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Finished. It's not the best in the series, but it ramps up toward the end. I'm on board with the idea that it's the Spear of Destiny, since all the items seem to be related to Christ specifically and that'd leave the "dagger" the odd one out. The placard is probably the one with INRI on it. The most disappointing thing to me ties back into book 10: No discussion between Harry and Nicky about Nemesis. Nicky had talked about Nemesis as a distraction, but everything he'd said was still technically true. Enemy or not, you'd think that'd warrant a bit of a discussion.
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May 27, 2014 21:20
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First book is completely the weakest and still more than enjoyable. Ramps up well after that, doesn't do too bad with upping stakes for characters, and unfortunately leaves you wanting more when you finish up what's out there. I liked it better than the Rivers of London stuff.
Mortanis fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Sep 9, 2014 |
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Sep 9, 2014 00:18
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And... Cinder Spires is done. On to Peace Talks! https://twitter.com/longshotauthor/status/533204154324623361
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Nov 14, 2014 17:29
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Well, that'll teach me to pop into the Dresden Files thread and negligently flick a mouse over spoilers without fully reading they were for Libriomancer book 3 that I'm a third of the way through, rather than continued discussion on the Peter Grant stuff I gave up on and has filled the thread for so long. Just caught one sentence but there's enough regrets packed into it.
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Jan 7, 2015 05:59
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jivjov posted:To be fair, the post does explicitly say that its discussing Libriomancer. Right. I never said it was their fault.
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Jan 8, 2015 03:48
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The third Libriomancer is clearly the best of the three. There's a few parts where I think it crawls, but overall it really comes into its own. If you read the first one or two and were on the fence about continuing, Unbound is both better written and a better story.
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Jan 11, 2015 23:31
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I just started Alex Verus also and I'm like all of three chapters in, and yeah, it feels similar. Guy has a magic business and that's a rare thing in a world of secret magic. Guy was apprenticed to an evil bad magician. There's an over-watching council and it's willing to throw people to the wolves for its own devices. Other than that, it feels like things work mechanically differently though. Urban Fantasy always feels pretty similar for the most part anyway, so the devil is in the details. For my money, I hope it gets away from "...so I looked into the future and..." every three paragraphs. It's a far bit better than Iron Druid so far, so I'm enjoying it.
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Apr 3, 2015 16:12
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Russad posted:Yeah, I read The Grimnoir series first, really enjoyed it, and then tried MHI. Ignoring the fact that Correia is a shitbag, the book just isn't good. It's just a giant masturbatory wish fulfillment fantasy. The romantic subplot actually made me angry. Aside from the writing leading me to believe that Larry has never met a human woman before, it boils down to "I deserve this girl even though I am an irredeemable shitbag". And make no mistake, the main character is an irredeemable shitbag. I was actively rooting for the villain. God, I'm a right wing gun nut at times and I want to punch Correia in the face repeatedly after reading. I got about a third through the second one and quit, and that was before I found out just how reprehensible he is in his views on women and the Sad Puppies stuff. I actually met him a few times back in February at a LTUE and the sad thing is he's really, really charismatic in person. It's easy to see how someone with really lovely, hosed up views can get a following based on force of personality and being the "voice of a moral minority" or whatever sleazy poo poo they're calling themselves now.
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May 17, 2015 00:04
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Just actually finished all 5 Alex Verus novels. Thus far his powering up has been a flat plane, which has honestly been refreshing. Power creep isn't terribly enjoyable unless done right. Alex is routinely surrounded by more "powerful" people anyway, and the series is more about the questions it raised - I really liked where things went in terms of moral shades with the last two, even if if was a tad on the nose with Ann. Also, given Alex's ability to see the future and how he's said it's given him a moderate skill at throwing things, I'd have expected him to invent Gun Kata and go all Grammaton Cleric, Equilibrium-style. Being able to predict exactly where someone will be and how to dodge an attack should make him deadly with pistols. He has one, but inexplicably isn't godlike with it. If you're on the fence about the series it does even out about book 3 when the cast starts to expand. It doesn't get the huge jump in quality like Dresden does, but it finds its feet. It's more of the same, but it refines it rather than simply "gets better" like Grave Peril and Summer Knight did for Dresden.
