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In Summer Knight, there's a bit where Harry summons Lea by the lake and the description mentions circular scars on his wrists. What are they from, I have forgotten entirely.
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May 25, 2014 18:10
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Zore posted:Its possible its just residual scars from his upbringing under Justin. We know he pelted things that hurt quite a bit while training Harry to use his shield, its possible he also did things like bind his wrists and made him escape with magic or the like. Could be, but it seems odd they bother describing them. Maybe it's just a weird line.
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May 26, 2014 01:38
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ConfusedUs posted:When the thorn manacles get put on Harry for the first time in the books, he has a brief flashback to Lea using them on him before, as a young man. DJ_Ferret posted:Either the thorn manacles via Lea or when he was hanging by handcuffs in the climax of book 1. These make sense 
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May 26, 2014 11:42
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Good read. Some thoughts: Were we meant to know who River Shoulders/the Forrest people are? I had no idea. I think Harry might have mentioned meeting Bigfoot one time, but no details. Surprised Dresden is still getting poo poo for "beating up" Andi. She attacked him in wolf mode, was ripping the poo poo out of his back and trying to bite his neck, and he struck her once to get her off. She's also a werewolf - pretty tough and heals fast. We see Will pre-Cold days pull a knife out of his arm and heal up almost instantly. Seems like it should be a "mistakes were made by both sides, no one seriously hurt, move on with your lives" situation. How can Christ-artifacts be anti-Outsider weapons? The Outsiders have been trying to become Insiders since Reality was created. Winter has been the guardian for "this era", which given the lifespan of some of the powers and no one giving Mab poo poo for being the new kid on the block must have been a long drat time already. Have there been major Outsider attacks since Christ was around? Nick would have been alive for those then, and the White council existed in that period - and given the lifespan of wizards 2000 years isn't such a long period that records wouldn't be kept (McCoy has a journal chain going all the way back to the original Merlin, for example) yet the Council as a whole seems clueless about the threat. I assume Nick told Tessa Dresdan killed Deirdre, but after seeing the Gate of Blood stuff I had assumed Tessa knew what Nick would have to do to get into the vault and was trying to stop it to save Deirdre. If so, it seems pretty credulous of her to believe Harry did it when Nick comes back from his Deirdre-killing trip sans Deirdre. If not, what was she trying to stop that was important enough to fight Nick over it and yet not so important she wasn't willing to help him at the end? Slightly disappointed Harry didn't punch anyone or use his ice-claws, I really thought he'd whip them out to surprise evil Bigfoot or kill the goons at the end. Maybe even use them to fight Tessa in the vault since using fae powers wouldn't break technology. I enjoyed the reoccurring "Parkour!"s, especially when Grey used it at the end. Hades/Spot were awesome too. Someone mentioned Grey possibly being Kincaid, but I doubt it. Remember Harry has seen both Kincaid and a nagoshii with his Sight, Kincaid was big and scary, but nothing like the nagloshii. People have also mentioned surprise that someone with a nagloshii parent isn't pure evil, but they were originally some kind of divine messenger. They aren't genetically evil - they just fell pretty hard.
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May 29, 2014 01:03
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thespaceinvader posted:Yeah, because nickelheads never come back. I'm assuming Nick kept the coin. Who cares if her coin comes back? Deidre was one of the "partner" Denarians, we know basically nothing about her demon - Deidre was the one driving and if the coin is given to someone else it'll be a completely new character with no affection to or from Nick. Deidre is not coming back, and if her coin does it isn't important. Slightly surprised you don't remember Binder, he's one of the people hunting Morgan in Turncoat, he summons an army of demons to find Morgan and Molly as they hide in Harry's storage safe house and again towards the end of the book on Deamonreach. Avalerion posted:I don't think the mantles were all that powerful to begin with, the last summer knight died falling down stairs after all. He was old and broke his neck. On the other hand, Lloyd Slate survived a rather large lightning blast from Harry in the same book. Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 21:18 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 21:10
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Wade Wilson posted:The naagloshi in this book is not the one Dresden fought before. It also isn't even a full-blooded Naagloshi, as Gray explains with the "we don't get to choose our parents, and don't give me any poo poo about it, I know who your mother was and she was pretty loving evil" stuff. Also, naagloshi get more powerful by eating wizards/magic users (remember, this is why the one Harry fought followed Morgan - a powerful, yet wounded, wizard passed by and the naagloshi wanted a meal). Presumably if Grey is trying to be a nice guy he doesn't murder many people to eat their magic. Not to mention he's likely younger, and less powerful for that reason too.
