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immoral_ posted:It was SiFi, until they renamed themselves. No, it was Sci Fi Channel, then Sci Fi, then they changed it to SyFy. It was never SiFi.
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Mar 7, 2017 17:27
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immoral_ posted:It was SiFi, until they renamed themselves. Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi Channel and Sci Fi) - per wikipedia
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Mar 7, 2017 17:49
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It's a shame nobody in their marketing department was slick enough to reference that into the way that word is used in Asimov's Caves of Steel.
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Mar 7, 2017 22:18
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Unrelated to Dresden's ride into the eye of the necromantic maelstrom. OR IS IT
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Mar 13, 2017 14:45
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Has anyone read the new mercy Thompson book? I loved the earlier ones but was less enthusiastic about the last few. Is it worth getting?
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Mar 13, 2017 20:52
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I liked it, but I always look forward to the Mercy Thompson stuff. This one heavily involves vampires, so maybe that will sway you one way or another. Spoiler for something revealed a quarter of the way through the novel: The setting shifts to Europe, specifically Italy and Prague, and we get to see a bit of the politics of continental vampires and werewolves, who - if you remember - don't report to the Marrok.
Wizchine fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 22:16
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tessiebee posted:Has anyone read the new mercy Thompson book? I loved the earlier ones but was less enthusiastic about the last few. Is it worth getting? It's enjoyable if you like the series, but it's the first time I've been able to say unequivocally, "Hey, there's some real power creep here."
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Mar 14, 2017 00:22
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torgeaux posted:It's enjoyable if you like the series, but it's the first time I've been able to say unequivocally, "Hey, there's some real power creep here." I think I know what you are talking about, but not sure. Was it: Adam being recognized a "the 4th most capable werewolf in unarmed combat in the New World" (behind The Marrok, Charles, and Asil I'm imagining) and the way he mopped the floor with the master vampire he fought? Or was it this whole "agent of chaos" idea that was played up for Mercy being the daughter of Coyote? Or something else like her power over the dead? Wizchine fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Mar 14, 2017 |
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Mar 14, 2017 00:35
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Wizchine posted:I think I know what you are talking about, but not sure. Was it: Adam being recognized a "the 4th most capable werewolf in unarmed combat in the New World" (behind The Marrok, Charles, and Asil I'm imagining) and the way he mopped the floor with the master vampire he fought? Or was it this whole "agent of chaos" idea that was played up for Mercy being the daughter of Coyote? Or something else like her power over the dead? No, that's been setup earlier that he was always one of the top. It was the Mercy aspect, especially her greater ability to control ghosts, not just talk to them or see them. Combined with the whole being more like Coyote than coyote, and it's a step up.
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Mar 14, 2017 01:23
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torgeaux posted:No, that's been setup earlier that he was always one of the top. It was the Mercy aspect, especially her greater ability to control ghosts, not just talk to them or see them. Combined with the whole being more like Coyote than coyote, and it's a step up. Got it. The only thing I hope regarding that is that it was a temporary side effect of interacting with the Golem. But even if it were, I can see that power being rejuvenated in some future plot point. Mercy being the daughter of Coyote leaves the door open for a lot of power creep should Briggs be so inclined.
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Mar 14, 2017 01:59
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Thanks everyone! I'll give it a bash x
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Mar 14, 2017 18:54
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Just finished Stiletto. I enjoyed it, but Odette and Felicity had zero agency in the ending, which kinda takes away from the strong female protagonist thing the books have had going on.
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Mar 14, 2017 23:12
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That book really should have been called Pawn and I think that was part of the theme of the book.
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Mar 16, 2017 01:11
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Azuth0667 posted:That book really should have been called Pawn and I think that was part of the theme of the book. It was a theme, yeah, and it puts a lot more of Rook into perspective, but it makes for a kinda terrible protagonist. Still enjoyable, though.
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Mar 16, 2017 03:49
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For the sequel, I want more POV from Myfawny engaging in inter-departmental passive aggressive grudge matches with Bishop Atariwalla. (I have no idea how to spell his name and my google-fu failed to find a character list  )
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Mar 16, 2017 05:26
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I still haven't read Stiletto even though it's been out for so long. I got the first one when I was in Canada and it's a different size and shape from the one I can get here in Britain, so I'm waiting for the North American paperback release so I can get one that will sit neatly next to book one on my bookshelf.
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Mar 16, 2017 10:21
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Get the audiobooks. Moira Quirk narrates Stilleto, which may or may not mean anything to you depending on how many Nickelodeon cartoons you watched in the 1990s. Susan Duerden narrates The Rook, and she's slightly more obscure depending on how many videogames you play.