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May 18, 2015 20:52
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I"m kinda wondering when Verus will square off against another diviner. I'm not sure if it would be really interesting or really absurd, but it's been overdue, especially since Jacka hung a lampshade on there being a bunch of other ones around that all took off during the events of the first book. Surely they didn't just leave forever.
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May 19, 2015 21:51
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Grundulum posted:Have you read the Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson? It's straight fantasy rather than urban fantasy, though the second trilogy is Western fantasy so we're building towards UF (supposedly the third trilogy will be set in modern times, and the fourth trilogy in the increasingly inaccurately named trilogy-of-trilogies will be space opera fantasy). There is a material in that universe that you can burn to see the future movements of your opponents, and in either the first or second book (forget which) there is a fight between two users of said material. I recall it being pretty entertaining. Yeah, read his stuff and went to a writing retreat with him last fall, and Vin's method of getting around Atium once she ran out ties in pretty well with Alex's talk of braching futures beyond decisions. I expect that a fight between two diviners will be them thinking really hard about not committing to thinking and will likely be kinda boring, but it's an elephant in the room for me given he's gone up against just about everything else except a carbon copy of himself.
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May 20, 2015 04:42
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I'm sure this has been posted before. Neil Gaiman: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.html
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May 20, 2015 17:36
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Neil Gaiman posted:You're complaining about George doing other things than writing the books you want to read... torgeaux posted:Is it just me or do other people resent an author for writing something else instead of the good stuff? I hate and find stupid the steam punk genre, so I really hate the waste of time here.
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May 20, 2015 17:42
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The end of Dead Beat is still probably my favorite moment in the series. There are better books - just barely. There are more amazing moments. There are some phenomenal endings in other books. But the last stretch of Dead Beat really sums up Dresden Files in a perfect package and serves it up neatly for you on a silver platter. It shows you what type of stakes the series can have, the type of humor the book can carry, and the batshit "haha, what? YES!" moments that I live for. I wish I could use it as a scene to describe to people to get them hooked because I know a few I could draw in that way, but it's just too good to spoil early. It's peak Harry Dresden and for the longest time I thought nothing would ever beat it. Thankfully I was wrong, but it's my favorite moment forever.
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May 24, 2015 00:47
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Benny the Snake posted:
Overall, Harry's handling with women is a huge drawback of the series and harder to get through on re-reads when it's worse in the early books, so I agree in general, but I have to ask about this. I'm guessing you mean "lascivious", which means lewd, but nothing in that description of Lash's manifestation strikes me as lewd - especially considering how many times Harry notices "the tips of her breasts". Unless it's the use of the word "appealing", but he's not at all describing her in a deconstructed, hyper sexualized way. Dresden Files is kinda like a Cult Classic B-Movie perfected. It revels in its cheese, and that makes it endearing. There's better written stuff out there, better characters out there, but Dresden Files hits the spot because it pulls together all those little absurd bits together into magic. I originally gave up on Peter Grant during Moon over Soho. It was just a little too bland for me. I liked that Peter is a cop so the narration has this detail-oriented description without actually describing every brick and tree, more of an awareness vibe, but Moon over Soho dragged around the 40% mark. After binging through the Alex Verus novels I decide that audiobooks would probably be better, and I'm currently back on Moon over Soho and it's much better narrated, even though I generally prefer written word. A little bummed that the plot was just spoiled for me upthread though, but I'd kinda already sussed it out.