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Jun 5, 2014 15:26
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Thyrork posted:Mr Dresden is not good people, riding around in his headspace is uncomfortable at times. It's kinda one of the big themes of the series: It's ok to have hosed up desires, it's actually acting on them that makes you a monster. Azuth0667 posted:I'm rereading skin game and wow you do pick up on a lot of little hints in the dialogue. Also I'm pretty sure Nick had determined way before hand he was going to use his daughter for the gate of blood considering how he responds to Micheal's talk of family before Harry had even told Nick about the replacement for Murphy. I thought that was the whole reason Tessa was trying to stop him. Nick, Tessa, and Deidre all knew in advance what had to be done and Tessa didn't want Deidre to die. I don't think they knew more than a few years in advance at most though, because the sting was only setup after Nick pissed of Marcone. Although if that's right I think Tessa is pretty dumb to join Nick and blam Harry at the end of Skin Game.
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Jun 13, 2014 12:40
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ImpAtom posted:My major complaint here is that unless it is a "never feeds on anyone ever' vampire, I can't sympathize with someone who has murdered people to extend their own life. No amount of angst and sadness can escape that fact. The alternate problem is that if they can just resist their urge to feed than they're boring as hell because it devalues the actual curse. It's very hard for a series to really manage to hit the sweet spot for me where I can sympathize with someone who uncontrollably murders. The Protagonist in GenV doesn't feed on anyone, besides his mother-vampire on occasion.
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Jul 22, 2015 16:57
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Ornamented Death posted:I don't care how good this book is or this series becomes, I will never be able to take a character named "Captain Grimm" seriously. Mad Grimm, if we want to be informal.
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Oct 8, 2015 13:10
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I spent half the book thinking Journeyman was the guy's title/rank, and then the second half thinking it was probably his name but not being entirely sure. Much worse then spires or habbles.
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Oct 11, 2015 10:37
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I agree with that. I just finished Library at Mount Char and overall really enjoyed it, but the last part of the book wasn't particularly good.
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Nov 4, 2015 20:09
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tessiebee posted:Kate Daniels series is pretty decent I've been reading this series recently and it's pretty good, Kate is refreshingly bloodthirsty without being a jerk.
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Feb 10, 2016 13:52
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I just read all the 20 palaces books and now I'm sad it won't be finished 
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Jul 24, 2016 15:24
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Yeah, I was fairly lost in the first book, although it wasn't too bad. Read the 2nd next and it was fine. Then I noticed there was a prequel and read it third and things made so much more sense, which was good because the actual third book would have been a lot harder to get into without the prequel.
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Jul 24, 2016 22:28
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:In Grave Peril, he does tell Susan about the thing- but he doesn't adequately convey the level of danger. This is probably because he doesn't know the breadth of Bianca's killboner. Susan knows about the supernatural, but she doesn't have Harry's level of experience. She underestimates the seriousness of it. Her want to know more about supernatural critters wins out. Actually, why does Bianca have such a killboner? If I remember right she thinks Harry killed one of her workers, but why would a rather old vampire care so much about a human - especially when it risks getting into a fight with the White Council which is at this point the undisputed magical heavyweight champion of the world? Now the Red Court are planning to challenge this, but if she knows about the coming war it's all the more reason not to kick it off early and if she doesn't know about it then why is the risking starting something with the Council?
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Oct 9, 2016 21:51
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:The second is that he, a human, slapped her across the face with a ray of sunshine. In her house. As a well-to-do vampire on the rise, she couldn't ignore that. The other vampires would make fun of her. Well at that point she was attacking a wizard of the white council already, which is a big step. Still, several of the mentioned points make sense. I should re-read these..
