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New Sandman Silm Tuesday, the series is my guilty pleasure.
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Aug 23, 2020 02:36
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StonecutterJoe posted:Except they're all available in paperback? Am I misunderstanding this? Whenever I googled them, it went directly to the Kindle store with no options. I stand corrected.
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Aug 23, 2020 04:40
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Proteus Jones posted:At this point the only physical books I have are entirely hard-to-find or out-of-print reference materials that relate to work. The problem with this is that you can't have cool books hanging around for visitors to look at and be informed about what you think is cool. The solution, of course, is a separate kindle for each book.
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Aug 23, 2020 15:55
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I was really not happy with Kindle/screen reading for a time, but then i gave it a chance, and I honestly love it. I can change the font. I can share passages with friends, or quickly copy down things I think are interesting. I can change page color or font and all that kind of stuff I just can't do with a book. Easier to pick it up and put it down. Whatever. But books are pretty good for making notes and highlighting passages, so anything that I'm studying, or trying to examine more critically, I buy, so I can write in it and dog ear it. My biggest problem with the kindle is that it's a million times more of a pain in the rear end to sort through than a bookshelf. I have no idea what I own. torgeaux posted:Eh. I find them readable but they don't make me want to buy the next one. Instead, they're the kind of book that I'm entertained enough to buy the next one in a lull. Honestly curious why. The book has great representation, the magic system is diverse, there's lots of voice and personality, and it's probably one of the better 'morally grey protagonist tough-guy' books I've read. Book five, Castle Doctrine, has a wonderful series of set-ups / pay-offs that are some of the best I've ever read.
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Aug 23, 2020 19:14
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:
The magic system is not setup well in book one, at least not in a "man, I really want to see this expanded" kind of way. The character is interesting, but having the super powerful girlfriend is a bit cliche, and like I said, fine, entertaining, but nothing that made me want to plow thru book 2. In fact, stalled hard early on book 2.
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Aug 23, 2020 19:57
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:I was really not happy with Kindle/screen reading for a time, but then i gave it a chance, and I honestly love it. I can change the font. I can share passages with friends, or quickly copy down things I think are interesting. I can change page color or font and all that kind of stuff I just can't do with a book. Easier to pick it up and put it down. Whatever. I totally understand why people would prefer regular printed books to a Kindle but I'm never going back. I love it for all the same reasons as you. I also love it because I've picked up books, gotten a few chapters in, and realized I just don't like it. It's much easier to drop books when you're not stuck with a physical object that takes up space that you now have to do something with. Also my fiance is dyslexic and trying to read books has always made her embarrassed because it's really hard for her. If she's even able to read them, it takes her a long time to do because she has to go so slowly. I got her a Kindle and she switched the font to the dyslexic mode and it was like magic. Suddenly, she was able to read at a normal speed. I don't know how, that font makes it harder for me to focus on the words, but for her it works perfectly.
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Aug 23, 2020 20:05
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Daric posted:I totally understand why people would prefer regular printed books to a Kindle but I'm never going back. I love it for all the same reasons as you. I also love it because I've picked up books, gotten a few chapters in, and realized I just don't like it. It's much easier to drop books when you're not stuck with a physical object that takes up space that you now have to do something with. The thing about dyslexia is that there are a lot of similarly-shaped letters in the alphabet. Different fonts counteract that issue in different ways, e.g. there's a font that ensures verticality by lending visual weight to letters. Comic Sans, as derided as it is, is a good font for dyslexia because of its jauntiness. Kerning is also important, as is text alignment, because the spaces between words and letters can turn in to traps (justified text is the loving worst for this), as can italics (underlining and bold are both fine, however, for emphasis). (I'm not dyslexic, but a good friend of mine is, and I maintain a site for a community he's been part of for nearly a decade now, so...)
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Aug 23, 2020 20:12
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:My biggest problem with the kindle is that it's a million times more of a pain in the rear end to sort through than a bookshelf. I have no idea what I own.
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Aug 23, 2020 20:37
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:I was really not happy with Kindle/screen reading for a time, but then i gave it a chance, and I honestly love it. I can change the font. I can share passages with friends, or quickly copy down things I think are interesting. I can change page color or font and all that kind of stuff I just can't do with a book. Easier to pick it up and put it down. Whatever. My Kindle Paperwhite has been a godsend, speaking as someone who likes to read in bed before going to sleep. No eyestrain, no phone-style lighting that messes with your sleep cycle, in addition to the obvious benefit of keeping over a hundred books on my nightstand.
