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Yeah, in the mythology of the books (as distinct from actual mythology), Outsiders are a very specific sort of thing, completely separate from anything that is part of the universe. Gods, immortals, Fae, Angels, demons (both the Fallen Angel and the Nevernever critter variety), First People, vampires, ghosts, and anything and everything else are in one category, and Outsiders are in another. That's why there's a specific Law about Outsiders that can be summed up as "don't".
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Nov 20, 2020 16:19
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Cthulu isn't an Outsider, either. More like one of the Old Gods that are imprisoned in Demonreach. Has Cthulhu even been mentioned in the Dresden books? (Honest question, I genuinely can't recall.) It would make sense for Lovecraft's critters to not be Outsiders, honestly, but just Things From The Nevernever that sprouted due to a sufficient number of people believing in them. (I could see Lovecraft being a "This Is How You Deal With These Particularly Dangerous Monsters" White Council op the way Bram Stoker's Dracula was, but I'd rather Butcher just avoided him entirely, tbh).
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Nov 20, 2020 16:39
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Lovecraft has always come across as someone more worthy of pity than of hate to me. The man was pathologically terrified of the world, though I'm of course not excusing his complete bugfuck-level racism at all. Either way, I don't particularly need or want to read his works.
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Nov 21, 2020 11:31
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It would hardly be unheard of for a fae to have a sword, that is, a bit of sharp metal used for stabbing people. I think this is the first time I've heard any of them refer to having a Sword, which suggests a badge of office, yeah. I liked the story and I don't usually like Butcher's non-Harry-POV Dresden stories that much, because he's not usually very good at making his narrators sound like not-Harry. He wasn't here either, but it was a fun enough story that I didn't care.
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Dec 30, 2020 21:48
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It's actually S Words, Mr. Connery
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Dec 30, 2020 23:24
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It helps (me) to think of the Dresden Files as superhero fiction rather than "urban fantasy" (in the specific "noir/detective stories with fantasy elements" mode that term is often shorthand for). I definitely agree that the quality dips a bit after Changes (with the exception of Ghost Story which is my favorite book in the entire series; this is an, um, contentious opinion), but certainly not to the point of unreadability (though Peace Talks on its own without Battle Ground puts that to the loving test). Anyway, read until you stop having fun, then read some of the other suggestions people in this thread have. I'll definitely second Ben Aaronovich's "Rivers of London" series; bear in mind that it actually does stay consistently closer to Police Procedural With Magic In, so it's got a bit of a different feel to the Dresden books. I also like Kat Richardson's "Greywalker" series specifically as magical PI fiction, though I'm kind of in the minority there (and I will certainly grant that the first couple books are very rough, though not as rough as early Dresden). I really need to get 'round to reading the Alex Verus books.
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Feb 2, 2021 15:05
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Amazon recommended them because I read the Murderbot novels How were these? I'm intrigued, but was put off a bit by the price-to-page ratio.
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Feb 3, 2021 18:12
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Just started in on the Alex Verus series (just finished book four) and I have no real coherent thoughts on them but I'm enjoying myself a lot.
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May 31, 2021 01:25
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So, just finished Burned and So this is the analogue to Changes in the series, huh?
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Jun 4, 2021 16:05
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So now that I'm completely through the Verus series to date: I got a little grumpy for a while about the general change in tone in the last two books though I can't really say it wasn't earned, or that it wasn't coming. I definitely like Alex Verus, Hanging On By The Skin Of His Teeth better than Alex Verus, Murderhobo though. (It's not really that huge a change in his character, I guess; Alex was always the dude who would prioritize keeping himself and his friends alive over every other consideration, and the best you could say for him is that he would at least try not to go on killing sprees if there was another way. Now he's just much more capable of killing sprees, but that's not really as interesting to read.) Jacka does a great job of presenting Alex as an unreliable narrator. Not that he's lying to us (though certainly to himself), but he's blinded by his own perspective and we the readers get to see a bit beyond that from time to time. I'll be interested to see how things pan out in the last book. Also I have definitely watched way too much Arrowverse stuff in the last year but Cinder is 100% Dominic Purcell's portrayal of Mick Rory, right? Right?
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Jun 8, 2021 21:40
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Omi no Kami posted:What did you think of how the stuff with Rachel and Drakh concluded? Besides the Anne stuff I think that was my biggest disappointment in the series- Drakh was really well-established as a scary eldritch threat guy, so boiling him down to "Lol, he's Verus except with another djinn, because everyone has a djinn" felt like a real letdown, especially since after multiple books of talking up the Rachel stuff, it turns out that the prophesied thing was basically "Distract a guy for a second so you can shoot him." Richard being another diviner was more or less inevitable for thematic reasons if nothing else. I haven't found anything about him to be that disappointing, mostly because he's always been Alex's personal nightmare, and it became increasingly clear that that's because of the circumstances of their relationship rather than because Richard was objectively some sort of unbeatable superwizard (except to the extent that diviners are really loving powerful in their way). Rachel...yeah, I'm a bit disappointed, less with the idea that redemption arcs only work if the person has any desire to be redeemed, which is fair enough, than with the general idea that trying to help friends who make bad choices is stupid and naive and what you should really do is kill them as hard as possible. For the record, I've really enjoyed the series in spite of some disappointing turns here at the end and I'm fully onboard to see how it turns out. Although...drat, I kind of expected it going in but the Babylon 5 references are REALLY blatant, aren't they?
