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Without spoiling anything, can someone who's read it confirm that it's really good?
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May 24, 2014 23:41
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With Rivers of London, he might be a better writer, and his books might be better quality, but to me, they weren't more enjoyable. He wrote more like Tolkien, where pages or even chapters go by without anything remotely interesting happening, vs. with Dresden, everything that happens is both important and it's interesting the whole way through. Seems like a British thing to me, because I've seen the same thing with other British authors.
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Sep 17, 2014 14:45
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Jomon posted:M lm. , lm.m,l,l lo. [[url=]url= L . Ll . L, l][/url][url=][::/url]/== I couldn't agree more.
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Oct 21, 2014 23:30
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He's only died the one time, can't they cut him a little slack?
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Nov 7, 2014 13:36
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Alera is good, except there are characters I absolutely hate - their chapters go NOWHERE.
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Dec 10, 2014 22:18
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RosaParksOfDip posted:Except when he goes off on awkward tangents like the homosexuality talk. Goddamn was that some terribly ham-fisted poo poo. Where was this? Or do you mean in the books, I remember something like that coming up in Cold Front?
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Jan 10, 2015 05:48
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tithin posted:Harrys conversation with Titania just prior to confronting the lesser queens on the island. Okay, that's what I thought you meant, but wasn't sure from context if you meant something else.
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Jan 10, 2015 23:04
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I really liked Unbound, too. There were some nice "oh, poo poo" moments, and that letter from his brother was something I really wanted to see Isaac's reaction to. It'll be interesting to see all the fallout from Gutenberg death and the unlocking of a ton of books, plus the reveal that magic is real. Honestly, I am SO tired of every urban fantasy going, "yep, we gotta hide this from everyone for reasons!" It's just refreshing to see this series go this route. I started his Goblin Quest series last night, just to see where Smudge came from, and it's okay - finished book one today. Not great, but not bad, either.
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Jan 11, 2015 22:02
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Iron Druid starts okay and gets progressively worse as the series progresses. I tolerated it for quite a while, because there were good elements, and I figured it was just one of those bad series that you can still get some enjoyment out of. But eventually I just got to a point where I'd read a whole book and it was just really, really bad and I hadn't enjoyed any of it, so I didn't bother following any further.
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Jan 12, 2015 00:07
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Captain Capacitor posted:Jim was kind enough to be there for my proposal/engagement party. How does this happen? Edit: Oh, right, that fan-film. Congrats, by the way!
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Jan 28, 2015 06:37
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Alera is okay, but that's all. Other posters have hit on some of the things, but I think the big problem is that Butcher is trying to be 100% serious, and his strength is being able to inject humor into scenes like he does with Dresden. He goes for the epic fantasy style political maneuvering and so on, and it's just plain boring. There are entire point of view characters that do nothing interesting in the entire series, existing to show political crap, and they're a huge slog to get through. I mean, does Isana do anything interesting at all, ever, or even anything that really has any effect on the plot? I also hate the Zerg Vord - it's a clear rip off, down to the creep, and a bad one at that. The lead up was interesting - people were disappearing, etc., and you as the reader knew what was going on, but the characters didn't, so that was really interesting, but the reveal and implementation after that discovery period was terrible. The series has its moments, but overall it's just really flawed. I think he might be able to come back some day and do a better job, but overall, Alera is just okay.
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May 4, 2015 21:59
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I like Alex Verus, but the thing that annoys me is that the character is so powerful, that the author has to invent reasons for him to not completely avoid any and all conflict. You have a character that can know exactly where someone is going to be, so you could just pick the future where your bullet hits where they're going to be and that's that. It makes for a really boring and short book, though, but it just feels like he the author really has to work his rear end off to get around the issue that without rules lawyering around his abilities, Alex automatically wins. It's sort of like how in Libriomancer, Isaac's weakness is any degree of a lack of imagination, though that series gets better as the author gets more used to the rules he has to work around. Just my observations, still enjoy both series.
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May 19, 2015 17:08
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I also really liked Generation V and am looking forward to the next one.
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Jun 2, 2015 00:57
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Gen V is a fun series. It isn't amazing, but it is readable and has almost nothing that makes me feel embarrassed. It's better than Storm Front and Fool Moon, which can be very embarrassing in a bunch of ways, but not better than Grave Peril onward, where embarrassing is reduced to just the occasional sex scenes or descriptions of women and overall quality skyrockets.
