The show was pretty terrible. They made Murphy some crazy amalgamation of Murphy and Susan, then they went the whole season and never introduced Michael Carpenter, which is a travesty.
It's funny, Butcher released a new Dresden book every year for more than a decade right until I got into the series. The idea of having to wait an additional 6 months or so for the next one to come out is painful.
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 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.
I was going by the wikipedia list. In that case, you're right they had a few which shouldn't be listed in Miles' series. That said, Miles still has a large series left over. Legend of Drizzt has around 28 novels, too.
are we safe for open discussion of ghost story? eh just to be sure
i think we can safely say that molly may have another premier role in a book after casting off the shackles of harry and being under the watchful eye of godmother. i'm not saying that the next book will do that but it's not hard to imagine that after the winter court stuff gets worked out, or doesn't get worked out, that we will need to have kept up on what's been happening in chicago. i know there's been hints that the whole world is turning to rubbish but i do hope that we keep chicago as the convergence of this crap because of all the nexus points meeting there.
That's what I'm kind of scared of.
Harry needs to get back to Chicago, not faff around in the Winter Court for 5 years or whatever. Molly still needs help, but is too strong for anyone willing to actually help give it to her. Everyone needs Harry back in Chicago for that matter. No doubt Molly can stand on her own and will either end up doing so or dead (which 2nd only to Murphy will really annoy me...), but I'd rather be seeing it all from Harry's POV. Molly can take over after the finale. We'll get Harry's POV for sure, just his location is needs to be correct. I don't want to wait another year+ for everyone to find out he's not dead.
Cold Days might take place entirely in the Nevernever, so we might not see anyone from Chicago until a later novel.
The show was pretty terrible. They made Murphy some crazy amalgamation of Murphy and Susan, then they went the whole season and never introduced Michael Carpenter, which is a travesty.
It's for the best they never introduced Michael. I don't have much faith that we'd have gotten a good adaption. Especially on their small budget.
In order to really tell the story well, I think Butcher is going to have to have a few novels without Harry, or at least with Harry as a support character and have a few novels not set in Chicago. I'm totally OK with this. Molly or Murphy or someone will need to be the focus of the story, and showing it from Harry's POV will feel clunky, and start to feel over done.
In order to really tell the story well, I think Butcher is going to have to have a few novels without Harry, or at least with Harry as a support character and have a few novels not set in Chicago. I'm totally OK with this. Molly or Murphy or someone will need to be the focus of the story, and showing it from Harry's POV will feel clunky, and start to feel over done.
Wasn't Nicolas Cage a producer on the show? And after the show failed he went on to make Sorcerer's Apprentice with Disney and made his character look a whole hell of a lot like Harry?
According to IMDB he was, but I don't really get a Harry vibe from this character in Sorcerer's Apprentice besides they're both Wizard's and maybe the coat kinda...
How early on did he say he'd had 20 books planned? That really seems off. For like the first 6 or 7 books nothing even happens, and for the first few there's barely connecting threads between them. I'd assumed that after he was about 7 books in and saw that the series was successful he decided to keep it going, because before that it could have ended without issue. There was no mandate that Dresden solve everything in his universe and no stakes besides another monster threatening Chicago.
Nah, as early as book 2 they had the scene with the demon where Butcher makes it clear that Harry is special and that there's very important beings interested in him. I'd wager that he at least had some vague idea for the overall series, even if a lot has changed since then.
Yeah, there was that special thing, but 12 books later and there's still almost no explanation of what it is or why it matters. It could easily have been a throwaway passage. There was a lot of treading water between then and now. I imagine that, if he hadn't kept introducing new big bads and then not dealing with them, that eventual arc could have been completed a long time ago.
well yeah, if you don't go on tangents that are important to Harry's characterization the main story gets done faster. Thats like saying "If you just take out the middle 24 letters, the alphabet is really quite small and easy to get from A to Z"
To be fair, Butcher has been pretty good about introducing plot threads and leaving them dangling for years before resolving them. I had a little checklist worked out with maybe a dozen outstanding points (minor and major), and every so often one gets answered while others pop up. It's less frustrating than something like LOST where dangling threads would just get ignored, and I have faith that we'll see answers to at least the important ones before the series is done.
We're up to book 14 this year, right? So ~23 total (wiki says he was/is aiming for 'roughly 20'), making for 9 more to go (plus Side Jobs 2 and anything else that comes up along the way).