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Jun 9, 2021 12:32
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Darkrenown posted:Speaking of Richard, after finding that he's also a Diviner I'm a bit confused that it wasn't obvious after the time Alex had a meeting with him and considered just stabbing him there and then. He did think to himself that he was surprised the fight would be so close, but he apparently could not see that he'd be getting counter-divined. Unless I am misremember and that was after Alex knew? Maybe I'm misremembering but isn't that part of what clued Alex in that Richard was probably a diviner? Hieronymous Alloy posted:It may be difficult for dividers to predict other dividers, mutually. There's a recursivity issue. One of the things I noticed as I read is that divination seems to be more or less unblockable and undetectable by other mages or magical protections, even those who are generally capable of blocking things like mental magic or time magic or whatever. The only things I ever remember even slowing Alex's divination down (aside from the built-in limitations like free will or there just being too many potential futures to sort through) were the wards in Crystal/Vitus's mansion in whichever book the apprentice tournament was in.
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Jun 9, 2021 14:20
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Everyone posted:A couple of points. First, Alex and Rachel were never friends IIRC. He's become friends with people who cared about Rachel (Cinder and ghost or whatever of the apprentice whose name I can't be arsed to look up), but any attempts Alex made to "save" Rachel where always for them, not for Rachel herself. Yeah, I don't think you're wrong about any of this, it just didn't really come across well for me. Hieronymous Alloy posted:The overall treatment of Anne is what I see as the series weak point, in a few different ways. Yeah, no question. I'm still trying to sort out how I feel about Anne's story in about twenty different ways but I think making the Also hahahaha I'd almost forgotten, Sheridan's Shadow-possessed wife in B5 is called Anna.
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Jun 9, 2021 19:57
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Cinder feels like a manifestation of the old Pratchett line about not having morals but having standards.
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Jul 19, 2021 13:58
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Bhodi posted:So you would have respected Alex more if he was upfront and honest about being ruthless to protect things he cares about, and that lying is worse than violence? I'd have respected Alex more if he hadn't given up.
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Jul 20, 2021 03:02
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ClydeFrog posted:I just finished Between Two Fires. Oh I've been meaning to read this one for a while now.
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Aug 15, 2021 21:54
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OscarDiggs posted:Is it recommended to skip the first two Dresden Files books still? Since the new one came out I've been meaning to do a reread but I know both of those were the weakest. They're definitely the weakest in the series, and if you've read them before you certainly know whether you need to read them again.
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Aug 20, 2021 13:11
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Speaking as someone who wasn't super happy with the developments in the last book or two I'm still on board to see where this roller coaster ends and how many more Babylon 5 references he can fit in.
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Nov 30, 2021 10:52
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So I just finished Risen. I might honestly give the whole Verus series a reread soon. I found it to be a satisfying enough ending, though it really felt like Jacka wasn't ever quite sure what to actually do with Richard. His villains in general were probably the weakest element of the series, sure they were scary enough but, Light or Dark Council, they all seemed to have no motivation beyond BWAH HA HA I AM EVIL. The 'good' people who eventually turned against Alex, Caldera in particular, because he did so much to protect Anne were much more interesting villains than his actual villains, I thought. Might have more thoughts later.
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Jan 3, 2022 16:05
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biracial bear for uncut posted:In the discussion on Reddit I basically re-capped the Ship of Theseus problem for the person I'm talking to and their response is "You're still making poo poo up!" There was a Greg Egan novel (Schild's Ladder, I think) that had a somewhat different take on a very similar question. It's been a long time since I've read it but I think the gist was, among post-human not-entirely-corporeal beings, how you could tell if you were still the same person after abandoning body after body. And being a Greg Egan novel the answer took the form of a complicated mathematical equation but the gist of it was that as long as you could draw some kind of line between who you were and who you are, you're probably still the same person in some sense. So you could argue that as long as Fateweaver Alex still thinks of himself as Alex, he's probably not wrong to do so, even if he's been fundamentally changed. Though I think you could also argue the opposite point too.
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Jan 25, 2022 21:30
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I think regardless, we're left with either a fundamentally changed Alex or a new being that thinks he's Alex and I'm not really sure there's a difference there that matters much.
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Jan 25, 2022 22:12
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Happiness Commando posted:I think you're thinking of Diaspora which is one of my favorite early-Egan works. I'm behind on Verus so I can't participate in chat but I did see some spoilered text quoting this post and I should probably catch up because this bit of discussion is very interesting. It's possible, yeah. I read like three or four of his books in quick succession about ten years ago and they all kind of ran together in my head since then. Was Diaspora the one that had the subplot where they spend a lot of time and effort trying to develop wormhole travel only to discover that it doesn't actually save them any time over conventional spaceflight?