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Mar 16, 2017 13:17
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I was into Cartoon Network and Disney cartoons in the 1990s. Gargoyles is how I knew about Star Trek actors long before I ever watched any Star Trek.  Gargoyles - best urban fantasy cartoon? It's got to be either that or The Real Ghostbusters.
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Mar 16, 2017 14:53
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Wheat Loaf posted:I was into Cartoon Network and Disney cartoons in the 1990s. Gargoyles is how I knew about Star Trek actors long before I ever watched any Star Trek. Fox's Peter Pan and the Pirates was pretty good as well. Even if it wasn't strictly urban fantasy in every episode.
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Mar 16, 2017 15:22
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I'd have to give the win to Gargoyles. The writing, the animation, the voice acting were all top notch and still hold up. To me at least. I've watched them recently. Sometimes it was a little dumbed down for kids, but other times it dealt with surprisingly mature themes. Even the heavily edited gun violence episode had long-lasting consequences for the rest of the series (Eliza was on crutches for a while and Broadway goes buck wild whenever he sees someone with a gun, for instance).
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Mar 17, 2017 09:35
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Just finished listening to The Hanging Tree. I liked it and it has some issues but then I've felt the same way about the entire series. It's an enjoyable listen while walking the dog. Someone remind me, why is Mr. Punch important to the story again? The rest of the books have kinda merged together in my head.
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Mar 22, 2017 01:55
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Xtanstic posted:Just finished listening to The Hanging Tree. I liked it and it has some issues but then I've felt the same way about the entire series. It's an enjoyable listen while walking the dog. Someone remind me, why is Mr. Punch important to the story again? The rest of the books have kinda merged together in my head. Mr. Punch is the one who possessed Leslie and melted her face.
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Mar 22, 2017 02:11
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ImpAtom posted:Mr. Punch is the one who possessed Leslie and melted her face. Also He isn't dead and one day Peter is going to have to free him again. $5 says freeing Mr. Punch is going to take Leslie's magic away.
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Mar 22, 2017 19:29
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New Harmony Black book tomorrow (and another in October if Amazon is to be believed!). And Schaefer posted some teasers for the next Faust novel (due in June); spoiler tags because there's some stuff from the last novel:quote:Plot-wise...well, I'll drop a couple of hints. First -- being vague for anyone who hasn't read A Plain-Dealing Villain yet -- the issue regarding Nadine's accusations about Caitlin, and the envelope she gave to Daniel, will 100% definitively be addressed and resolved. This is very much a Daniel-and-Caitlin story from start to finish.
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Mar 27, 2017 20:32
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Ornamented Death posted:New Harmony Black book tomorrow (and another in October if Amazon is to be believed!). And Schaefer posted some teasers for the next Faust novel (due in June); spoiler tags because there's some stuff from the last novel: I need this immediately.
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Mar 28, 2017 02:26
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Finished Glass Predator, the new Harmony Black book. In the space of three books, the series has morphed from "demon hunters hunt the monster of the week" to "conspiracy/spy thriller with magic in it," and I would have been happy with the former but this is even better. The romance angle is kicked to the curb where it belongs "gently caress you, Cody.", Harmony continues to become a more likeable protagonist (and gets a massive personal problem to wrestle with), and Jessie is hilarious. The overlaps with the Faust series are fun, too, like finding out what the demons-only meeting at the start of Castle Doctrine was about. And I can't wait to see Faust's reaction when he finds out Harmony "borrowed" his car. The Revanche nods are in there, too, and stuff is definitely escalating. Mari Renault has come back to life and somebody gave her a badge and a gun oh jesus why would you do that why would anyone do that. And the Owl graffiti has gone viral. At this point we've gotta be headed for a Mari/Owl spinoff. Or I just really really want there to be one.