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Aug 3, 2015 15:34
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Just finished the new Gen V. I thought it was overall a pretty boring book, more of a setup for the next one than anything. Big events happen, and yet at the same time, nothing really happens. Fort goes around undermining his family's authority the whole book, which could have dangerous consequences in a world where monsters are real, and then starts completely acting on his own, which would more likely than not end with his sister doing the same and just going on a massacre. The end, where he leads his coup, he's basically telling the other races that if they want to, they could rise up and go French Revolution on the Scotts, which would end badly for everyone since something worse would move in and take over the territory. Doing the right thing the wrong way can get everyone killed, and I just found the book frustrating and Fort naive as gently caress. He's a mafia vampire, and he's constantly going around trying to make everyone happy, which is just going to have people take advantage of him to the detriment of everyone. If he wants to make progressive changes, great, but that's the kind of thing that he should be doing slowly. He also needs to be willing to give a little; he's a late twenty year old with a useless degree and lovely work and world experience and isn't willing to even listen to his siblings who have tens of decades of experience on him. Also, at no point did it occur to the Scotts to compromise? "I'll let you do X your way if you let me do Y my way," kind of thing. They'd have to be able to get some things done that way. I guess I was just hoping Fort would become more of a realist as the series progressed instead of his naive idealism. He's a monster in a world of monsters, it's frustrating that he acts like the 18 year old that's never left his home town and still thinks he knows everything about the world. Not that his beliefs are bad, it's just not going to work out like he wants in a feudal monster world.
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Aug 5, 2015 06:53
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JohnnyCanuck posted:Mac wields a power known as The Force Galactic. Well, Harry is from Earth . . .
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Aug 22, 2015 18:18
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The Vord were really interesting when we didn't see any of them. Shortly after they start appearing, they became really lame. The Vord Queen also goes from "interesting, mysterious villain" to "what the hell?" as soon as she shows up in any capacity, too. Oh, you're Kerrigan and these are your Zerg.
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Sep 1, 2015 07:38
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It's sort of like if there's a herd of zebra, and lions kill half of the babies and 15% of the adults each year, but they keep out the wild dogs, hyenas, and leopards. Suddenly, the lions are gone and the other animals are eating 80% of the babies and 20% of the adults, overall it's not a good thing that the lions are gone.
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Sep 9, 2015 01:40
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I'm curious as to whether or not this takes place on a fantasy Earth; a lot of the spires could potentially be linked to Earth locations; Albion - England, Olympian - Greece, etc. I liked it. I didn't really have a problem with any of the characters, though I didn't particularly like Gwen much until she started interacting with Journeyman and she started getting at least a little interesting. Grimm didn't bore me, he was just your standard very capable British officer type; he wasn't anything special as a character, but interesting things happened around him. Bridget was generally a decent POV character, and once I got used to the etherealists and saw that they weren't just randomly crazy and that there was method to their madness, I liked them. And I liked Rowl; if you have a cat, you can imagine them talking and thinking like that. I liked the naval combat; the next book could definitely use more of that, and I'd like to hear more about the surface. One thing I did like was that though it was a multiple POV book, all the POVs closely overlapped, so you were still largely following one plot or two closely related ones, rather than POVs that seem to have absolutely no overlap at all until the end. Overall, it was a fun read and I think Butcher did a good job. OneTwentySix fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Oct 4, 2015 |
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Oct 4, 2015 05:34
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For the first couple books in the series, it's important to remember that Butcher wrote them as a way to prove to his writing teacher that the methods she was teaching would make an absolutely terrible story, and that instead she told him it was publishable. Once he gets into his game and gets some experience, that's when the series goes from mediocre to good/great. I definitely think Fool Moon is the worst in the series, but book three is where it gets much, much better on all accounts, and the main plots of the series start going - just about anything of later significance from books one and two (beyond character introductions) seems almost retconned in, rather than planned, so there's this huge disconnect between one and two vs. the rest of the series in quality and tone.
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Nov 29, 2015 18:37
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thrawn527 posted:Wait, what's this part? Has he written about this someone? What methods was she teaching that he worked into the book? Not sure exactly where, that link might be one place, but he gets asked a lot about it in Q&As. Check out his Q&As on youtube - he's actually a really funny guy to listen to, they're worth the time.