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Jan 26, 2022 17:32
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Rivers of London suffers from the same "the world and its past is infinitely more interesting than the main character" syndrome as the Iron Druid books, except Peter is far less irritating a person than Atticus. I unironically think of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell as a direct prequel to the Rivers books.
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May 16, 2022 23:57
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LesLEY goddammit!
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May 18, 2022 19:00
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It is my unacknowledged headcanon that Harry drat near killing himself with a potion in Fool Moon is the reason he hasn't used them as much since then. e. biracial bear for uncut posted:Yeah, but there were only the three/four effect types, right? The Supercoffee (which came across a bit more like Wizard Meth when Harry used it). Also, I think the Third Eye drug in Storm Front was technically a potion too.
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May 23, 2022 20:21
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biracial bear for uncut posted:I thought the Third Eye drug was retconned into a Nemesis vector and not actually a drug/potion. I don't recall that but it's been a thousand years since I've read most of the books and that plot aspect bores me to tears so you could well be right.
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May 24, 2022 11:39
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:My guess is that his new wife probably isn't as good an editor as his actual writer ex wife. I liked Ghost Story more than most people (in this thread) (and in general) but otherwise I'm generally in agreement. Do we know if his current wife is actually doing the editing? Because I am not convinced, based on Peace Talks and Whatever The One After Peace Talks Is Called that he actually has an editor any more. Honestly, a 13-book run where probably 10 of them were 'pretty good' or better is a hell of an achievement even if the later books have not kept up the pace.
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Nov 3, 2022 03:52
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ConfusedUs posted:However, A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark from the same author? That book I recommend to everyone. It's great. The world needs more somewhat batty, elderly auntie protagonists. I need to give this one another try. I bounced quite hard off it for some reason, and I don't think it had anything to do with the book itself. I did really like his "The Way Into..." trilogy even if the ending felt a bit "Okay I'm in the last 100 pages of the last book I guess I'd better do something to wrap this up". He's not always the most polished of authors but he's got some real invention in his storytelling and I'll forgive a lot for that.
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Nov 14, 2022 17:23
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Ninurta posted:I unfortunately was lost when the first battle starts with the Big Hero shouting out "Splashtown!" I know towns have weird names, but that took me out of it. This makes me want an epic urban fantasy battle set during one of those crazy stunt shows they have at amusement parks.
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Nov 16, 2022 16:12
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Calidus posted:Is Butcher’s kid’s book any good? Not read it myself but there's some talk about it a page or two back.
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Dec 7, 2022 17:01
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I read one book by Stross (Accelerando, so probably rather different than his UF stuff) and I enjoyed the book and it did not leave me with a need to read anything else by him. I'm not quite sure how to reconcile this seeming contradiction, it's just how I feel.
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Sep 28, 2023 18:47
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I liked Ghost Story a lot more than most people but yeah I would have been fine with the series ending there.
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Apr 21, 2024 20:32
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Deptfordx posted:It's been discussed before, but Butchers first wife, who he split up with after i think Ghost Story. Was heavily involved in his previous work. She was his editor, which is definitely a good way to get around the 'Too big to be edited properly anymore' problem a lot of successful authors succumb to. As well as being heavily involved as a sounding board, note she's a succesful author in her own right. Yeah, I don't want to read too much into personal circumstances that I know nothing about beyond the internet rumor mill, but Peace Talks/Battle Ground (Peace Talks in particular) read like maybe a second or third draft, and needed something to get knocked into shape. The storylines were fine, but the quality of writing was not what I'd expect from an experienced writer, and certainly not from the person who wrote, for example, Small Favor. Ravus Ursus posted:I don't think you're missing anything. I've been a fan since the third book and I genuinely like Fool Moon and Peace Talks was very disjointed and weird and Battlegrounds felt like he was trying to do an Avengers style thing but also the rules are gone for reasons so everyone is just blasting with all their power all the time. I'm kind of in the same boat as you, I think. My feeling has long been that Butcher's been deliberately writing Harry as an exaggerated loner nerd with some hangups about women, and that he knows that Harry's attitudes are wrong and consistently get him into trouble, but that Butcher also has some (hopefully not completely after all these years) unexamined baggage all his own that creeps into his work. It's never been enough to completely drive me away before (though it drove my girlfriend away from the books early on, and she'd been enjoying up til then) but Peace Talks had some especially bad moments, yeah. Also, on one hand, if this is the cringiest horniest thing you've ever read (universal 'you', not you the person I've quoted specifically) then I fuckin' envy you, but I'm also not nearly starved enough for reading material that I need to put up with that poo poo to get an enjoyable story about wizard superheroes (and even if I were I certainly wouldn't blame anyone for deciding differently). We'll see how I'm feeling when I'm in the retirement home and the next book comes out, but enh.
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Apr 22, 2024 14:03
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