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Apr 2, 2017 16:27
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StonecutterJoe posted:The Revanche nods are in there, too, and stuff is definitely escalating. Mari Renault has come back to life and somebody gave her a badge and a gun oh jesus why would you do that why would anyone do that. And the Owl graffiti has gone viral. At this point we've gotta be headed for a Mari/Owl spinoff. Or I just really really want there to be one. I saw the graffiti reference, where do you see evidence of the employment? I find Schaeffer's books compulsively readable but overall mediocre, with Revanche being pretty good, Faust ok, and Harmony Black really kind of dumb. It's clear he can write these quickly because 90% of the plot, characterization, and dialogue are lame cliches that overlook the way normal people would react in these situations. "I'm going to Belize," the master spy about to disappear said, which is LOL even as a decoy. Or the amateurish "oh, no, they've found me out!" reactions at the NSA front. Or the casual sharing of Harmony's plans in front of the demon of uncertain loyalties who is "helping" her. The demon she is alone with, because she sent her partner off to NYC early for no good reason at all. Or the frontal assault on a supernatural threat of a type that no one has ever beaten before, backed up by seriously superior numbers of mundane guards. Surprise and firepower aren't nothing, but c'mon. No one in this book about spies and special operatives is able to keep a blank face in adversity or keeps secrets or does anything at all clever.
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Apr 2, 2017 16:37
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It's Marie Reinhart, the detective at the bank in NYC. Beyond the name, she's described like Mari (ragged hair, mismatched clothes), and IIRC her partner tells Jessie that she treats her job like she thinks she's on a holy crusade. Agreed on the dude telling them where he was going, that was lulzy. The NSA thing I was fine with, because Burton IS an amateur. Dude's not a spy, he's a tech geek who got promoted into a job he's not remotely capable of doing, and the only reason he wasn't replaced with somebody competent is because he made sure he was the only person who could operate the system. (Which raises the question of why he wasn't pulled aside for a friendly waterboarding session until he gave up the info, but still.)
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Apr 2, 2017 17:17
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StonecutterJoe posted:The NSA thing I was fine with, because Burton IS an amateur. Dude's not a spy, he's a tech geek who got promoted into a job he's not remotely capable of doing, and the only reason he wasn't replaced with somebody competent is because he made sure he was the only person who could operate the system. (Which raises the question of why he wasn't pulled aside for a friendly waterboarding session until he gave up the info, but still.) I'm not even talking about that, the NSA receptionist and guards were laughably amateurish. The receptionist stammered and turned white at the end when they dropped that they knew she was with a spy agency. Holy Christ. And no one ran the IDs of the people who had a private sit down meeting with the head of their illegal private domestic surveillance operation? Or put a "call me immediately" order out when they couldn't find out who they were or got a bogus contact report from the Nerd in Charge? It's all amateurish bullshit from everyone at every agency. LOL at the FBI SAC in Boston, sure, just let these folks breeze on out after their previous fiasco and now this one.
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Apr 2, 2017 17:58
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biracial bear for uncut posted:
The last book stated that doing magic has nothing to do with being someone special or some born-in ability for humans. Everyone can learn it, it's just a way of thinking and training, training, training.
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Apr 3, 2017 07:16
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Number Ten Cocks posted:"I'm going to Belize," the master spy about to disappear said, which is LOL even as a decoy. He probably didn't put much thought into it since he had the guy literally get his head perforated by a supernatural sniper right after saying that.
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Apr 3, 2017 20:45
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I just finished my first re-read of the entire Rivers of London series, including a read of The Hanging Tree for the first time. I didn't read the discussion on it at the time it came out because spoilers, but I remember the thread being negative about it. Why? I thought it was great. Moved the meta-plot about Lesley and the Faceless Man forward a lot.
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Apr 3, 2017 23:03
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ConfusedUs posted:Moved the meta-plot about Lesley and the Faceless Man forward a lot. Did it though? We learned his name, but his name means little to me since it wasn't an existing character in the series. He's still out there in the shadows, doing whatever it is he's been doing for years and he's apparently not getting caught any time soon. For my part, I just get really tired of seeing the protagonists being incompetent, especially when it seems to be contrived for the sake of letting the bad guys escape. Nightingale set a trap and everything went exactly as expected, yet all the bad guys managed to walk away unharmed and even the bait was stolen (that magic book). It's hard to get excited about an epic confrontation when you know all the bad guys are just going to escape again. Maybe I would have felt differently about it if I read all the books in short order. As it was, I had been waiting ages for the book (as it was much delayed), but in the end it felt like nothing much happened and it was all just filler to drag out the story over as many books as possible. The Faceless Man isn't a particularly interesting villain and I don't understand why he needs to be a permanent fixture of the series.
