapter three. Okay, not "predicting" so much as "hoping".
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Oct 18, 2016 04:58
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StonecutterJoe posted:The big problem with Harmony is the incredibly forced romance, which is why I'm looking forward to book three -- since Schaefer's done everything but say outright that the publisher made him write it in, and that he's been given free reign as of book three to tell the story he wants to tell. So I'm predicting Cody's stuffed in a refrigerator by chapter three. Okay, not "predicting" so much as "hoping". Just curious, where did you find reference to that? I'd love to read what he had to say about it. I have to say though that I don't totally hate the romance piece, I think it helps humanize her a little bit, but I wouldn't be upset if he Cody gets the axe, literally, either.
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Oct 18, 2016 06:30
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Vateke posted:Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Empty Night somehow referring to the Oblivion War stuff from Thomas's short story? I thought Jim said he wasn't going to bring that into the main series, if even write about it at all. I figure something bad's going to happen to ......Mab......, possibly even Nemesis infection. After all, [they] said that "the stars will fall from the sky ere Mab fulfills not her word". Seems like a good premise for Empty Night to mee.
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Oct 18, 2016 08:38
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Vicissitude posted:I thought Jim said he wasn't going to bring that into the main series, if even write about it at all. http://dresdenfiles.wikia.com/wiki/Oblivion_War
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Oct 18, 2016 08:52
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Well, there you go, then  But yeah, I thought I read once that it was only going to be tangential to the main book series and never become a focus. Mentioned here and there but never the plot for a book. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it'll be part of the BAT at the end.
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Oct 18, 2016 09:13
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I'm interested in the Dresden Files. However, I'm not sure how I want to read them. Usually I like to read before bed on my laptop, but I've also been dabbling with audiobooks at work recently. I'm not sure what it is, but I have a hard time dealing with complicated books in an audio format. For instance I got lost pretty quick trying to listen to Use of Weapons by Banks, however I managed to listen to Blindsight(although the writing style here was difficult too, but I managed to persevere through it and enjoyed it overall). So I guess I'm asking if these books are pretty accessible as audio books? With regular books you can always just easily skip back to reread or randomly stop to analyze but I feel like I'm forced to keep up playing an audiobook, so I'd like to make sure the next audiobook I try is fairly simple to follow.
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Oct 18, 2016 12:54
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Yeah, there's no heavy lifting from an intellectual standpoint. I've never listened, but the consensus of the thread seems to be that the audiobook versions are really well done.
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Oct 18, 2016 13:18
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vulturesrow posted:Just curious, where did you find reference to that? I'd love to read what he had to say about it. I have to say though that I don't totally hate the romance piece, I think it helps humanize her a little bit, but I wouldn't be upset if he Cody gets the axe, literally, either. There was a blog/fb post from a few months ago, when he was writing book three. I'll have to find it, but iirc he went from acknowledging that a lot of readers really hate Cody, to an oblique comment about how the publisher has given him free reign over the storyline (implying, at least how I read it, that he was pretty much told to shoehorn a romance in there.) I don't object to Harmony having a romance (and Schaefer's getting a little better at writing them -- the Revanche books were a huge improvement there, and the Daniel/Caitlin relationship is a lot less lulzy than it was in the early Faust books), but Cody just doesn't bring anything to the table beyond being Deputy Beefcake. Hell, I'd rather see her hook up with Fontaine, though there's no way to make that not-creepy given the guy wears dead bodies as suits. (Also, making a bet, based on Castle Doctrine: what brings Faust and Harmony back together won't be the Enemy, at least at first. Nadine's gonna plan something twisted and sadistic, because she's all butthurt about her kid being humiliated, Daniel's going to find out about it, and try to save Harmony's life. Which would be a great way to build detente between them and show Harmony that Daniel isn't all that bad. Well, he is, but not that bad.)
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Oct 18, 2016 13:19
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flosofl posted:Yeah, there's no heavy lifting from an intellectual standpoint. I caught up using the audiobooks and they're super-good, to this I will attest. James Marsters, motherfuckers!
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Oct 18, 2016 13:24
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Dresden is just good fun that you really don't need to pay attention to that much. The pacing is good, the prose is smooth, and the voice acting is lovely. Maybe start with Grave Peril or Summer Knight, depending on how much an audiobook costs you. If you've got a membership at a local library and Overdrive, you can probably listen to a number of the books for free.
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Oct 18, 2016 14:13
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Deathlove posted:I caught up using the audiobooks and they're super-good, to this I will attest. James Marsters, motherfuckers! Some of them are much better than others though. Marsters sounds like he's bored out of his mind in some of them, while others he gets a fair bit more animated in his reading. Grave Peril and some stretches of Summer Knight are the worst. Lip smacking and nose-breathing like a presidential debate.
