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The books have a slight uptick in quality whenever Angry Old Druid shows up, but it is no way worth dealing with the rest of the series.
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May 9, 2018 13:57
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Iron Druid reads like a first draft that was written with a very hazy outline and then never really developed before it was published. It is frustrating because there are some interesting parts and ideas scattered in the first novel, some interesting characters, but Atticus, the pacing, the lack of polish, it all grates throughout and drags down the whole thing. If you manage to write a dog that people dislike you probably hosed up somewhere.
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May 9, 2018 14:54
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Iron Druid reads like a first draft that was written with a very hazy outline and then never really developed before it was published. It is frustrating because there are some interesting parts and ideas scattered in the first novel, some interesting characters, but Atticus, the pacing, the lack of polish, it all grates throughout and drags down the whole thing. The dog was the best part of the first 2-3 books then it turned into a meme-machine.
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May 9, 2018 15:00
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Iron Druid reads like a first draft that was written with a very hazy outline and then never really developed before it was published. It is frustrating because there are some interesting parts and ideas scattered in the first novel, some interesting characters, but Atticus, the pacing, the lack of polish, it all grates throughout and drags down the whole thing. I'm honestly kind of happy I finished it, because at least the ending is kind of satisfying. End of series spoilers: Atticus gets his arm chopped off in revenge for all the dumb stuff he did, loses his ability to shapeshift, heal, teleport, etc. He also alienates all of his friends and associates and ends up broken and alone.
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May 9, 2018 15:03
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xsf421 posted:I'm honestly kind of happy I finished it, because at least the ending is kind of satisfying. End of series spoilers: Atticus gets his arm chopped off in revenge for all the dumb stuff he did, loses his ability to shapeshift, heal, teleport, etc. He also alienates all of his friends and associates and ends up broken and alone. It is impossible for me to reconcile this with the first book, and I'm guessing that this is supposed to be a sad, sacrificial kind of thing as opposed to just desserts.
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May 9, 2018 18:37
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Nah most characters spend a fair chunk of the last few books telling Atticus what a fuckup he is.
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May 9, 2018 21:51
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You all say how bad the Iron Druid series really are, but I'm getting legitemetly curious.
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May 9, 2018 21:58
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Angry Lobster posted:You all say how bad the Iron Druid series really are, but I'm getting legitemetly curious. Same, before I read the first book. You ever eat something that, at a glance, looks and smells like something you'd like? It has all the right ingredients, sure, but then you take a bite... and something is off. You're not quite sure what it is, maybe it's just you- so take another, chewing thoughtfully. By the third bite you're convinced it isn't bad, but it's mediocre, like a bowl full of flavorful Tex-Mex that's been ruined by too much grease. Soggy. Bland. And so you stop eating. That was my experience with Iron Druid, book 1. I would actually recommend it to someone who was a fan of UF and thinking of writing their own books as a "contrast and compare" exercise with something like Verus or Dresden.
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May 9, 2018 23:24
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Ornamented Death posted:Nah most characters spend a fair chunk of the last few books telling Atticus what a fuckup he is. Except he made a plan to get his arm back which would let him get his tattoos back. And he ends up with his dogs doing something he wanted to do. Basically he lost his girlfriend.
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May 9, 2018 23:39
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EVGA Longoria posted:Except he made a plan to get his arm back which would let him get his tattoos back. His dog... Does his girlfriend? I haven't read the series, but it sounds bad enough that that's a possibility?
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May 9, 2018 23:41
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EVGA Longoria posted:Except he made a plan to get his arm back which would let him get his tattoos back. It does have the best portrayal of Jesus in any Urban Fantasy though. "Congrats, you made it to one of the timelines where you survived. Unfortunately, you will never be happy. Try to learn to be at piece with it. Or even worse things will happen to you." Seems like a pretty dire warning from Jesus for Atticus to promptly ignore it. Again.