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Apr 3, 2017 23:58
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Apoffys posted:Did it though? We learned his name, but his name means little to me since it wasn't an existing character in the series. He's still out there in the shadows, doing whatever it is he's been doing for years and he's apparently not getting caught any time soon. A big recurring statement through the series is that the Faceless Man is just a criminal, and the forces of the Met will grind him to dust once they figure out who he is. Assets will be frozen. Accomplices captured. Property will be searched and seized. Get him under surveillance and keep him there. Etc, etc, etc. The big wrench in that plan is that the Folly is woefully unprepared to interface with that modern policing. One of Peter's projects is writing up the operational documents to get them plugged into the rest of the Met. And we've already seen the fruits of that in Foxglove Summer, when the country nick asks Peter to do his best Falcon assessment on it, resulting in the recovery of those victims. We see the next step in that in The Hanging Tree. The moment they figure out the Faceless Man's identity (and escape), the police start picking apart his shell corporations, seizing his assets, tracking his cars, etc. He's a hunted man, now. The big confrontation at the end just kinda happened. They were following Reynard when Lesley showed up and they twigged that the FM was also involved. The resulting operation was thrown together on the fly vs a Faceless Man who had time to prepare, with added interference by not one but four parties (Tyburn, the Americans, Reynard (the original target), Caroline and her mom). It was a huge clusterfuck but most of that wasn't on Peter and Nightingale. Also I'm pretty sure that book didn't get taken by the FM, it was taken by Caroline and her mom, whose name escapes me, and that they'd probably be willing to share.
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Apr 4, 2017 00:22
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Also don't forget that Peter and Nightingale abused police authority to claim the FM's fancy sports car was a magical device and that it belonged to The Folly. EDIT: I don't even remember what kind of car it was, just that Peter was about to ejaculate in his pants lusting over it.
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Apr 4, 2017 16:26
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Decius posted:The last book stated that doing magic has nothing to do with being someone special or some born-in ability for humans. Everyone can learn it, it's just a way of thinking and training, training, training. While that may be true, the most recent book also more or less explicitly states that the only reason Leslie has magic right now is her exposure to Mr Punch. She doesn't have any natural/genetic inclination the same way Nightingale and Peter do. Hard work wasn't the cause, even though we all assumed so after Book 2 (which sucks, because I thought it was really cool she taught herself magic during her rehab).
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Apr 4, 2017 16:38
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ConfusedUs posted:I just finished my first re-read of the entire Rivers of London series, including a read of The Hanging Tree for the first time. Yeah I agree I finished The Hanging Tree last month and I didn't hate it like the thread seemed to. Felt like a solid entry into the series and I liked the meta-plot moving forward.
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Apr 4, 2017 21:46
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Xtanstic posted:Yeah I agree I finished The Hanging Tree last month and I didn't hate it like the thread seemed to. Felt like a solid entry into the series and I liked the meta-plot moving forward. I didn't hate it, just felt it was... a let down, I suppose. I enjoyed it while I read it, but for a novel titled The Hanging Tree I expected it to be a bit more... dramatic? No one even got seriously injured, and the plot only sidled along. How many more books do we go through until Nightingale dies so Peter has to actually mature and truly step up? I suppose in the end people might have been disappointed because this was another bridging book for the metaplot, and it felt like the author was spinning the wheels a bit to draw this out. Especially since, following pattern, the next book will primarily be a stand alone adventure. We're at least two years away from another "main plot" book. Also, now we know who the Faceless Man is, I feel like that revelation wasn't enough to be the focus of an entire book. He's no one we know, and no one important (like a politician or something), so the revelation just feels like another plot beat. I imagine Ben Aaronovitch's starting point/end goal for this book was "We reveal the Faceless Man!!!" But eh. I'm pretty convinced the Faceless Man will be end game now—when he's defeated, the series is going to end. Which is a bit disappointing, because six novels in I'm ready for a new Big Bad. The Faceless Man was terrifying in Book 2, and even in Book 4, but I'm not as enamoured with him as I used to be. He feels stretched a bit too thin.
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Apr 5, 2017 03:58
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Daphnaie posted:I didn't hate it, just felt it was... a let down, I suppose. I enjoyed it while I read it, but for a novel titled The Hanging Tree I expected it to be a bit more... dramatic? No one even got seriously injured, and the plot only sidled along. How many more books do we go through until Nightingale dies so Peter has to actually mature and truly step up? Nah. It's pretty clear that Aaronovitch is transitioning from FM to Leslie as the ongoing Big Bad of the series.
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Apr 5, 2017 04:03
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Nah. It's pretty clear that Aaronovitch is transitioning from FM to Leslie as the ongoing Big Bad of the series. You think? I'd really like to hear why you think so, because that'd be awesome. If that't the case, perhaps I need to reread The Hanging Tree with an eye out for that. Is that why Peter will end up freeing Mr Punch? To stop her?
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Apr 5, 2017 04:04
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