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Oct 18, 2016 14:15
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I just finished the latest Verus book and ugh April can't come soon enough
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Oct 18, 2016 17:59
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And done with Small Favor. This is another book I've recommended to people potentially interested in the series, as it's another one to feature most of the major players in the Dresden Files. Not my favorite in the series by any means, but not bad. Also not a terribly important book plot-wise, the only real notable events being Michael's retirement and the introduction of Uriel. Also the first appearance of Demonreach, though it doesn't receive its name, characterization, or powers yet.
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Oct 19, 2016 03:51
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So I was thinking about the big bad apocalyptic thing that happens every couple thousand years. The only thing really big that comes to mind is that Christ was born around two thousand years ago. Maybe it's a cycle where God takes mortal form? Would explain a few things.
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Oct 19, 2016 12:58
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Durendal posted:So I was thinking about the big bad apocalyptic thing that happens every couple thousand years. The only thing really big that comes to mind is that Christ was born around two thousand years ago. Maybe it's a cycle where God takes mortal form? Would explain a few things. Or something else comes, and God took mortal form just to stop it. Maybe it's a bit like Sandman Slim where God stole the universe from the Old Ones and they periodically come knocking because they want it back.
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Oct 19, 2016 17:25
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I imagine it will be based mainly on Christian eschatology since that's the background Butcher's from.
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Oct 19, 2016 21:23
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Wheat Loaf posted:I imagine it will be based mainly on Christian eschatology since that's the background Butcher's from. I don't think you can pull a compelling christian eschatology story because Jesus is completely OP, no balance, no tension. Unless the writer goes for a Rocky narrative.
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Oct 20, 2016 02:51
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Either way, it sounds like there's going to be some long lasting fallout from it. I mean, those 30 pieces of silver have been causing a lot of problems ever since Jesus died...
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Oct 20, 2016 14:45
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Every time I read this I pick up nuances I missed beforeHarry to Nicodemus, pre-Changes posted:“You and I,” I said quietly, “are both willing to give things up to reach our goals.” And of course there's Nicodemus sacrificing his daughter as a step towards... Killing the White God? Escaping predestination? Stopping Nemesis? in Skin Game
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Oct 21, 2016 14:24
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tentacles posted:Every time I read this I pick up nuances I missed before I think this big thing that he's foreshadowing is more like a rebalancing of power. He implies he wasn't ready the last time it happened, but this time he will be with the things he's stolen from the vault. I think it's going to be like Halloween writ large, with mantles of power that are normally untouchable getting passed around.
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Oct 21, 2016 22:53
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I didn't think a short-story anthology called "Full Metal Magic" could actually make me introspective about a goddamn thing, but there it is, breeding deeper thoughts than it deserves. It's a collection of stories from a dozen indie urban-fantasy writers. It's largely dogshit. In trying to figure out why, I realized the common theme: half of these people are telling the exact same loving story. Insofar as I can tell, they read one Dresden novel, watched Supernatural and/or Buffy, and decided to write UF. Half the stories in this book could literally be about the same faceless dude: he's a Joss Whedon wisecracking badass mage with a sexy vampire or werewolf girlfriend who he has lots of hot sex with (and he has to tell you just how amazingly hot the sex is, god, you wouldn't believe the hot sex this guy has). And the wisecracks aren't funny, and the sex isn't hot. It's like they all bought an urban fantasy template and played Madlibs with it. "SCOWLY GUY meets a MONSTER from CLASSIC MYTHOLOGY, and makes a DEADPAN QUIP before killing it with MAGIC MACGUFFIN." That said, I liked Pippa Dacosta's story enough to check out more of her books, despite pinging every one of the above points. She's actually got good writing chops. (As opposed to some of the contributors, like "Al K. Line," who is the poster child for why people shouldn't self-publish. I've read better stories from high-schoolers. It's embarassingly bad.) I picked it up for the new Faust story, because I'm a Schaefer fanboy. Worth the 99 cents. And way, way better than his collaborative story in Urban Allies, which kinda sucked. It's a flashback story about the heist-gone-bad that happened before the first book, set into a narrative about Faust driving a dumbfuck heroin dealer out into the desert to kill him, and it's short but a lot of fun. Faust at Peak rear end in a top hat levels. My one complaint is that it introduces a really cool new character only to kill them off (not a spoiler, it's established that he was the only one who walked away from that heist), and they would have made a great addition to the regular cast. Then again, it's Schaefer, so this is probably a setup for their return five books from now.
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Oct 22, 2016 03:55
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