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May 10, 2018 02:00
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biracial bear for uncut posted:It does have the best portrayal of Jesus in any Urban Fantasy though. Hearne seems to be in this mix of fantasy authors who genuinely seem like cool, interesting people...who write for crap. I’ve had some BAD disappointments lately. Sarah Gailey is a pretty good twitter follow who had the concept “what if there was an alternate history where that guy’s plan to import HIPPOS into the mufun MISSISSIPPI worked and now there are hippo cowboys and they are working a heist” and made a..not good book. (The hippo plan is real and weird and this should have been my fav book of all time), the Dinosaur Lord books which were, again, a neat idea that splatted flat in the execution. There are a lot more in that vein. Edit: FWIW, I read the Iron Druid books. Then I tried to read his new “Plague of Giants” book. It is...hoo boy...it is real bad, folks.
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May 10, 2018 05:53
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I also love his Coyote. He is legit funny (and heroic in his way). And I read that hippo book, too, and was sorely disappointed.
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May 10, 2018 08:24
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biracial bear for uncut posted:It does have the best portrayal of Jesus in any Urban Fantasy though. Yeah, a lot of the side characters are good to great. The story actually does a pretty believable "This one action you took in book one snowballed into ragnarok" for the most part. It does depend on "BUT MY HONOR!" a bit early on, but still. Atticus is a bit too powerful, and he doesn't really fit the idea of a millennia-old Druid. Iron Druid is really not nearly as bad as everyone in here likes to pretend. Go back to the last thread and you'll see people singing it's praises for the first few books, calling it the best thing since Dresden. Until there was a lolcats joke and suddenly it was the biggest abomination in urban fantasy. Basically, just decide for yourself about the books.
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May 10, 2018 13:52
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I wouldn't be totally against reading book 2, but Atticus' tone was so judgmental and prickish. Thousand years old, acts like a kid, looks down on actual kids. That and the stakes / set-up for book 1 was kinda... eh. I've read a lot of series that started out a little rough, but they had something redeeming about them, a few good scenes. I never felt like Atticus was in any real danger, or that he was taking things entirely seriously. I didn't sympathize or empathize with him, or want him to succeed.  I didn't like Harry a great deal for the first few books, but I was interested in him, and by the time I got to "Then I blew the tires off his loving truck" I was sold.
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May 10, 2018 15:14
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I’m gonna be contrary and say it’s dumb how everyone gives Atticus poo poo for causing Ragnarok when it was a team effort he got guilt tripped into - everyone else involved just gets a pass for it. I kind of liked the setting and even the characters, just found the writting kind of dry, like everyone is just so blasé about everything, events just get narrated matter of factly with no emotional weight. 
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May 10, 2018 16:31
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So, if I'm bailing out on Iron Druid...Alex Verus?
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May 10, 2018 17:13
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thrawn527 posted:So, if I'm bailing out on Iron Druid...Alex Verus? Yeah, very solid. It is very pulp but it's workmanlike pulp with a minimum of outright stupidity. The worst thing about it is that the magic is a bit videogamey (it came as no surprise at all to me to find that the author apparently helped work on the X-Com Long War mods), but once you accept the premise -- society of mages in modern britain who are all surreptitiously murdering each other when they think they can get away with it -- it works fine past that. There's a lot of discussion of it in the past few pages of the thread. The main thing it has going for it is that it has that same page-turning quality that the first few Dresden books had. It's a burn-through-ten-books-in-a-weekend type of series. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:28 on May 10, 2018 |
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May 10, 2018 17:18
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thrawn527 posted:So, if I'm bailing out on Iron Druid...Alex Verus? Good series that gets better, sympathetic hero, plot/structure that doesn't waste your time, stakes are set, things are paid off. Verus good. Audio book ain't bad either.
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May 10, 2018 17:19
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thrawn527 posted:So, if I'm bailing out on Iron Druid...Alex Verus? Its okay. I binged on it a few weeks ago and posted some impressions in the thread. Good but not great, the world building is a little weak and contrived, some of the naming conventions are real bad, no one ever actually respects how goddamn powerful Alex actually is etc.
