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Dresden Files (most recent thread is archived) Peace Talks is finished


Ser Scot A Ellison

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On 5/28/2020 at 3:47 PM, Werthead said:

Jim should probably stick to his day job (not doing basic research about Chicago) rather than not doing basic research about viral spread.

On 5/28/2020 at 4:12 PM, Argonath Diver said:

I just saw this on another friend's wall. Someone pointed out that Butcher's son just lost his grandfather (ex-wife's father) during the shutdown, due to cancer. Apparently it was not detected early due to the hospital refusing treatment until critical condition. Butcher posted a comment saying "The government chose to kill him." It sounds like an awful situation, and certainly affected Jim's opinions.

Both of these things suck. Reading about this has definitely made me lose some respect for Butcher. I don't tend to want to know the politics (what a fucking mental world it is that things like scientific truth and public health and safety are a matter of politics) of the authors I read and to thus point Butcher had as far as I am aware done a good job of not publicly voicing any of that bullshit. This seems like a pretty bold strategy to piss people off and seem like an asshole ahead of his first major book release in 5 years. This is a little different to say, JK Rowling being a massive fucking TERF, or Orson Scott Card's rabid homophobia so I'm still gonna buy it, but it certainly leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

23 hours ago, Werthead said:

True, but he's also an extremely successful fantasy author (still never been 100% sure why, I gave up after Book 7 when I realised I'd just read exactly the same book four times in a row with the names changed)

I feel like this is a little unfair - I think the books, especially the earlier ones do tend to follow the same general structure, and I'm not gonna argue The Dresden Files is a masterwork of literature or anything, far from it, but they're fun, action-packed, fast paced, and just generally easy and enjoyable to read. I think it's worth somewhat of a comparison to an adjacent genre which I enjoy - the police procedural - when I watch an episode of CSI, or Law and Order, or Castle, or White Collar, or whatever the next new show Netflix or Amazon throw at me is I'm not really watching to find out if they solve the murder / mystery or not, because of course it's getting solved just in time for a nice clean denouement too, and it'll be one of the people we already met early on and all the threads will converge into one nice neat solve. I mean sometimes the details of the crime/mystery or the way the plot unfolds will be interesting but in general it's all mapped out already, so what I'm really watching them for is the characters and how they go about approaching this week's case, their banter, their side-stories about their lives, how these people and their relationships evolve and grow over time, that kinda stuff.

Likewise with The Dresden Files while I am interested in what particular flavour of plot Butcher pulls out (though there have been less and less standard adventures lately, with only the most recent book Skin Game being more to formula, this time a heist caper) but mostly I'm invested in the characters, and the worldbuilding which I quite enjoy because I think it's pretty cool that he's created this setting where every mythology is true, and all the stuff I guess I'd call the ongoing meta-story whether it be the more epic progressing story-arc or just characters growing, interacting with each other, how their relationships grow and evolve and how everyone lives their lives and grows older - I think it's one of the few book series where that sort of pacing exists so that enough time passes that you get this natural evolution of the characters that have, literally, grown with you. Compared to, say, The Wheel of Time which I should add is a series I like and am not taking the piss out of here, but in WoT it takes over 4 million words across 14 books to go through 2 years so while it might not feel that way because of the sheer weight of words, if you stop to think about the timeline, it's insane how rapidly all the characters progress and advance both in terms of power level (of their skills/abilities, magical powers, and political influence and accumen) and just general arcs of growth and such.

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  • 4 weeks later...
18 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Chapters 1 to 4 of Peace Talks are up on Butcher's website:

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4

  Reveal hidden contents

Ebenezar is almost certainly going to die.

 

Thank you.  :)
 

I agree, Eb is toast.  I am curious to see if Harry remains in the White Counsel
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Spoiler

Honestly so many death flags for Ebenezar that I'm starting to think he might survive. Also some good flags for him being the one who betrays Harry one way or the other. Finally I'll note that in the Christmas Eve story which takes place after Peace Talks and Battle Ground Maggie's back at the Carpenter house, which is somewhat suggestive of certain things.

 

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1 hour ago, Poobah said:
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Honestly so many death flags for Ebenezar that I'm starting to think he might survive. Also some good flags for him being the one who betrays Harry one way or the other. Finally I'll note that in the Christmas Eve story which takes place after Peace Talks and Battle Ground Maggie's back at the Carpenter house, which is somewhat suggestive of certain things.

