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Just reread the first three Rivers of London books. Do they get better? I don’t have any complaints about the plots or characters. I rather like them! Grant’s morality and wokeness are a refreshing change of pace. But they’re very much detective novels with the characters wandering from place to place and tediously building evidence. On a second read, they have been very slow paced. Even the magic and fight scenes generally failed to excite me. I was initially planning to get the fourth book right away, but now I am not sure.
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 05:57 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 04:20 |
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It all stays very much low on magic, high on policing procedures and Britishisms. Book 4 probably reads the most like a BBC police series but by the end poo poo really hits the fan.
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 06:08 |
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LLSix posted:Just reread the first three Rivers of London books. Do they get better? nah, what you see is what you get
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 06:17 |
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Battle Ground gave me a headache. Just too much. Not even a bad book. Just way too much, even if it had lots of individually good bits. I'm mostly a sucker for seeing the big important people do big epic things in appropriate situations. 350 pages of battle scenes was just too much though after the previous book, and the Fomor are still utterly uninteresting. As for the White Council, Ramirez etc, I'm mostly bothered by the initial concept of him being loyal to two factions at once. It seems impossible to believe someone functioning in an official capacity and recognized role like the Winter Knight could be seriously thought of as still being an official member of the White Council, let alone a Warden. Other than the habitual lack of communication leading to dresden's conflicts, I'm struggling to see at what point since Changes (or at least since the council knew Dresden was alive and the winter knight) that they would expect anything else from him. And the flip side of that is there isn't a reason to put a delayed execution order out on someone who is the most important human agent of an ally (and an ally apparently holding up the very fabric of the world) It feels like a very arbitrary and forced conflict. Why would Ramirez expect total honesty from somebody he knows is bound to a Faerie court in the first place? The intensity of the animosity feels totally out of place, especially Ramirez taking the effort to spy on Dresden. If I remember that bit from Peace Talks correctly. Micheal's reaction seemed normal from our perspective though. All he knows about the council is that they suck rear end and this is 100% in character with the pre-Changes council. I was planning to write a huge post about how Marcone is in fact, the real hero of Chicago after he answers Dresdens challenge by leading half the army around the city, but then he has a coin lmao why. oh my god i hate power creep so much.
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 07:17 |
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Yeah, that bothered me too, especially given Marcone's previous exchange with Nicodemus on the subject waaaaaay back in whatever book it was.
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 11:19 |
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Up Circle posted:Battle Ground gave me a headache. Just too much. Not even a bad book. Just way too much, even if it had lots of individually good bits. I'm mostly a sucker for seeing the big important people do big epic things in appropriate situations. 350 pages of battle scenes was just too much though after the previous book, and the Fomor are still utterly uninteresting. Ramirez started obviously having problems with Dresden well before the Winter Knight thing. Dresden went all hellfire on the ghouls at the Warden training camp. Dresden, famous for his lovely correspondence course Latin, demonstrated to Ramirez his fluency in both the ghoul language and Ancient Etruscan. Dresden's also apparently very tight with both the White Court and Marcone, as he was able to arrange for Marcone's private army to be standing by at the Raith Deeps, after which he and Lara sponsored Marcone into the Unseelie Accords. And then you have to figure, back in Dead Beat Dresden was pretty cavalier about finding a loophole in the Laws of Magic to justify an act of necromancy. There's a lot of little things Dresden's done in his association with Ramirez that look pretty fuckin' shady when you add them all up. Not to mention the fact that Ramirez has recently been jumped hugely up in rank. Seems natural to me he's gonna be a little extra aggressive about things, prove he deserves his place in the Council and that he's not gonna side with his old buddy Dresden. Up Circle posted:
Marcone was always going to take a coin. It became inevitable as soon as he signed onto the Accords. How else is he going to get the strength to stand as Lord of Chicago in his own right? All his supernatural muscle was rented from Odin, and that's just not a real tenable longterm position. He needs some sort of real personal power to fill his role, because without it he's hideously vulnerable to the Code Duello. Without it, what happens when somebody calls him out? Is he going to send up a purely mortal guy against a wizard? Hire a Valkyrie as a champion? No, he needs power of his own and there's only a handful of sources he could get it. The only two that come to mind immediately are the Swords and the Coins, since becoming a Knight would be counterproductive to being the lord of your own territory, and the Swords are clearly out.