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Oct 10, 2016 13:04
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Speaking of vampire books, whatever happened to the Chris Cséjthe (Half/Life) series? The last book came out 2007 and the writer was apparently working on a final one. William Mark Simmons' webpages looks like a crazy man's from 1990 though 
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Oct 11, 2016 01:37
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-Fish- posted:I'm gonna go against the flow and advise avoiding the Mercy Thompson series. It definitely never reaches Anita Blake levels of supernatural sex, but the romance arc still majorly ruins the series. The first few books are really promising but the romantic relationship gets into this poorly written sub/dom thing with her boyfriend as the dom, just with every instance of the words "sub" and "dom" replaced with "pack" and "alpha". This gets incredibly bad at the point where Mercy is raped by someone who drugs her with a mind control serum and is dealing with PTSD from it. Her boyfriend cures her of being raped and having PTSD by being ~sooo alpha <3 <3 <3~ and forcing himself on her while they're alone in his house.. That was the fourth or fifth book I think? I noped out hard at that point. See also, the women of the werewolf tribes ALL know Mercy and just hate her because unlike them, she can shapeshift whenever she wants, so she can have babies since she won't kill them by shapeshifting if she doesn't want to. Does the forcey-cure happen later or something? I'm about a third of the way through the book after the rape and so far there's been nothing of the sort. The boyfriend did use ~alpha magic~ to make her drink from the fairy cup to heal her physical injuries, but there was nothing about curing her PTSD with it. He's also been very clear they're not going to do anything physical until she's had some therapy so I'll be very surprised if he turns around and forces her into sex.
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Jan 9, 2017 12:44
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Seems like most of what I have to say about Peace Talks has already been said:Everyone posted:As for Peace Talks, very much half a book - and not an especially interesting half. thumper57 posted:N'thing the editing complaints... aside from the "remake of The Blob" twice in four pages there was also Lara saying "we can always choose to use the Hunger, but can't always choose to not use it" two different times, and Harry reacting like this was a new insight both times, Harry saying about 4 times in one sequence that Lara made him want to beat his chest like Tarzan, and for one sentence Butters is sparring with Santa instead of Sanya. I enjoyed the book but it felt like a draft that got published by accident. I really don't understand how you end up with a book of this poor quality after, what, 6 years? Seems like it would have been better to just cut some of the filler and worst bits and combine it with Battle Grounds to release one presumably good book, although I really hope BG is going to be better edited. I was also disappointed that after all the build up and delays that we see "the parasite" for about one paragraph and it's not an interesting paragraph. Zore posted:Like, to be clear, the deal with Marcone was that he wouldn't go after them and they gave him weregild for the dead guy. And as far as we know Marcone has done literally nothing to Harry or Murphy since. Even if Marcone isn't involved and doesn't actually own Rudy as suspected, he does have a lot of the political power and other cops in his pocket, so you'd think he could put pressure on the investigation to go away now that they are all working together.
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Jul 25, 2020 11:54
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Masonity posted:Why would he give Dresden a freebie like that? If anything, I could see him manufacturing just enough of an investigation to get Dresden worried, then offer to make it go away in exchange for a favour. I meant more by the end of Peace talks, once everything kicks off and they know they're in trouble and on the same side it doesn't really make sense to let anything jog Harry's elbow. But yeah, might just be because they haven't talked yet. newershadow posted:Alternatively, we’ve seen the sword fail to cut someone. What happens if it does cut someone that it shouldn’t? And how do the Swords feel about Outsiders? I think the Swords might be very useful vs Outsiders, since Skin game establishes that major Christian relics are powerful weapons against them. Avalerion posted:That's another short story thing. Ramirez and Molly try to hook up, but since Molly is the Maiden in the Mother/Crone trio her mantle is hardwired to preserve that maidenhood - so as they are about to boink it makes her go berserk and beat Ramirez to a pulp. That sounds very strange. The winter lady can't gently caress? Maeve seemed to be all about sex any time she turned up, and in Cold days went on about how the Lady and Knight are traditionally meant to get it on. I know Nemesis let her lie, and Molly says she was a poo poo Lady who neglected her duties, but until the very end she had to keep her lying concealed so if her power is tied to virginity then you'd think she wouldn't constantly be publicly offering Harry and others sex. Also pretty surprised Molly is a virgin since she had at least one boyfriend in her late teens, got naked and offered Harry sex later, and is what, 25-30 now? Khizan posted:Yeah, that's what I think too. He didn't like Dresden hanging around with him, but Dresden's an adult and can make his own choices even if they're bad ones. It's when he saw that Maggie was around Thomas that his hatred got cranked up to 11. I mean, his daughter had been killed by Lord Raith. It's not surprising that seeing Raith's son hanging out around his granddaughter drove him over the edge. Does McCoy even know Lord Raith is a mere puppet of Lara these days? If not he still thinks the Whites are run by the magic-immune bastard who killed Maggie.