Spoiler

I think Ebenezar is more likely to sacrifice himself than betray Harry.  Would be hard and sad to see that happening, since the scene between them at the end of Proven Guilty is one of my faves.  That said there's definitely a big ole knife in Harry's back coming from someone somewhere.  

I inferred from the location of the Christmas Eve story that Molly's apartment and the building it stood in was destroyed.  I mean the Last Titan sounds like a figure of awesome power and hundreds of thousands are going to presumably die in her attack on Chicago.  Do you have a different reading?

 

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And Chapter 5 is here

Spoiler

We finally get to see Murphy, which is nice, and Rudolph, which is not.

I think it is now clear why the book was split in two. Butcher is introducing a lot of potential plot threads. So far we have:

1.) Justine's pregnancy

2.) Harry potentially getting expelled from the White Council

3.) Potential conflict between Harry and Ebenezar over Thomas and/or Maggie

4.) The peace talks and the murder we know of from the trailer

5.) The giant footprint from chapter 1

6.) And now Rudolph, his investigation of Harry and Murphy, and who the person controlling him is

 

We will also get yet another chapter next week

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3 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

And Chapter 5 is here

  Reveal hidden contents

We finally get to see Murphy, which is nice, and Rudolph, which is not.

I think it is now clear why the book was split in two. Butcher is introducing a lot of potential plot threads. So far we have:

1.) Justine's pregnancy

2.) Harry potentially getting expelled from the White Council

3.) Potential conflict between Harry and Ebenezar over Thomas and/or Maggie

4.) The peace talks and the murder we know of from the trailer

5.) The giant footprint from chapter 1

6.) And now Rudolph, his investigation of Harry and Murphy, and who the person controlling him is

 

We will also get yet another chapter next week

Spoiler

Re 6) I inferred the Red Court controlled Rudolph from what went down in Changes.  

 

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10 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:
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Re 6) I inferred the Red Court controlled Rudolph from what went down in Changes.  

 

Spoiler

They aren't around any more, but I strongly doubt that Rudy's new patron is Marcone, and not just because that's the conclusion that Harry jumps to first, which is bound to be wrong. The Formor, or Lara would be my top two guesses, or maybe Summer since the robbery was a Winter op.

 

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19 minutes ago, Poobah said:
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They aren't around any more, but I strongly doubt that Rudy's new patron is Marcone, and not just because that's the conclusion that Harry jumps to first, which is bound to be wrong. The Formor, or Lara would be my top two guesses, or maybe Summer since the robbery was a Winter op.

 

Spoiler

Right.  Marcone has no reason to harass Harry in respect of the bank robbery and in fact such harassment would amount to a breach of the agreement they reached at the end of Skin Games.  It's weird that Harry wouldn't realize that. 

I suspect his controller is actually the Black Council.  We never found out the relevance of the Egyptian number that was on Madeline Raith's cellphone, but I would suspect it's a black council operative who is seeking to use mortal authorities as leverage against Dresden/Murphy as in prior novels. 

 

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I'd like to posit an idea.  Please correct me if I'm ignorant due to not being as well read.  Has anyone ever grown up through writing fiction like Jim has?  Obviously, the outline helped him but DAMN.  I've never turned so many pages; like at breakneck speed.

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13 hours ago, D_P said:

I'd like to posit an idea.  Please correct me if I'm ignorant due to not being as well read.  Has anyone ever grown up through writing fiction like Jim has?  Obviously, the outline helped him but DAMN.  I've never turned so many pages; like at breakneck speed.

I'm going to rephrase your sentiment and please tell me if I understood you correctly.  Has any writer improved so visibly in both ability and maturity from his first novel to his latest as Jim has?

Was this what you meant? I'm unable to fully answer your question since I haven't read Peace Talks yet.  Curious as to how you have read it: did you pick it up in a bookstore or buy it online? 

Anyway, if you were to ask me on the basis of the published novels I would say that the novels post-Changes have been somewhat indifferent in quality.  Skin Games was the best of the bunch. The excerpts I have read of Peace Talks actually seem somewhat mediocrely written.  But one can't judge a novel without reading all of it.  If you were to compare the quality from Storm Front to Changes, then he has certainly improved dramatically as a writer.  And reading the Codex Alerus and his Aeronauts series, it's clear that he brings his A game to the Dresden Files. 

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For me, I rank the books about this:

1. Blood Rites
2. Dead Beat
3. White Night
4. Proven Guilty
5. Turn Coat
6. Ghost Story
7. Cold Days
8. Changes
9. Death Masks
10. Summer Knight
11. Small Favor
12. Skin Game
13. Grave Peril
14. Storm Front
15. Fool Moon

I confess, I kind of regret moving away from the case to case format.