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I'm not complaining. The middle books where nothing really happened are just fine. But if he'd planned out 20 books from the start then he did a bad job of it because there are major plot points that he introduces and then just ignores for like 4 or 5 books at a time so he can start the ball rolling on some completely new threat. He could have split things into more concise arcs (Vampire arc, Faerie arc, Denarius arc, Outsiders arc, etc.), but instead he introduces something, plays with it for a book or two, then moves on to something else.
It seems like he'd gotten to the point where he'd have to start dealing with some threats just to avoid ridiculous power-creep, since Harry will eventually have to fight all-powerful demons from beyond space and time how do you keep a bunch of vampires a credible threat? Or a few fallen angels or whatever else.
I will only really complain if he goes off on another tangent, which I doubt will happen. Even if he just deals with 1 major threat per book till the series ends he's got enough material to cover it.
Heh, I'm sure he gets and deletes enough spam and nigh-hate mail at this point that we should probably just let him wrap it up.
Speaking of which, I remembered hearing somewhere that the due date for Cold Days was August or September or something like that, and according to Butcher's site the final chapter has been sent off to some people ('his betas'? Beta testers?) for review. Not sure what the turn around time should be on such feedback and any updates that might be necessary, but hopefully that means we'll see it soon.
Fake edit: he also tweeted that the book was done, so presumably he's pretty happy with the result.
Re: the spoiler someone posted above;
I do hope we see some of Chicago. Changes threw the status quo heavily, and Ghost Story gave us a peak at how things had changed in the years in between, but I'd like to see him really getting a grip on what has happened, what needs to be done and starting to tidy shit back up (in time for it to all go to hell by the end, I'm sure).
I guess I'm just saying that I hope we don't have to wait until book 15 to really get back in touch with most of the characters.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Cold Days might take place entirely in the Nevernever, so we might not see anyone from Chicago until a later novel.
I'm thinking that we'll be seeing a time skip while Harry is off dealing with the Winter Court in the NeverNever. Ghost Story definitely wrapped up the "Chicago Arc", so a 4-5 year jump won't seem too odd. This time skip will put Molly at close to the same age as Harry and a side bonus to getting Margaret to adventuring age.
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I don't think Butcher intended for Dresden Files to be a series considering the first book was written primarily because a teacher asked him to write a formulaic book (It was originally titled Semi-Automagic, which I kinda wish it was still.)
It seems he's been kinda making it up as he goes until a few books ago when things started to become a lot more tied together.
"Apparently people sent cupcakes to Bioware over some game ending bullshit, and now the internet is all about sending food to people for things they want."
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
This pie was made with time, effort, attention to detail, heat, and sharp objects. We made this pie because we like you. Want to find out what we can do if we don't like you?
In other news, I've started to fear the reception of baked goods.
So much scorn for the TV series. I happened to really like it and hope the dislike is more alteration from the series I haven't yet read rather then the quality of the show. But, wouldn't be the first time I have acquired some bad tastes. Only thing that really bugged me about the series was the same actor played adult Dresden and child Dresden. Other than that, from what I know about the series I can rationalize a guy carrying around a hockey stick through Chicago more than an actual wand, and the show would have been much worse with an incorporeal bob. Though if they screwed up some of the other side characters I wouldn't really know.
In regards to the series, just picked up Storm Front, that's the start if I'm not mistaken?
I've always been worried about the Internet's response to anything. Post-Portal I'm easily frightened by baked goods. Combine those two and I can't help but see the worse possible meaning.
So much scorn for the TV series. I happened to really like it and hope the dislike is more alteration from the series I haven't yet read rather then the quality of the show. But, wouldn't be the first time I have acquired some bad tastes. Only thing that really bugged me about the series was the same actor played adult Dresden and child Dresden. Other than that, from what I know about the series I can rationalize a guy carrying around a hockey stick through Chicago more than an actual wand, and the show would have been much worse with an incorporeal bob. Though if they screwed up some of the other side characters I wouldn't really know.
In regards to the series, just picked up Storm Front, that's the start if I'm not mistaken?
I actually really like the show as well. Of course I did see it before hearing about the books so that could have a part in it. I managed to use the show as a hook to get a few other friends hooked on the books too.