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Aug 23, 2020 20:46
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StonecutterJoe posted:My Kindle Paperwhite has been a godsend, speaking as someone who likes to read in bed before going to sleep. No eyestrain, no phone-style lighting that messes with your sleep cycle, in addition to the obvious benefit of keeping over a hundred books on my nightstand. Been happy with my paper white as well, though I still have all my physical books too
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Aug 23, 2020 21:48
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Daric posted:I totally understand why people would prefer regular printed books to a Kindle but I'm never going back. I love it for all the same reasons as you. I also love it because I've picked up books, gotten a few chapters in, and realized I just don't like it. It's much easier to drop books when you're not stuck with a physical object that takes up space that you now have to do something with. That understandable. For my part, I don't want a Kindle because you apparently don't really own the books you "buy" for it.
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Aug 23, 2020 22:54
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My mom has been trying to talk me into wanting an e-reader of some sort for years, since I travel for work and she points out that the reader would be way more convenient than hauling stacks of novels with me. But, I dunno. There's just something to me about having the actual book in my hands, plus yeah, I like showing off my books on my bookshelves.
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Aug 23, 2020 22:58
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You can do both. I have something like 2300 physical books and 700+ ebooks (gogo freebies!).
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Aug 23, 2020 23:52
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Everyone posted:That understandable. For my part, I don't want a Kindle because you apparently don't really own the books you "buy" for it. back up your files and strip the DRM from them, so you always have a backup that Amazon can't take away on a whim
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Aug 24, 2020 00:37
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jivjov posted:back up your files and strip the DRM from them, so you always have a backup that Amazon can't take away on a whim Or, and I'm going with one, continue to say "gently caress Kindle, physical copies all the way" so I don't have to break the law to fully use what should be my own property. If somebody wants to borrow my copy of Peace Talks I can say, "Sure. Here you go." and physically hand it to them. I don't want to have to hack files and risk a lawsuit or possible jail time to do something like that.
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Aug 24, 2020 01:00
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Everyone posted:Or, and I'm going with one, continue to say "gently caress Kindle, physical copies all the way" so I don't have to break the law to fully use what should be my own property. You can loan most Kindle books once, also. You're right about licensing versus owning, but for electric media, that's the norm, not the exception. Digital music, movies, TV shows are the same.
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Aug 24, 2020 01:04
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Everyone posted:That understandable. For my part, I don't want a Kindle because you apparently don't really own the books you "buy" for it. There will be a note on the Kindle page on Amazon for publishers that aren't using DRM. Tor books for instance do not have any. The trick is you have to expand the collapsed description of the book and it will be tucked way at the bottom. "At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied."
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Aug 24, 2020 01:14
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After reading Daniel Faust, track down and read Felix Castor. Those books were fun, too.
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Aug 24, 2020 02:04
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biracial bear for uncut posted:After reading Daniel Faust, track down and read Felix Castor. I blazed through the first two, but choked halfway through the third for some reason and couldn't make myself read any more. That's weird for me.
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Aug 24, 2020 02:21
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biracial bear for uncut posted:After reading Daniel Faust, track down and read Felix Castor. I agree. Innovative but a shame there aren’t any more.
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Aug 24, 2020 04:51
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I've moved a few too many times in the past ten years to keep a physical book collection around. Wound up giving them to my brother and selling off the overlap. Still, that leaves me a ~4000 book library and growing to read, just have to make a trip to his place.
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Aug 24, 2020 07:15
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Beachcomber posted:I blazed through the first two, but choked halfway through the third for some reason and couldn't make myself read any more. Skip ahead and read book four. It was pretty cool and sets up what honestly works as the conclusion of the series, book five.
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Aug 25, 2020 02:24
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Which one was the one where we find out Brother Matt is an even bigger sack of poo poo than Felix because he is directly responsible for his kid becoming a demon?
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Aug 25, 2020 02:35
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Which one was the one where we find out Brother Matt is an even bigger sack of poo poo than Felix because he is directly responsible for his kid becoming a demon? I don't recall it shaking out exactly that way (though it's been a while since I've read them) but that would be Book Four.
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Aug 25, 2020 04:39
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Everyone posted:I don't recall it shaking out exactly that way (though it's been a while since I've read them) but that would be Book Four. As I recall, it comes out that Matt knew about the kid, and he knew about the kid's mother taking up with the abusive guy whose murder Felix is set up for--the twist was that the "Castor" meant by the bloody note was the priest, not the exorcist. It makes him a piece of poo poo because Matt cared more about preserving his "calling" than he cared about being responsible and caring for the kid he had with a woman against his vows as a priest, and his "redemption" arc to help the shade of his dead son find peace was bullshit.
