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Penny Arcade - Comic - Fine Distinctions
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The second book is not better than the first. It is worse. Considerably worse.
It has every hall mark of second novel syndrome writ large across it.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Nintendo ID: Incindium
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While I really liked most of the Vlad Talos books, he really lost me hard with Tiassa. But it was a fun long road getting there, so I'm cool with stopping now.
If you've got a bookstore near that doesn't mind you flopping down and reading for a bit check out the first chapter of Hawk. That was some seriously gripping writing.
Except for having any of the actual hallmarks? You can't have second novel syndrome if you don't have a highly successful first novel. Butcher's first novel wasn't even published before he completed his second and it isn't like any of the early ones were break away hits.
While normally that'd work, Tiassa was written in 3 styles and it was only the 3rd style I had an issue with. So I had read 2/3rds of the book before I had to give up on it.
The Paarfi stuff or the Cawti POV sections?
the first few books are kinda kiddish I suppose, but going further on into the series, it gets delightfully dark.
I would rather have watched recordings of this LARP event than watch the SciFi show.
The Khaavren section. I ultra-super-hate the writing style in The Phoenix Guards. The ten-sentences-to-expresses-one style. I'm not a "words for their own sake" person, so I cannot stand when writers write just to marvel at how they octupled the number of words in a sentence.
And as long as we're suggesting fantasy detective books, Glen Cook's Garret series are kind of like the inverted Dresden (but a decade older). They are about a magicless PI living in an actual fantasy world (he's from the world, it's not a fish-out-of-water story). They are very much hard-boiled. Full of dangerous dames, chin-music, burly thugs, and treacherous employers. I don't like them as much as the Dresdens, but I did like them.
There are times when he seems a little overpowered, but I did start half way through the series, so he's had a few books to level up...
I liked Charles Stross' Laundry Files a lot more personally.
tl;dr: British Secret Service meets Call of Cthulhu.
If Gabe is looking for something new after finishing Dresden, I'd point him in that direction.
I'm reading through the first book right now and... hoo-boy. This is some pretty bad shit. Like, really hackneyed and obvious plot identical to all similar novels stuff.
Is it going to get better, or is it going to stick with the snub-nosed detective who overlooks the really obvious clues and chases the early red herring stuff every book? Because the thing I hate most is protagonist holding the stupid-ball plot lines.
I really need to read these books though. For reals. My friends won't hush about 'em.