Butcher's slowing down a bit now and being more deliberate in his plotting, but in the earlier books he really tended to write them like serials - he'd seed in lots of little tidbits of interesting ideas, and then depending on where the story went he could pull them out as necessary. It's a great way of making things seem preplanned, even though he's actually making up lots of it as he goes along.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Butcher's slowing down a bit now and being more deliberate in his plotting, but in the earlier books he really tended to write them like serials - he'd seed in lots of little tidbits of interesting ideas, and then depending on where the story went he could pull them out as necessary. It's a great way of making things seem preplanned, even though he's actually making up lots of it as he goes along.
If I recall one of his interviews correctly, he did that for the first three books, and then after he sold them he sat down and figured out the broad outlines of how the series would go. Again, if I recall correctly, he also said he had no idea who Harry would end up with. He isn't holding himself to an unchangable set of iron clad guidelines though - again, if I recall correctly, the entire Lashiel plot triggered at the end of Death Masks was a spur of the moment decision made as he was finishing the book.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Shipping anyone and Michael is just screwed up. He's a married man, after all. Everyone else is fair game. Except Molly and Harry. It just be weird if he called her grasshopper if they were a couple (among the other issues), we can't lose that!
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Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
I was going by the wikipedia list. In that case, you're right they had a few which shouldn't be listed in Miles' series. That said, Miles still has a large series left over. Legend of Drizzt has around 28 novels, too.
It's for the best they never introduced Michael. I don't have much faith that we'd have gotten a good adaption. Especially on their small budget.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
That'd be great.
I always liked the idea I read somewhere that the show was financed by one of the courts to discredit and make fun of Harry.
So Harry came up with the role playing game as payback.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
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We're up to book 14 this year, right? So ~23 total (wiki says he was/is aiming for 'roughly 20'), making for 9 more to go (plus Side Jobs 2 and anything else that comes up along the way).
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~ Buckaroo Banzai
It seems like he'd gotten to the point where he'd have to start dealing with some threats just to avoid ridiculous power-creep, since Harry will eventually have to fight all-powerful demons from beyond space and time how do you keep a bunch of vampires a credible threat? Or a few fallen angels or whatever else.
I will only really complain if he goes off on another tangent, which I doubt will happen. Even if he just deals with 1 major threat per book till the series ends he's got enough material to cover it.
Anyone want to beta read a paranormal mystery novella? Here's your chance.
stream
Speaking of which, I remembered hearing somewhere that the due date for Cold Days was August or September or something like that, and according to Butcher's site the final chapter has been sent off to some people ('his betas'? Beta testers?) for review. Not sure what the turn around time should be on such feedback and any updates that might be necessary, but hopefully that means we'll see it soon.
Fake edit: he also tweeted that the book was done, so presumably he's pretty happy with the result.
Re: the spoiler someone posted above;
I guess I'm just saying that I hope we don't have to wait until book 15 to really get back in touch with most of the characters.
It seems he's been kinda making it up as he goes until a few books ago when things started to become a lot more tied together.
If by "pressure" you mean delivering a delicious pie along with the best wishes of the PA forums, then yes, yes I do.
"Apparently people sent cupcakes to Bioware over some game ending bullshit, and now the internet is all about sending food to people for things they want."
My baking leaves a lot to be desired.
If I do any passive-aggressive catering, it'll be a nice selection of smoke meats and/or various charcuterie that I make at home.
Hmmm... I wonder if any of his LARPing weekends would need a pitmaster?
~ Buckaroo Banzai
In other news, I've started to fear the reception of baked goods.
In regards to the series, just picked up Storm Front, that's the start if I'm not mistaken?
I just meant give the guy a pie in return for the countless hours of enjoyment he's provided me.
How'd we manage to make a delivery of pie frightening? It's pie, It's supposed to be a good thing.
I actually really like the show as well. Of course I did see it before hearing about the books so that could have a part in it. I managed to use the show as a hook to get a few other friends hooked on the books too.
And yes, Storm Front is the first book.
If I recall one of his interviews correctly, he did that for the first three books, and then after he sold them he sat down and figured out the broad outlines of how the series would go. Again, if I recall correctly, he also said he had no idea who Harry would end up with. He isn't holding himself to an unchangable set of iron clad guidelines though - again, if I recall correctly, the entire Lashiel plot triggered at the end of Death Masks was a spur of the moment decision made as he was finishing the book.
I boarded the S.S. Molly Dresden some time around Changes.
...what?
Lash needs to return.