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Harry Dresden: Wizard, White Knight and Complete Dork.
Posts
Hah, yes, Ghost Story. I know the general context of that one.
Perhaps I am not giving Butcher enough credit - entirely possible he could turn the general context of Ghost Story into something pleasant.
Still, gonna start slogging through Proven Guilty. Suspicious that I'll regret it, but ehn. If it's too much I can always take a break after and finish up Polgara the Sorceress before continuing on.
I'm currently unemployed (hence the reading pace), and would be quite interested in a gaming group. I have no familiarity with the system though.
* I still wasn't really that clear in book 10 on why Summer wanted to kill Harry so much. Or if it was just the Gruffs doing their thing. Or whatever.
* Still no return of Lash, which is too bad since she's way more fun then Harry's replacement Soul Fire or whatever the heck.
* Harry's really gotten over his angry, berserker, using the powers of darkness against darkness role. Which I guess is good for Harry, but I did rather enjoy his Darth Sidious impersonations. On the other hand, he's not nearly as much of a dumbass about women either. Still not sure if it's Harry or Butcher growing up, but either way it's appreciated.
* One thing I preferred in the early books was the idea that Michael's faith was a power in and of itself. Maybe there was a god or not, but it was Michael's faith in goodness and his living life by his ideals that gave him power which was anathema to the various nasties. Now it's much more a straight-up "Harry, angels are giving you powers" thing, which is generally a lot less interesting to me.
* So Harry's got some sort of power or talent vs. outsiders. ...Okay?
* Poor fallen angels got a massive power demotion since their last appearance. Even his brother took out one.
* I'm still wishing we got a scene of Molly getting to hang out with a bunch of other apprentices. Because she'd get to show off so much.
* Ugh. As soon as the book started focusing so much on how important Peabody was, it was obvious that he was the mole. It seems a little weird that, seeing as how our only real knowledge about him is how anal and organized he is, his magic style is mindfuckery. Besides that, with that amazing amount of information, shouldn't he have provided even more intel by now? Also, if he's in with the black council, and he wrote the book on the Erlking, why did the necromancers spend so much time trying to get his book? Couldn't they have just asked their man on the inside to loan them his primary sources? I'm still not sure this whole "All these problems are actually tied together!" plot thread is actually holding together.
* Seriously, if you had a crush on someone for 100 years and then you found out they were shacking up with Harry Dresden... Ouch.
* So, Harry's got his very own evil island now... Maybe next volume we can get Harry Dresden vs. The Slutty Summer Camp.
I wonder if Murphy and Harry realize they might as well make their relationship formal, since they're totally serious about each other anyway. Also, their scenes together are a good example of something that early-series Butcher just wasn't capable of - emotionally intimate writing.
Heh, yeah, that's also what she said.
Sanya.
Speaking of fallen angels, though, was Uriel suggesting that the FA who sent Harry off towards suicide was Lashiel? She'd have to have communicated with Lash in order to "know" Harry. Or I guess it could have been Lash straight-up, though she isn't literally a fallen angel. And it being Lash would be another reasonable way to interpret the JB comment that she was mentioned in Ghost Story, but not by name.
I thought the implication was that
I always thought that the implication was that
Also worth noting here that it doesn't look like Lashiel or Nickodemous are directly work for Lucifer. They all seem to be free agents working on their own plans, which would make the way the Black Council has split the coin-bearers' allegiances.
Which really points big giant glowing arrows directly at Lashiel. Though Butcher was probably being purposefully vague so he can asspull later down the line if he decides to do something else. Butcher likes multiple-choice foreshadowing.
I just relistened to Dead Beat and Lash basically:
What Lash really did was
But Dracomicron makes good points I hadn't considered before. I'm no longer certain it was Lashiel.
Butcher is still working on Cold Days it seems. And there are some more short stories coming down the pipe as well. Other than that, no real updates. I check his site periodically so I can put up when Cold Days gets a release date.
The only good thing about that show is the fact that they were what introduced me to the books in the first place (though I remember seeing someone reading Fool Moon at an SCA meeting back when it was fairly new-ish.)
Thinking back to them though, kinda wished the show lasted long enough to get thier take on Michael Carpenter (and his family) and the nickelheads... though maybe it's a good thing it didn't.
I haven't watched the show but didn't they severely alter the mythology and some characters, like Bianca, to be more mediocre?
I think that Butcher is suffering from some fatigue now that his series is so popular. Several years ago when I first read he had planned out 20 books I thought that was a little...excessive?
He's got the major storylines all in play. And I don't think he needs another, seven books to tie everything up.
20 is a lot, but it isn't uncommon for long running series to run for a long time. Honor Harrington is about to have its 14th book published, the Vorkosigan Saga is on its 28th and Discworld has finished on its 39th.
I don't know if it's fatigue, or just that he's got so much more crap to keep track of when writing a Dresden book. The current books are also a lot better written then the earlier ones in the series (let's be honest here, the first books were pretty hard to get through). Between the higher quality of writing and the drastically increased cast, it makes sense they'd take longer to write. I mean, in the first books he had what, 3 or 4 characters to track? It's not easy to write a novel, even if you've got a fairly limited cast that is at the center of everything, sure you had hints of larger things happening but that was background information.
Also, wow, it's only been a year since Ghost Story was released? It feels like it's been longer then that.
This neo-feudalism would be more tolerable if our betters had fancy titles.
I saw the show first too, and since I hadn't read the books didn't know what was changed. So that helped it be alright. Upside to it getting killed off I guess, I didn't have time to think of it as the way things should be and then learn how much better it could be. I think they did alright casting Harry at the least.
I think you're wildly overcounting on the vorkosigan books. There's been a fair share of novellas and then omnibus rereleases, which you might be accidentally counting.
And even then some of the Vorkosigan books are stuff like Ethan of Athos or Floating Free which while more or less in the same universe really has nothing to do with any Vorkosigans nor any of the main plots.
Gotten another friend into the books as well, she just wrapped up the third, and hopefully her boyfriend will pick at them as well.
As for the series; setting up over two decades worth of work for yourself is probably daunting, but if they keep selling as they have, it's not a bad way to ensure yourself an ongoing revenue stream.
That's what I'm kind of scared of.