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May 10, 2018 17:23
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Avalerion posted:I’m gonna be contrary and say it’s dumb how everyone gives Atticus poo poo for causing Ragnarok when it was a team effort he got guilt tripped into - everyone else involved just gets a pass for it. To be fair, everyone else responsible for causing Ragnarok in that team is dead by that point except for Perun, and he's basically in hiding. Loki was pretty thorough. Also, the writing for Atticus's POV was dry, but the POV for his teacher were fun. Especially the bits that were focused on teaching a bunch of kids how to be druids.
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May 10, 2018 17:28
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Alex has a “leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone” philosophy and tries to be personable, but he does some pretty morally questionable things. I’d say he straddling a pretty fine line between hero and anti-hero. I think that’s why I like the series. Alex isn’t a self-righteous busy-body, hell he’s not even righteous a lot of the time.
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May 10, 2018 17:52
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Ok, gently caress it. I'm getting Iron Druid, I'm just to curious. It's ok if it turns out to be super poo poo, my life has been such a colossal garbage dumpster fire lately that I won't mind one more turd.
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May 10, 2018 18:04
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I just re-read the entire Alex Verus series over the last week-ish. It was better than I remembered, I remembered it being pretty good. Zore posted:no one ever actually respects how goddamn powerful Alex actually is etc. Even Alex doesn't seem to get it. He sees every win as this skin-of-its-teeth thing where he got lucky or the other guy got dumb. There's a line, at the very end of the most recent book (Bound), where Alex is amazed that he and Richard just took out an entire Council strike team. Richard did most of the work, but Alex took out a good portion. Final count was something like 8 Richard/4 Alex, and Alex was in control of his part the whole time...but it's not really clear he realized it. In fact, there are only two people who really seem to get how dangerous Alex is: Richard, who is using him, and Cinder, who has been very, very careful to stay on Alex's good side since around book 2 or 3. Cinder just may be the smartest adversary Alex ever had. Also, put me on the side of Richard being a Diviner/Chance mage hybrid. He fights like a hybrid of Alex and Luna. Everything's in just the right place, almost as if by accident. Almost everything else can be explained via items and focuses.
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May 10, 2018 18:19
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Proteus Jones posted:Alex has a “leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone” philosophy and tries to be personable, but he does some pretty morally questionable things. I’d say he straddling a pretty fine line between hero and anti-hero. I think that’s why I like the series. Alex isn’t a self-righteous busy-body, hell he’s not even righteous a lot of the time. That's pretty much why I like him. Verus is a conflicted person, who sometimes does the right thing for the right reason, or the right thing for the wrong reason, or... he just fails, and does what he thinks he has to in order to survive. He's ruthless, but in a compelling sort of way. He's a small fish trying to survive in a shark tank. That conflict makes his ruthlessness interesting, because you see what made him that way. I really do not like characters who are just ruthless and predatory because they're 2edgy or "badass" or whatever. I enjoyed the experience of Verus more than Rivers of London, though I did like London's prose more.
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May 10, 2018 18:26
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biracial bear for uncut posted:To be fair, everyone else responsible for causing Ragnarok in that team is dead by that point except for Perun, and he's basically in hiding. Loki was pretty thorough. Uh, the guy that got Atticus involved, Leif Helgarson...
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May 10, 2018 18:28
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As I recall, Iron Druid starts obviously a work of something still learning to write well, starts palpably improving about halfway through the book until, by the time it arrives at a finale, it's readable enough to give the next one a shot. And the next few are kinda dumb but also kinda fun, if you're in a mood for it. I personally dropped the series at the first book when he tried giving the girlfriend a PoV and the voice he wrote her in was the most insufferable thing ever.
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May 10, 2018 19:30
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Avalerion posted:I’m gonna be contrary and say it’s dumb how everyone gives Atticus poo poo for causing Ragnarok when it was a team effort he got guilt tripped into - everyone else involved just gets a pass for it. Thor was a tremendous dick who was coasting on "Everybody needs me to kill Jormungandr, so I can do whatever I want to people and nobody will hold me accountable". Dude absolutely had it coming and everybody who let him get away with it for all that time is partially at fault for this. Wizchine posted:Uh, the guy that got Atticus involved, Leif Helgarson... ...is a vampire and so technically counts as dead. ConfusedUs posted:In fact, there are only two people who really seem to get how dangerous Alex is: Richard, who is using him, and Cinder, who has been very, very careful to stay on Alex's good side since around book 2 or 3. Cinder just may be the smartest adversary Alex ever had. Cinder really isn't an adversary. Verus thinks of him as an adversary because he's a Dark Mage, but he's pretty clearly not one.