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Jul 25, 2020 13:38
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I'm also re-reading Dresden, and compared to Peace talks even the first two seem good. I wonder how much is foreshadowing vs just callbacks latter, but I noticed in Summer Knight Harry twice mentions almost breaking his back while fighting faeries, and Murphy suffers a knee injury while fighting a monster. Harry also talks about wanting to wipe out the Red Court. I'm also wondering exactly when Lea and Maev get Nemesised - it apparently gets them via the knife the vamps give Lea, but Lea saves and/or helps Harry several times after this when Harry already seems to be in the Outsiders' sights, and Maev has a small part in helping Harry and foiling Auroa's (Nemesis') plan at the end of SK which implies either they are not yet infected, not fully controlled, or are playing 12d chess. I also wonder how much of the total Dresden files word count is copy pasted character intros and repeat explanations of things  Finally, do we ever find out why the Denarians attack Arctis Tor? I haven't got to that point again yet but I don't think it's ever revealed, and if nothing else Skin Game would have been a good time to mention it.
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Aug 4, 2020 23:16
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biracial bear for uncut posted:I think you mean "poo poo song that is still cooler than anything in The Dresden Files since Skin Game". Being cooler than Peace talks isn't much of a bar to clear though 
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Aug 11, 2020 14:31
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rndmnmbr posted:Peace Talks is pretty standard Dresden fare, just with a missing climax. We've just gotten older and become more critical in our tastes. I don't think that's entirely correct, or at least it isn't for me. I re-read Cold days and Skin game just before Peace Talks, and I'm now re-reading the entire series (on Dead Beat now) and I've enjoyed every book more than PT. I think PT is just the worst Dresden book. It's poorly edited, the action isn't fun, it's both short as a book while also being too padded out as a half-book with too many plot threads, and it doesn't deal with a few things I had been looking forward to - such as details about Bonetia or much reaction to Harry's return to life and changes. Speaking of Dead Beat, I notice Cowl talks a lot like Sharkface from Cold days (not suggesting they are the same entity, I just wonder if it was intentional), and apparently he was the one who gave Lea the Nemesis-infected knife, but both he and especially Kumori are much less hostile/evil than I would expect from people who work with Outsiders to end all life. I hope this eventually makes sense and isn't just a pile of ret-conning and ad hoc writing.
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Aug 16, 2020 09:46
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It's a bit confusing because Lea mentions swapping the sword for the knife and Mavra got the sword, and yet:quote:In Dead Beat, Harry Dresden meets Cowl for the second time, where he's searching for Die Lied der Erlking and The Word of Kemmler with Kumori, his assistant. Harry recognized them from Bianca St. Claire's ball as the ones who gave the Leanansidhe the athame. which is the bit of the book I just read, but I looked it up to confirm.
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Aug 17, 2020 02:00
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Beachcomber posted:I haven't read them because I don't really want to read a screen. I suspect others haven't for the same reason. What does this mean? E: Oh, they are only on Kindle? They're lovely to read on though
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Aug 22, 2020 23:26
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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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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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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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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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StrixNebulosa posted:Anita Blake 9 thoughts as I'm over halfway through it: That's Obsidian Butterfly, right? I remember it being the best for a while, and probably the last one I enjoyed before dropping the series. Reading Small Favor now, Harry again worries about having his back broken. I really wonder if the time travel speculated about earlier will both involve Harry fixing little Chicago for his past self in Proven guilty AND pushing his own ladder over in Changes. Perhaps Mirror mirror shows him what happens if he tried rescuing Maggie without Winter powers?