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Aug 25, 2020 11:15
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biracial bear for uncut posted:As I recall, it comes out that Matt knew about the kid, and he knew about the kid's mother taking up with the abusive guy whose murder Felix is set up for--the twist was that the "Castor" meant by the bloody note was the priest, not the exorcist. Well, sure. I took it that even the so-called "best people" sometimes make awful, selfish choices that they can never truly make right. So... yes, piece of poo poo but one that's uncommonly lovely. Anyway, I did kind of like Castor working (reluctantly) with Gwynion(sp?) and the mom somehow possessing some other dude's corpse to kill the abuser..
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Aug 25, 2020 14:14
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Finishing up Proven Guilty on my re-read and I'm still more confused about what Nemesis is up to. Maev works with Lilly to use Harry to unleash Summer fire in Arctis Tor, which draws back Winter's forces which allows Summer to help the White Council vs the Reds... But the Reds seem to be heavily involved with the Outsiders, so why is Maev helping the fight against them? Maev seems to be Nemesised already because she can lie about Mab having gone mad. Unless perhaps she/Nemesis was hoping that this strike on Winter would actually disrupt their Outer Gates forces too? 
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Aug 26, 2020 01:46
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Darkrenown posted:Finishing up Proven Guilty on my re-read and I'm still more confused about what Nemesis is up to. Maev works with Lilly to use Harry to unleash Summer fire in Arctis Tor, which draws back Winter's forces which allows Summer to help the White Council vs the Reds... But the Reds seem to be heavily involved with the Outsiders, so why is Maev helping the fight against them? Maev seems to be Nemesised already because she can lie about Mab having gone mad. Unless perhaps she/Nemesis was hoping that this strike on Winter would actually disrupt their Outer Gates forces too? Well, for the last question, and probably for all of them, Cold days came out like 6 years later so that whole thing, especially the part about outer gates and winter's imbalance with summer was probably not fleshed out, on top of the still unresolved denarians being infected and attacking arctis tor roughly at the same time(weird that this basically got a single oblique reference in skin game and no more.) my reading of the older books was always that the Red court was only involved with the outsiders to the extent that they were summoning them occasionally for help in battles, not so much that the entire court was suborned to serve the Outsiders interest. He hasn't really gone into enough detail about how nemesis works or how closely it can coordinate or actively interface with the Outsiders but it's possible that nemesis is just as capable of playing the long game, and destabilizing winter just a little bit was the goal. the events of proven guilty as a whole is used by maeve to trick Lily in Cold Days. proven guilty is kind of weird on a second reading to me. The whole malk plot to kidnap or murder people seems kind of random, that the malks real plan was to kidnap someone back to winter, but not just winter, right into arctis tor is weird.
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Aug 26, 2020 04:18
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Up Circle posted:Well, for the last question, and probably for all of them, Cold days came out like 6 years later so that whole thing, especially the part about outer gates and winter's imbalance with summer was probably not fleshed out, on top of the still unresolved denarians being infected and attacking arctis tor roughly at the same time(weird that this basically got a single oblique reference in skin game and no more.) my reading of the older books was always that the Red court was only involved with the outsiders to the extent that they were summoning them occasionally for help in battles, not so much that the entire court was suborned to serve the Outsiders interest. As I understood it the malks (if they're the fear-bringers I'm thinking of) only went after Molly because Harry turned the spell she was using back on her. He thought he was loving over an evil warlock and it turned out... not so much. As for the Red Court, evil as they were, it's not like they wanted the Outsiders to bring their "Lovecraft paradise" to Earth any more than the White Council does. So, from Maeve's/Outsiders' perspective, letting the White Council get back into the war a little so that they and the Red Court can grind down and weaken each other is all to the good. Everyone fucked around with this message at 08:44 on Aug 26, 2020 |
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Aug 26, 2020 08:38
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It's Fetchs, not Malks (Malks are the evil cats, like Cat Sith. Fetchs take on the illusions of fears to feed on the fear it causes). Perhaps the reds aren't as pro-Outsider as I am thinking, but their upper ranks are called the Lords of Outer Night so I thought they were buddies with them. And yeah, I know it's entirely possible that Butcher just hadn't planned out the entire arc and later ret-conned Nemesis etc. but I find it more fun to believe there's reasons for everything which will be revealed at some point.
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Aug 26, 2020 16:42
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Proven Guilty is just a weird book all the way around. There's a ton of unexplained or confusing events. Also, consider that the book includes a serious talk about time travel between Harry and Bob, but there's no actual time travel that we're aware of. Then think on Cold Days, with the whole "Merlin performed the same acts in the same place in multiple points of time" thing when he created the superjail on Demonreach. Between the two, it really feels like we'll revisit the events of Proven Guilty at some point, via time travel.