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 11:47 |
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In retrospect, Marcone's "I was going to ask you the same thing" answer to Nicodemus offering him a job makes a lot more sense now. Come to think of it, it was Thorned Namshiel's coin that went missing at the end of Small Favor, wasn't it?
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 13:43 |
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LLSix posted:Just reread the first three Rivers of London books. Do they get better? Nah, the books stay pretty grounded on the police work and low on flashy magic.
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 13:57 |
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LLSix posted:Just reread the first three Rivers of London books. Do they get better? I like them a lot, but if your objection is that they're police procedurals with magic thrown in, then yeah, the series continues to be pretty much that.
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 14:00 |
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Hub Cat posted:Nah, the books stay pretty grounded on the police work and low on flashy magic. Thinks certainly do get a bit more fantastic in later books, things like the the pregnant river goddess.
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 14:02 |
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MonikaTSarn posted:Thinks certainly do get a bit more fantastic in later books, things like the the pregnant river goddess. I had more in my post but then I remembered that the first book had Peter's trip into the ghost world and Mr Punch starting a riot, I'm not sure anything really tops that till the end of Lies Sleeping or Fairyland in Foxglove Summer and even those are 90% Grant investigations. I would say even when the later books are being fairly fantastical it's still treated in a staid or grounded way that is unlikely to appeal to someone looking for a flashier book like Dresden Files. Hub Cat fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Oct 3, 2020 |
# ? Oct 2, 2020 14:13 |
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I'm not far in but have come to the conclusion that this serious would have been loads better if Harry had just hosed Lara years ago. Every single scene with the two of them is just constant eye-loving and I'm sick of it. "Lara was bleeding everywhere and was bruised up but I still wanted to gently caress her! And then midget snuggled up against me and I got hard. But Lara walked by and I came so hard Molly called me Darth Vader."
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 16:15 |
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Waltzing Along posted:I'm not far in but have come to the conclusion that this serious would have been loads better if Harry had just hosed Lara years ago. Every single scene with the two of them is just constant eye-loving and I'm sick of it. Except that she's a powerful White Court vampire so it'd be safer to gently caress an electrical outlet. Feel free to do it if you don't care that much about your life or free will. Harry clearly does. For my part I look at the various descriptions of Lara as a version of the gun porn in action movies (where the camera lovingly examines the various weapons). The point is that the hot body in the slinky clothes? That's her weapon. That's what she uses to kill you. When, you know, she's not using knives, swords, guns, etc to also kill you.
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 18:01 |
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The series would be loads better if the White Court had been exterminated the same time the Red Court was removed.
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 19:21 |
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Everyone posted:Except that she's a powerful White Court vampire so it'd be safer to gently caress an electrical outlet. Feel free to do it if you don't care that much about your life or free will. Harry clearly does. I understand the rationale but I keep getting Piers Anthony vibes. Maybe Butcher is just part of some weird fiction writer quartet of nastiness with Rowling, Card and the aforementioned Anthony.
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 19:54 |
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That makes a lot of sense given the idiotic poo poo Butcher said about COVID-19 and China.
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 19:57 |
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Khizan posted:Marcone was always going to take a coin. It became inevitable as soon as he signed onto the Accords. How else is he going to get the strength to stand as Lord of Chicago in his own right? All his supernatural muscle was rented from Odin, and that's just not a real tenable longterm position. He needs some sort of real personal power to fill his role, because without it he's hideously vulnerable to the Code Duello. Without it, what happens when somebody calls him out? Is he going to send up a purely mortal guy against a wizard? Hire a Valkyrie as a champion? No, he needs power of his own and there's only a handful of sources he could get it. The only two that come to mind immediately are the Swords and the Coins, since becoming a Knight would be counterproductive to being the lord of your own territory, and the Swords are clearly out. I agree with this, but it was also a foreseeable outcome of Even Hand, or whichever Marcone story had him barely survive a mid-grade Fomor noble sorcerer sent to kill him in one of his strong points. He won, but it used a lot of resources and required him to retreat to a prepared position. The price of independence from the coin was looking increasingly like death. Everyone posted:I suppose I can see that. Still, figure that Rudolph will probably end up getting away with it under the law (no body, no bullet, Harry was the only witness) - but only under the law. I think Freydis survived so I wouldn't put it past her to crush Rudy like a bug. Hell, even Marcone respected Murphy. I think Rudolph is in for a bad time. It wouldn't surprise me if Rudolph woke up in a hospital to find Marcone and Gard there in a Butcherverse version of this awesome scene from Person of Interest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yvhMyr_7fY In a world with Kincaid none of these other people are a threat to Rudolph. Drone Jett fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Oct 2, 2020 |
# ? Oct 2, 2020 22:07 |
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Drone Jett posted:I agree with this, but it was also a foreseeable outcome of Even Hand, or whichever Marcone story had him barely survive a mid-grade Fomor noble sorcerer sent to kill him in one of his strong points. He won, but it used a lot of resources and required him to retreat to a prepared position. The price of independence from the coin was looking increasingly like death. You have just reminded me, we never did find out where he was, did we?