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Dec 1, 2015 00:31
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Kea posted:Just marathoned the entirety of Worm in 4 days, worth it! Great read but im sad because the guys other work just doesnt grab me anywhere near as close. That's insane. Worm is my favorite work of fiction, and I found it through this thread, so I'm glad other people are reading it! I'd also love to have a copy of it, even though I don't much like print books anymore, just to have it on my bookshelf would be great.
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Jun 29, 2016 20:13
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Ika posted:Stupid nerdy rulemongering libriomancer question: At some point I think it was said there was no need to lock large objects, because they were too big to let libriomancers pull them out of a book. Now that there is at least one person that can use e-readers, what is stopping them from using a stadium screen setup as an e-reader and pulling out spaceships?
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Sep 11, 2016 19:40
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There are some good moments in Iron Druid, and it manages to level out at readable but not great for a bit, but it got really bad and that made me stop. The overall trend is from "okay, I guess" to plain horrible. I did like his depiction of Coyote, but that's all that stands out as great to me.
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Sep 11, 2016 21:09
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I really liked Stiletto but I loved The Rook; it was frustrating to go from this character I really liked to the viewpoints of two characters I was just lukewarm about, and then the setting/universe just carried the rest of the story.
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Mar 2, 2017 23:25
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You can always read the urban fantasy not worth reading. Iron Druid, anyone?
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Apr 25, 2017 05:15
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I absolutely loved The Rook, it's among my favorite fantasy novels, and the sequel is quite good, too. Highly recommend. I liked Laundry until a certain point and lost interest. There are some fun parts and I liked the early books, but have no interest in re-reading them or trying to pick the series up again. Could not get into Rivers of London - could be because I tried the audiobook, and I have a much higher failure rate when trying audiobooks, but I just wasn't interested. I like Alex Verus quite a lot, but it's not really on the same level of quality as the other three, not that quality and a fun read are the same thing. The early books are fun, and the later books are much better as the author gets better and grows the world.
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May 10, 2017 00:07
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The thing that pisses me off most about werewolf alpha crap is that that's all based on bad science. Wolf packs don't really do that alpha male/female thing in the wild - it's typically actually a mating pair and their offspring of the past few years. Eventually, the adult pups disperse and form their own packs. The guy that came up with the term alpha wolf has since recanted and wants his old editions of his book taken out of circulation - wolves don't behave like that in the wild, and much of the idea came from jamming a bunch of unrelated adult wolves together with no opportunity to leave the pack in zoos. If you wanted to do a more realistic werewolf pack thing, it would be two parents and their kids, possibly the grandparents, with adult children leaving the pack to start their own; basically, exactly like a nuclear family. OneTwentySix fucked around with this message at 19:21 on May 24, 2017 |
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May 24, 2017 19:14
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My best guess is that it's a territory thing, so that the different families aren't at odds, they partition resources that way and could feed on different emotions if they set out to.
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Jun 1, 2017 17:25
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thrawn527 posted:Eh, from what I understand, Butcher has hosed up Chicago on more than one occasion and no one really cares all that much. He put a cottonmouth snake in the middle of Lake Michigan, and it bugs the hell out of me. You can find them in extreme southern Illinois, but Lake Michigan is over 350 miles beyond their most northern range. Timber rattlesnake would be plausible, possibly even a massasauga, but definitely not a cottonmouth. I know this makes me a giant nerd. OneTwentySix fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Jun 2, 2017 |
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Jun 2, 2017 22:55
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Biologists get annoyed, too, though we tend to be able to give them a pass since no one ever gets biology-related things right. The one glaring example that stands out to me in Dresden is how he detects a cottonmouth snake on Demonreach, despite extreme southern Illinois being the northernmost point of their range (snake nerd).
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Oct 2, 2017 21:27
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What do you mean? That's how hacking works. And two people typing at the keyboard means you can type twice as fast. I think you've just been doing it wrong all this time.
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Oct 3, 2017 02:35
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I feel like Iron Druid is a really fun idea, filtered through a Reddit thread and then rinsed liberally with sewage.
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May 9, 2018 13:56
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"Aldrich needs to be more sparkly. Also, I think we need a love triangle between Gestalt, Myfanwy, and Gestalt."
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Feb 17, 2019 16:40
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 11:12 |
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I'd rather see a third book, hopefully from Myfanwy's point of view again, because The Rook was completely amazing. Not really expecting much from this series, but could always be surprised I guess.
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Mar 15, 2019 16:01
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