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Aug 26, 2020 16:51
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It's been a long time since I've read Proven Guilty (it's really not my favorite Dresden book for a number of reasons), but my highly speculative take: The fetches were essentially a distress signal from Mab to get Harry's attention. They're basically her personal guard, and she wasn't otherwise free to act. She sent them so Harry would track them back to Arctis Tor and discover what was going on. Molly's involvement there was not planned by anyone beyond Mab seeing an opportunity and taking it. I'm not sure yet what the ultimate point of the assault on Arctis Tor was, probably because that hasn't been revealed yet. But I think Nemesis's aims in particular were to keep Harry (and by extension the Council) thinking that Mab was insane and untrustworthy, so that it was free to keep acting with a relative lack of scrutiny. The ultimate goal, I think, was specifically to prevent Harry from aligning himself with Mab. (Which feeds into Changes too, and Lasciel's ability to defy her angelic constraints to whisper in his ear).
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Aug 26, 2020 17:00
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That reminds me, why is Mab pretending to be a statue in the garden? I'm not sure the distress signal idea makes much sense, Harry doesn't do anything to help Mab once he gets there and in fact kills several more Fetches, including Eldest, and comes close to releasing or killing Lea who Mab clearly wants locked up for now. It's possible Mab wanted Harry to be aware of the attack, but he doesn't seem to do anything with the knowledge. Maybe Mab wanted Harry to know about Lea, but he only learns about her by happenstance while he's there so it also seems unlikely. Harry does learn Lloyd is still being tortured, but this is unlikely to encourage him to sign up as Knight so it doesn't seem to Mab's advantage either.
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Aug 26, 2020 17:25
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Darkrenown posted:That reminds me, why is Mab pretending to be a statue in the garden? This is all complete speculation but of course we don't have anything else. My theory is that, whether Mab knew specifically what Nemesis was, she knew something was up with Lea and now Maeve, and she statued herself to keep it from happening to her too. I also suspect she was hoping Harry would get the message a little sooner and arrive in time to do something about the actual Arctis Tor attack, but if not, even getting that information to him in whatever cryptic form would help offset whatever lies Maeve and Lily were feeding him. Also, what Harry did accomplish by being there was draw Winter's forces away from their holding action at Summer's borders, which Mab wasn't in a position to do then either. Again, it's all guesswork.
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Aug 27, 2020 02:07
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Makes sense, I didn't consider that Mab might be stuck as a statue for a while.
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Aug 27, 2020 02:23
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Took a while to get through this new one. I know it is really only half a book but I thought it was garbage, nonetheless. Easily the worst in the series. The amount of stupid on display from pretty much everyone, all the time, was off the charts. And I can't stand new Butters. Talk about ruining a good character.
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Aug 27, 2020 18:11
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Calidus posted:New Sandman Silm Tuesday, the series is my guilty pleasure. Came here to talk about this, I really enjoyed it. The "unstoppable murder monster, but entirely useless when violence doesn't help" is nice, and consistent. Anyone have other series in the Sandman Slim vein to recommend? Separately, is Kevin Hearn's non-Iron Druid stuff worth reading? I enjoyed the characters and ideas in Iron Druid.
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Aug 27, 2020 20:19
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Silly Newbie posted:Separately, is Kevin Hearn's non-Iron Druid stuff worth reading? I enjoyed the characters and ideas in Iron Druid. If you liked Iron Druid, you'll probably like the rest of his stuff. Although I gotta say, I wasn't aware that anyone like Iron Druid after the first couple of books.
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Aug 27, 2020 21:03
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Silly Newbie posted:Came here to talk about this, I really enjoyed it. The "unstoppable murder monster, but entirely useless when violence doesn't help" is nice, and consistent. I read it all at midnight when it released. I really like how he's having to deal with all the mental stuff caused by the last couple of books.
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Aug 27, 2020 21:09
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Dilber posted:I read it all at midnight when it released. I really like how he's having to deal with all the mental stuff caused by the last couple of books. I remembered I had been waiting for it late Tuesday night, then finished it yesterday. The action felt more like fluff to give the characters something to do while they developed as characters, which I didn't mind, and the hook into the next catastrophe at the end was good enough. ConfusedUs posted:If you liked Iron Druid, you'll probably like the rest of his stuff. They were pretty quick reads, and I tend to get into a thing with a series where I read it just to know what happens. I couldn't tell you what happened in the middle of the series from memory, though.
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Aug 27, 2020 21:37
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