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 22:16 |
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wheatpuppy posted:You have just reminded me, we never did find out where he was, did we? Kincaid There's a short story where Ivy fires him because she knows he took the contract to kill Dresden. So that's why he's not with her in Battle Ground, no idea where he is now, but presumably as a former right hand man for Drakul he'll come into that storyline in the near future.
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 23:04 |
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Drone Jett posted:Kincaid There's a short story where Ivy fires him because she knows he took the contract to kill Dresden. So that's why he's not with her in Battle Ground, no idea where he is now, but presumably as a former right hand man for Drakul he'll come into that storyline in the near future. Oh I missed that one, thank you!
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# ? Oct 2, 2020 23:21 |
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It was one of the Microfiction releases on Jim's website earlier in the year--hasnt been published anywhere hard copy yet. Incidentally, that makes the "notations" in Dresden Files Accelerated even less canon than they already were
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 00:16 |
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So I feel like there were big hints as to who Mac really is, but I couldn’t put the pieces together.
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 01:48 |
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Kloaked00 posted:So I feel like there were big hints as to who Mac really is, but I couldn’t put the pieces together. That's definitely still being drawn out. But think back to the last time someone told Harry that looking at them with his Sight would be bad -- an Angel in the 'afterlife' Chicago during Ghost Story. Combine that with Mac's reaction to the placard from Jesus' crucifixion and him being called a "Watcher". Mac's some kind of angel, for sure.
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 01:55 |
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Kloaked00 posted:So I feel like there were big hints as to who Mac really is, but I couldn’t put the pieces together. Re Mac: Likely a member of the Grigori, since he was referred to as Watcher by an Outsider. The Grigori were tasked by God to watch his creation, but they decided to get involved. Introduced "civilization" to mankind, and had Nephilim babies with the women. They are fallen angels condemned to walk the Earth until Judgement Day (but not Fallen)
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 01:57 |
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Skipping a bunch of thread I'm going to reread once I've completed Battle Grounds, but I just refinished Peace Talks and had some thoughts I wanted to put down before I crack Battle Grounds. I think there is a large spoiler on the cover. That's almost certainly the Spear of Destiny, right? Or a makeshift version hacked onto his staff. The athame was even hinted at at the end the last book as being something else and it fits with the INRI plaque and the Crown of Thorns. Second is an off the wall prediction my brain hinted at on my reread. Murphy is going to betray him. It keeps being hinted at that someone is, and that he won't expect it, and this will completely gut him. She probably does it to save his life. All through the last book Harry explains how he's finally learned he can't deprive his friends of choice because it's infantilising. I think this means it's going to happen to him, soon. Maybe not in this book, but I think it's coming. As an aside Peace Talks reads better the second time when you know there's more book coming. Ok, here we go on Battle Grounds.
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 01:58 |
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biracial bear for uncut posted:That makes a lot of sense given the idiotic poo poo Butcher said about COVID-19 and China. I know I'm going to regret this, but what did he say? And just to be clear, I want some kind of link or quote of the actual things that he said, not some version of what somebody else said that he said.
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 02:21 |
There was a screenshot of Butcher's social media that purported to show him being skeptical of the entire thing. Despite being posted the same day it was dated for, it could not be found on any of his social media accounts.
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 02:51 |
Gnoman posted:There was a screenshot of Butcher's social media that purported to show him being skeptical of the entire thing. Despite being posted the same day it was dated for, it could not be found on any of his social media accounts. This is the screenshot. From what I recall, Butcher acknowledged it was legit, but then also came to the realization that he was wrong and needed to learn more about everything. But that was six months ago in this hellworld, so I could be misremembering and it could be fake. Edit: I just went scrolling through his dang Facebook feed to February (dang it's a pain to go back eight months) and I didn't find the above post, but I did find this. It's the only non-meme Covid related post he's had in the last 8 months. It's a little 'both-sides'y but it's definitely not the worst take I've read. Jim Butcher on April 6th posted:Dead from poor isn’t any better than dead from virus. Soysaucebeast fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Oct 3, 2020 |
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 02:52 |
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Yeah, I mean in general I don't think that Butcher is the most enlightened soul out there, but I've seen nothing, including the above, that puts him anywhere like the same category as Card or Rowling or whoever.