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May 24, 2015 16:41
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Benny the Snake posted:And I apologize to Mortanis and everyone else for blabbing the plot to "Moon over Soho", I felt that it was key though to prove my point if I did spoil it, especially in comparing it with a Dresden book. It's the de facto thread for discussing urban fantasy. It's a mine field for anyone reading the genre and I know it. I've had a hard time dodging the Foxglove Summer stuff. No worries.
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May 24, 2015 20:10
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Changes is the mid-season finale.
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May 25, 2015 01:30
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ImpAtom posted:The big problem with the heist is that it just wasn't an interesting heist. It was more like a series of video game challenges. Rather than talented people necessary for a job you basically just had Harry Dresden's JRPG Party. This right here. If you look at something like Ocean's Eleven of The Italian Job, it's about getting your team of specialists together with unique skills. poo poo goes entirely wrong and you apply your team's skills to the new challenge, but then the readers/viewers discover that poo poo loving up was according to plan and that the unique skills play right into that but in a totally new way. Skin Game had a series of linear game checkpoints that had to be overcome and lacked the entire last half of the traditional heist genre. There was a twist, but it had nothing to do with the plan and didn't use the "plan within a plan" strategy to its fullest. Most of my friends hold it up in the top 4 or 5 and I have no idea why.
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May 26, 2015 16:10
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ImpAtom posted:At this point "The universe shits on Karren Murphy basically nonstop" is just sort of a fact of life. I kind of wonder if Butcher realizes just how much she gets crapped on. She can't go a goddamn book without something terrible happening to her. Murphy speculation (spoiled for the newbie reading): Which is why I'm thinking it's likely she'll take up a coin. There's going to be a payoff to all the poo poo she's gone through. She's the only straight vanilla mortal left in the game, and she's woefully outclassed by all the supernatural players at this point, and only getting older and more damaged. I can see her taking up a coin despite knowing what they mean in much the same way Sanya was originally supposed to. To protect Chicago at whatever the cost, to try and keep that edge. Dresden constantly point out that Murphy is the only one out of SI that knows the level of poo poo that is out there and gets it, so it's not a hard leap from "has dealt with it for years" > "my understanding and experience makes me strong enough to put up a fight and find a balance with its influence". Otherwise, I don't see much of an arc for her except straight up dying to kick off something terrible in Harry's life.
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May 26, 2015 17:47
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How exactly does Uriel choose to give up his mantle? He's bound to do his job and the will of the White God. Lash had said previously that one of the Fallen's big things was being bound to another's will when she was making that point to Dresden. Supernatural beings can't act outside their nature. Uriel can't do anything but what the White God wills. Harry even has that discussion with the angel of death in Ghost Story about how nothing can be done except what God wants regarding saving Father Forthill. So, how can Uriel just choose to give up his mantle unless it was willed by the White God?
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May 27, 2015 21:22
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Just finished Whispers Under Ground. I'd originally given up on the series last year halfway through Moon Over Soho, but decided to try the audiobooks and wound up enjoying the first two much more the second time around. Whispers Under Ground was just mediocre. Thank Nightingale that it reintroduces Lesley and gets her in the action. I get that the books are police procedural novels with magic, but this one was almost entirely a police procedural - go there, interview someone; go here, interview someone. It dragged. It wasn't bad by any stretch, and every character not named Peter remains the reason to keep reading, but unlike the first two where there was plenty of magic type of stuff to pull you along, this one was way heavier on the actual process of policework that just happened to be interviewing people of a supernatural nature while in an interrogation room or at bars. Still, I'm hooked enough on the series to keep going, but it didn't resonate compared to the last two.
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Jun 9, 2015 22:48
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Wade Wilson posted:Pretty sure Papa Raith is out of the picture since his "STARVE" curse is still in effect and Lara has subjugated his mind. That'd make him a pretty impressive Chekhov's Gun though, for exactly those reasons.