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That's a very interesting ranking list. I assume one of your Blood Rites (probably the one in the number 1 position is actually Death Masks)? A few months ago I did a ranking in response to Daniel Greene's Tier List and ended up ranking Changes, Skin Game, and Small Favour as my top three, but having re-read the series in preparation for Peace Talks I think my list would look a little different. I think I overrated Skin Game quite a bit and Changes somewhat, Dead Beat at least deserves a podium position, though I still think Small Favour is great so it stays in my personal top three, if I'm gonna commit to doing a full ranking though I need to sit down and think about it a bunch more.

Overall I do think Butcher improves a ton as a writer as the series goes on, though I think he stumbles from time to time and there are still things in his writing that annoy me, though a large part of that I think is rather things that irritate the fuck out of me about Harry as a character rather than Butcher the author, which can be somewhat hard to untangle from a first person narrative perspective, but having read his other series' and the DF short stories it's very clear that there's a big difference in style when he isn't in Harry's perspective.

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Well my all time favorite book in the series is Blood Rites because it is the (full) introduction to the White Court, which remains my favorite part of the series alongside Molly Carpenter. I also love the humor that Harry is being finally given a paying job but it's on the set of a high class erotica movie (which Harry, of course, just thinks of as porn). The characters of Lara Raith, the expansion of Harry's relationship with Thomas, the use of Lord Raith as a villain [he's easily the best villain in the series, IMHO], and the fact that Harry ultimately fails in his mission to protect the actresses of the production.

It's a book that definitely stuck with me and actually had an effect on how I viewed sexual content in fiction. The idea of personifying the misogyny in erotica with Lord Raith and toxic masculinity as a whole was a really clever idea. Jim Butcher clearly knows nothing about actual porn and erotic movies [particularly with a European director] but that's one of those things I can forgive along with his somewhat questionable knowledge of Chicago.

Death Masks is okay but just doesn't have the same oomph. Honestly, I feel like as interesting as the Knights of the Cross are, also a positive example of Christian mythology being used in a book series, the Nickelheads are overused. Ortega also feels wasted as a villain.

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I would rank the novels thus: 

1. Grave Peril
2. Changes
3. Small Favor
4. Death Masks
5. Turn Coat
6. Dead Beat
7.  Skin Game
8.  Proven Guilty
9. Summer Knight
10. Summer Knight
11. Small Favor
12. Cold Days
13. Ghost Story
14. Blood Rites
15. White Night
16. Storm Front
17.  Fool Moon

Grave Peril was the first novel that simultaneously exhilarated, depressed and transfixed me and so it gets pride of place. 

I find the WC and the Raiths the least engaging and also the least plausible: how many times does Harry have to neutralize would-be usurpers or rogue Raiths?

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1 hour ago, Gaston de Foix said:

I find the WC and the Raiths the least engaging and also the least plausible: how many times does Harry have to neutralize would-be usurpers or rogue Raiths?

Harry does it because Lara uses him as a closely available deniable asset and Harry falls into it very easily.

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On 7/4/2020 at 10:52 AM, Gaston de Foix said:

I'm going to rephrase your sentiment and please tell me if I understood you correctly.  Has any writer improved so visibly in both ability and maturity from his first novel to his latest as Jim has?

Was this what you meant? I'm unable to fully answer your question since I haven't read Peace Talks yet.  Curious as to how you have read it: did you pick it up in a bookstore or buy it online? 

Anyway, if you were to ask me on the basis of the published novels I would say that the novels post-Changes have been somewhat indifferent in quality.  Skin Games was the best of the bunch. The excerpts I have read of Peace Talks actually seem somewhat mediocrely written.  But one can't judge a novel without reading all of it.  If you were to compare the quality from Storm Front to Changes, then he has certainly improved dramatically as a writer.  And reading the Codex Alerus and his Aeronauts series, it's clear that he brings his A game to the Dresden Files. 

Yep.  Exactly what I meant...apologies for being less than eloquent.  I've only read the sample chapters of Peace Talks but, from Dead Beat on it was a mad dash to being current.  I've not read any of his other work...and I agree that it has been a tad bit up and down since Changes.  I feel like he burned a book afterwards in order to advance the narrative but I liked Ghost Story.  I will admit to recency bias because I crammed so much, so quickly.  It became just one long book for a minute there. One other point...I was inquiring solely about his ability as a writer, I'm not really interested in his maturity.  Again, so sorry for being unclear :cheers:

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