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Aug 31, 2020 11:19
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I really enjoy her necromancy and I wish there was more of that and less group sex. I remember in one of the early books there was some other necromancer making abominations out of multiple corpses and Anita eventually tears him to shreds with a pack of zombies. She should have solved more of her problems like that, IMO. On the subject, if you haven't read it yet I recommend trying the Kate Daniels series next. It's a bit different from many of the big Urban Fantasy settings because the world has been partially destroyed by magic and now everyone knows about it and the various monsters, and Kate herself is refreshingly brutal in dealing with threats that arise. It does veer a bit into paranormal romance later on, but far, far less than Anita does.
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Aug 31, 2020 15:21
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William Bear posted:I missed it yesterday, but the first two chapers of Battle Ground are up. Within a few pages of each other: quote:I looked down at her and said, “If anything happens, it will be near shore. Makes the most sense for the enemy to post their people or whatever there. Better tell everyone to be ready.” quote:“Okay. I think we’re getting close. If there’s going to be trouble, it will be between us and shore. Better let them know.” E: Reading on, there's a lot of repetitive wording in just these two chapters. I'd definitely be asking a writer to reword some of this if I was editing it. Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Sep 3, 2020 |
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Sep 3, 2020 09:06
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:His new hot young cosplay wife probably isn't as good a beta reader as his old professional writer wife, that's my guess. Oh. Did that happen during the Peace talks wait? His writing feels different, and worse, in both PT and what I've seen of BG. I thought it might just be from a 6 year gap and a lot of rewrites, but if his ex-wife was heavily involved in his writing it could also explain it.
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Sep 3, 2020 09:50
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I enjoy Faust a lot, but at the same time he doesn't always feel powerful enough to do the things he does. Perhaps Schaeffer is just too good at making Faust afraid of the weird poo poo that happens, but I often find myself thinking there's no way he can get out of his situation with just magic cards and a gun, but then he does, and even directly after reading it I'm not sure how he actually got away with it. When he's doing gangster stuff with a side of magic it feels a lot more plausible for the power level I think he has. I guess it can also feel a bit inconsistent when he goes from defeating princes of hell or ancient wizards to being terrified of the FBI or the city not granting his club a liquor license. But I also love the lore and meta-plot which is very weird indeed, so it's not like I don't want the spooky stuff happening. Faust is a land of contrasts.
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Sep 5, 2020 15:01
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Huh, so in Changes when Harry meets Odin for the first time he compares his laugh to Santa's. And then in Cold days... It's a neat touch and there's a number of these little bits of foreshadowing that I'm only noticing during a series re-read.
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Sep 11, 2020 13:06
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I did not know that!
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Sep 11, 2020 18:12
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In fairness, Mouse is constantly described as having a lion-like mane and battle roar.
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Sep 12, 2020 12:43
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Changes re-read. Was Martin just lying at the end when he told the Red King that the Brotherhood was being killed off as he spoke? I thought he had sold them out and also hoped to destroy the Reds. But in Skin game, Asher's thing is she was living with the Brotherhood until the Blood Curse killed them so she's mad at Harry, implying the Reds hadn't struck them as Martin described. If Martin didn't betray the Brotherhood and was entirely devoted to breaking the Reds then surely he could have just killed himself on the alter which might have left vamps under ~200 ok, but would still have ended them as a power.
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Sep 15, 2020 20:49
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ImpAtom posted:Martian wasn't a vampire. Susan was turning into one which was the entire reason she would work for the curse. Martin and Susan were both half-vampires and could turn at any point by killing someone vampily. Hub Cat posted:Yeah Martin initiated the purge while they were at Chichen Itza, the whole thing was over in minutes I can't imagine there was time to hit them before the curse went off. No, the purge was going on the whole time: quote:“I beg your forgiveness, my lord,” Martin said. “It seemed the proper time. On my initiative, strike teams began removing Fellowship personnel and safe houses two hours ago. By this time tomorrow, there won’t be an operative left alive south of the United States. And our financial division will have taken or destroyed well over ninety percent of their accounts.” And the entire point of a move like this is to strike everyone at the same time so no one can be warned or notice the loss of contact, if Martin was telling the truth then all or most of the Brotherhood should be dead by the time the curse goes off.
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Sep 16, 2020 13:06
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Yeah, I was expecting a pothole, curb, or just a small stone caught in a wheel to flip the cart and loving launch her.
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Sep 17, 2020 11:21
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