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Jun 11, 2015 00:39
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Finally all caught up through Foxglove Summer, which was much better than Whispers Under Ground (though I liked Broken Homes even if it felt a little disjointed overall), but gently caress that last chapter. None of the child swapping motives really makes sense, and it's just way to abrupt, though I can't wait to see how Peter belonging to Beverly fucks his life up more. We've still not had any pay off to Peter's keylogging his computer after he caught Molly on it. It's not like she's emailing the Faerie Queen, though Beverly did say she had friends. If each book is a season, it's been at least three months since he's looked into this, which is annoying, but it's not like he's a good cop or anything.
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Jun 30, 2015 16:59
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Butcher is a masterful troll. Don't read if you don't want some potentially SERIOUS spoilers for Peace Talks: https://twitter.com/longshotauthor/status/621483946556162053 If it's not a troll, there's nothing to say it's Karrin Murphy. There's other Murphy's around.
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Jul 16, 2015 18:32
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I bailed halfway through the second Monster Hunter novel. The somewhat sad thing is that Correia's absurdly personable in real life, and a natural charismatic draw. I met him earlier in the year and if I hadn't already known about the Sad Puppies stuff and his views on women and rape, I might have actually liked him.
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Aug 18, 2015 23:14
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I like The Jennifer Morgue, but there's the question of is it mediocre because Bob has to follow a path based on mediocre Bond and deliberately written that way, or is it genuinely just a bland book irrelevant of Bob having to act out the Bond scenario? Given the history of Stross' work, I'd say it's the former, but that doesn't excuse the book feeling a bit of a chore to push through. You can't write to a deliberate mediocre level and then expect the book to be a smash hit. It's not bad, it's just not inspired. Thankfully, The Fuller Memorandum fires on almost all cylinders. I'm just now starting Apocalypse Codex.
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Sep 16, 2015 20:57
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I'm thinking the change is Harry never tells Susan he loves her in Grave Peril. Michael makes a big deal out of it, and his saying it to her is the snowball for the entire rest of the series. It snaps her out of going nuts and killing right then and there. I think it's the most thematically appropriate one too, instead of something like taking the coin or something massively overt.
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Sep 23, 2015 19:18
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Finally finished Aeronaut's Windlass The book seriously doesn't get interesting until the plucky band of heroes fully assembles. Before that I was putting it down pretty often. I actually dug the self-contained feeling of it all. I really think "God in Heaven" is absurdly overused, though. It gets pretty obnoxious by the end when listening to the audiobook. I wonder if anything will come of how it seems like this is a far-future Earth. There's Latin and Albion, which seems pretty weird for a random fantastical setting.
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Oct 30, 2015 16:44
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Finally finished the latest Alex Verus novel. I really liked it, which is pretty surprising to me. I've enjoyed the series so far, and it's clear that Jacka is getting better at weaving a story, but Burned is just such a reactive book that I shouldn't have enjoyed it. Literally 90% of the book can be described by the sentence "So I looked into the futures and saw I was about to get my rear end kicked", time after time after time. Unlike other novels, Verus doesn't really get to do anything clever. He just bounces between group after group that wants to kick his rear end. I should hate it, a protagonist that reacts instead of proacts, but I found myself really enjoying it. Maybe it's because basically everything in the series came due all at once and the status quo actually gets drastically changed for once. It doesn't hurt that the action piece revolving around his shop and home getting burned was one of the best he's done, and I did love the build up to recovering the box only to have none of the poo poo you're expecting to happen go down and it's practically a cake walk, only to find out it was all a huge set up anyway. I think the Verus novels are now firmly in second place for me in the UF pantheon, displacing Felix Castor and hovering an inch above the Peter Grant novels. I just wish Verus and Anne would gently caress already. I hate will they/won't they bullshit. Speaking of which, isn't the next Rivers of London supposed to drop in a few months?
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May 3, 2016 18:17
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Yeah, as someone raised in Chicago in my early years, some things don't quite line up. Thankfully he's rarely super specific about things so its easy to just give it a pass. Sue's rad, though.