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 04:03 |
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Soysaucebeast posted:This is the screenshot. From what I recall, Butcher acknowledged it was legit, but then also came to the realization that he was wrong and needed to learn more about everything. But that was six months ago in this hellworld, so I could be misremembering and it could be fake. Well, I admit that I tend to be a "both sides" person on a lot of issues. If one side is clearly, obviously right and the other is clearly, obvious wrong, there really isn't an argument. It's when both sides really do have some valid points that there's an argument. And I do thank you for posting what Butcher said. I admit that I'd never really thought about "dying from being poor" in exactly those terms. As far as the Facebook image, depending on when it was posted, I could see myself agree with at least some of it based on the information we had at the time. So, I guess based on what I've seen, I don't really think we should put Butcher in some Cabal of Evil Authors. I'm unfamiliar with the evil of Rowling and Anthony. Card I know is a viciously homophobic poo poo-heel
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 05:38 |
Piers Anthony is a major sex pest, and Rowling's made several transphobic comments of late.
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 05:49 |
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Piers Anthony writes pretty blatant pedophilia. Its pretty disturbing. I'm going to link here a deeper dive into a breakdown of some of his more insane stuff Warning if anyone has any issues with depictions of CSA https://litreactor.com/columns/themes-of-pedophilia-in-the-works-of-piers-anthony
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 05:56 |
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I've had the displeasure of reading a Larry Correia book. Butcher's sins have been overblown in this thread.
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 06:13 |
Wizchine posted:I've had the displeasure of reading a Larry Correia book. Butcher's sins have been overblown in this thread.
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 09:58 |
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Gnoman posted:There was a screenshot of Butcher's social media that purported to show him being skeptical of the entire thing. Despite being posted the same day it was dated for, it could not be found on any of his social media accounts. He absolutely went covidiot. He was doing it both on his facebook, and other people's. The first post that got widely shared was deleted, but the topic continued in another thread: https://www.facebook.com/519982123/posts/10157155553362124/?d=n I've not seen him walk it back, then again i've not seen him walk back the transphobia support either (though that one was about his sister being a transphobe rather than him outright saying anything himself).
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 12:04 |
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I think Butcher has the level of dumbass opinions that I personally can't financially support or recommend him, but I don't feel he rises to the level of notorious shithead like Rowling or Piers Anthony where I would feel the need to actively denounce him.
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 14:16 |
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PST posted:He absolutely went covidiot. He was doing it both on his facebook, and other people's. The first post that got widely shared was deleted, but the topic continued in another thread: Well, from what I just read he was a COVIDiot but seemed to be at least willing to be educated on the subject, which puts him well above Hub Cat posted:I think Butcher has the level of dumbass opinions that I personally can't financially support or recommend him, but I don't feel he rises to the level of notorious shithead like Rowling or Piers Anthony where I would feel the need to actively denounce him. I just have something of a deep antipathy for "cancel culture" as a weapon of the enemy. My recollection of it being deployed came from conservative Christian groups trying to use it against Disney for not sufficiently despising LGBTQ people.
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 15:17 |
e: Screw it, I'm not getting into this kind of debate.
anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Oct 3, 2020 |
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# ? Oct 3, 2020 15:52 |
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Yeah uh no thanks, not interested in having this discussion here.
Hub Cat fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Oct 3, 2020 |
# ? Oct 3, 2020 16:33 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 04:20 |
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I powered through battle ground because it was action page after page, not that it was the high crust of literature. I did find some things were written well and others were overused tropes , or butcher. Txt Did I miss when Mab stopped needing to speak through a 3rd party,? I get harry is fine, but everyone else? Book possible spoilers so hidden The starborn thing is really, really wearing thin. The payoff better be worth literally justifying why NOTHING was revealed to the central player to everything, especially in this last book At least the last few books of harry stating that everyone has a better command of magic because they sat down and learned/made stuff is finally over If there isn't a proper gear making montage next book I'm just.. gonna read on because I'm committed at this point
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# ? Oct 4, 2020 00:21 |