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May 10, 2018 20:20
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Khizan posted:
He was at first. That lasted exactly one book. That's why I say he's the smartest adversary Alex ever had, emphasis on the past tense.
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May 10, 2018 20:25
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Anyhow, the think to remember about Verus is to not stop during the first book which starts off reading like a Dresden fanfiction. It gets better as it goes on.
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May 11, 2018 08:35
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anilEhilated posted:Anyhow, the think to remember about Verus is to not stop during the first book which starts off reading like a Dresden fanfiction. It gets better as it goes on. Good to know, and I'll keep that in mind when I get to them, but a digital copy of Sandman Slim just became available from my library, so I'll be reading that first.
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May 11, 2018 13:16
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thrawn527 posted:Good to know, and I'll keep that in mind when I get to them, but a digital copy of Sandman Slim just became available from my library, so I'll be reading that first. It should be noted that the writing in Sandman Slim is pretty well at the same level as Iron Druid. It just gets more slack because the jokes are a little funnier and the whole tone of the series makes everything that Sandman Slim deals with funny. It has the same utter lack of suspense though.
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May 11, 2018 14:47
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http://benedictjacka.co.uk/extracts/marked-chapter-1/
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May 11, 2018 17:19
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Old Kentucky Shark posted:That reminds me, I’m listening to the new Stephen r Donaldson book, and listening to the narrator take his best shot at pronouncing random obscure words is practically a drinking game. Is it SF or fantasy? Overall, I liked his Gap Cycle more than that Neverending Leper's Story.
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May 11, 2018 17:22
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biracial bear for uncut posted:It should be noted that the writing in Sandman Slim is pretty well at the same level as Iron Druid. Nah, Kadrey is a much better writer, and it's not just his tone.
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May 11, 2018 17:56
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Libluini posted:Is it SF or fantasy? Overall, I liked his Gap Cycle more than that Neverending Leper's Story. Fantasy. Having finished it, I would say give it a miss until the second book in the series comes out; much like The Real Story in the Gap cycle, this book seemed to be almost entirely composed of an extended setup for a larger series, with not that much story in its own right. It was about twice as long as it needed to be, with almost all of the plot happening in the first and last chapter, and it's hard to tell exactly where things are going to go from here. It could be an interesting premise for a setting, or a meandering mess with an unlikable protagonist. TLDR: at the end of the first book of the Great God's War series, there has been, so far, no Great God, and only a little bit of War.
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May 12, 2018 00:10
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I'm listening to the first Johannes Cabal book and I'm pretty close to giving up. A part of me is curious about the ending, but every encounter just feels pointless. There's never any tension, Johannes always finds the most direct solution to the present situation and I don't find his character development particularly interesting. The tone is like Pratchett without the charm. Is it worth giving the rest of the book a chance or should I try to get a refund and start Verus?
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May 12, 2018 06:21
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I'd suggest skipping out and trying the second book. I remember being unimpressed by the first one, but the second I really like. That being said, you won't miss that much by giving the series a pass.
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May 12, 2018 07:51
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Hello thread, I think it's been a year since I've seen you last. Has there been any major release from Butcher in the past 365 days, aeronauts/Dresden/anything? It's kind of wild to think his last Dresden book came out in 2014.
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May 12, 2018 22:26
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Shinjobi posted:Hello thread, I think it's been a year since I've seen you last. Has there been any major release from Butcher in the past 365 days, aeronauts/Dresden/anything? It's kind of wild to think his last Dresden book came out in 2014. There's been some Dresden comics, which Butcher has story input on. And the next short story compilation (including a new one) is out in a couple months.
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May 12, 2018 22:50
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