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May 6, 2016 18:01
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A six month push on top of everything else? Balls. That means there's nothing else I'm really looking forward to for the rest of the year now. Starting The Rook for the first time. About 10% in and it's only barely holding my interest. The mystery of it all isn't really strong enough to carry me along while waiting for poo poo to actually happen.
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May 16, 2016 16:17
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Wade Wilson posted:The Rook is one of those things that really benefits from listening to the Audiobook version of it vs. just reading it. Thanks. I'll probably switch over to the audiobook rather than fight myself on reading it.
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May 16, 2016 18:17
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Darkrenown posted:I just read all the 20 palaces books and now I'm sad it won't be finished I originally read them in release order and never really got the hype for them. Earlier this year I started with the prequel and everything just clicked and now I'm in this boat as well. I feel like that the prequel not getting published until later (despite it having been written first I gather) really hurt the series. I'm looking forward to the supposed wrap up novel/novella though.
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Jul 24, 2016 19:08
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WarLocke posted:The only real stumble the books make is the dryad side character, but the second and third books correct a lot of the 'literally there to be a sex object' stuff about her. Keep in mind that the "literally a sex object" dryad isn't some nerd wish fantasy made flesh by a stereotypical male author for some sort of male gaze. Jim Hines is an accredited rape counselor, very vocal on the subject, and has even gone to bat against the likes of Larry "women are to be protected by their superior men" Correia. He wrote the character with a purpose and it comes out over the course of the books. Of course even if a character is written in a specific way with an intent to subvert and cast light on a particular subject it doesn't change that it still reads that way until the change. Plus you shouldn't really need external backstory to understand something. It's just that Jim Hines is exactly not the sort of guy to just blindly make a sex object character.
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Sep 12, 2016 20:23
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Oh, no, I'm not saying he does it well or anything. Just that, given his background, he didn't just write the character like that randomly or obliviously. Whether he succeeded in doing what he set out for is a different matter. Author intent doesn't necessarily mean skilled execution. I just think it's an important distinction to make, even if maybe that kinda fell flat in how it was done.
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Sep 12, 2016 20:40
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I'm strongly leaning toward OUR Harry Dresden being the evil goatee-wearing version in Mirror Mirror. It makes way more thematic sense that Alternate Harry comes across, meets our Harry and is horrified by all the lovely things that our Harry has done - killing Susan, becoming the Winter Knight, picking up a coin, all the torture and killing and so on... It also lets our Harry see how much better of a person he could have been, which is huge fuel for his angst-fires. I still think that the decision difference is Harry saying, out loud to Michael and then to Susan, that he loved Susan. It's a small but important difference because without him saying he loved Susan she goes full vamp and things cascade badly from there. Which is also why I'm pretty sure Harry himself kicks off the apocalypse - it's thematically appropriate that Harry, acting for his own interests, causes massive ramifications. He gets out of the mantle of the Winter Knight, which destabilizes Winter, which allows the Outer Gates to be breached and poo poo goes south all because Harry wanted to get out of his obligation. Point is Harry Dresden is kind of a dick.
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Sep 20, 2016 22:29
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Bonus BONUS points of Murphy hooks up with Alt-Harry.
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Sep 20, 2016 22:48
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Murphy is the best candidate. Murphy is, at this point, mid forties and the ONLY mortal player still in the game. She needs a power up to keep up or the character will quickly become boring and sidelined. Skin Game made a pretty big point of just HOW mortal Murphy is and that it rubs her poorly. She's seething with anger at her current lot in life. Seriously, she's perfectly set up for a tragic fall. She's either going to be the next Knight or take up a coin under the guise of The Greater Good.
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Sep 21, 2016 03:15
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Given the name of the school it sounds more like X-Men had a baby with Harry Potter. I trust Butcher but that doesn't sound at all appealing to me.
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Sep 27, 2016 23:41
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It also has the best opening line and the second best line in the series: "For my next trick: anvils!" It's a crap book, though.
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Oct 13, 2016 01:20
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