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


Ser Scot A Ellison

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5 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Personally I blame the editor. They should have noticed the drop in quality and encouraged (read: forced as much as possible) the go over the book again delays be damned.

Yeah this book definitely needed more time. I don't know exactly how much of the blame to put where but Butcher certainly needs to shoulder some of it. The impression I've gotten from other fans is that it was a publisher decision to split the book but I can't really verify that. At the very least after it was split more time was clearly needed to get both books into some sorta shape where they can function as individual novels, and between Butcher himself, his editor, and his beta readers this should have been flagged up since it's so obvious. Right now though I can't imagine that even reading them as a pair Battle Ground will somehow redeem all the mess and general badness in Peace Talks which seems to indicate a bigger problem. Not really spoilerific thoughts but I'm sticking it in a spoiler box just in case:

Spoiler

So for me having thought about it a bit I think one of the big root problems from which a lot of the pacing and plot issues in Peace Talks flows is that it's way way over stuffed with plot ideas, and as a result none of them are sufficiently developed. We end up with this patchwork quilt that's been loosely sewn into something that might look like a plot in low lighting but which falls apart under any kind of scrutiny. People have been describing this as half a book but honestly the more I think about it this feels like about 1/4 to 1/3 of about 3 or 4 different books (plus some stuff that feels more like "shit I thought up and it seemed cool so why not?").

Throughout the book Dresden gets hosed down with a near endless barrage of plot hooks, and instead of developing any of them Butcher just rolls on and introduces a new hook, a new complication, another returning character for what turns out to be a cameo that ultimately goes nowhere because uh oh we're 300 pages in and it's time for the book to end before anything has really gotten anywhere. I feel like Butcher needed to either realise that there was no way he could handle this much within the formula of a Dresden novel and have the discipline to take the axe to some/most of it so he could turn what was left into something that'd make a solid, cohesive entry in his series, or that he'd have to go way outside his comfort zone and write a single Stormlight Archive length brick if he wanted to do justice to the multitude of plots, ideas, and characters he was trying to bring together for this big world changing showdown.

Regardless of wider speculations being made in this thread, for whatever reason this is a huge step down in quality.

 

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32 minutes ago, Poobah said:

Yeah this book definitely needed more time. I don't know exactly how much of the blame to put where but Butcher certainly needs to shoulder some of it. The impression I've gotten from other fans is that it was a publisher decision to split the book but I can't really verify that. At the very least after it was split more time was clearly needed to get both books into some sorta shape where they can function as individual novels, and between Butcher himself, his editor, and his beta readers this should have been flagged up since it's so obvious. Right now though I can't imagine that even reading them as a pair Battle Ground will somehow redeem all the mess and general badness in Peace Talks which seems to indicate a bigger problem. Not really spoilerific thoughts but I'm sticking it in a spoiler box just in case:

  Hide contents

So for me having thought about it a bit I think one of the big root problems from which a lot of the pacing and plot issues in Peace Talks flows is that it's way way over stuffed with plot ideas, and as a result none of them are sufficiently developed. We end up with this patchwork quilt that's been loosely sewn into something that might look like a plot in low lighting but which falls apart under any kind of scrutiny. People have been describing this as half a book but honestly the more I think about it this feels like about 1/4 to 1/3 of about 3 or 4 different books (plus some stuff that feels more like "shit I thought up and it seemed cool so why not?").

Throughout the book Dresden gets hosed down with a near endless barrage of plot hooks, and instead of developing any of them Butcher just rolls on and introduces a new hook, a new complication, another returning character for what turns out to be a cameo that ultimately goes nowhere because uh oh we're 300 pages in and it's time for the book to end before anything has really gotten anywhere. I feel like Butcher needed to either realise that there was no way he could handle this much within the formula of a Dresden novel and have the discipline to take the axe to some/most of it so he could turn what was left into something that'd make a solid, cohesive entry in his series, or that he'd have to go way outside his comfort zone and write a single Stormlight Archive length brick if he wanted to do justice to the multitude of plots, ideas, and characters he was trying to bring together for this big world changing showdown.

Regardless of wider speculations being made in this thread, for whatever reason this is a huge step down in quality.

 

 

Spoiler

Yeah, I think that this is about 1/3 of a book trying to be 1/2 of a book, if that makes sense. It makes me, as I said, concerned about BG, but I'll reserve judgment for the whole until I've read that.

 

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In fairness I think most of the Dresden Files books tend to have a main plot which gets resolved within the book and then a bunch of stuff that gets kicked down the road to be addressed in later books. I think it's a reasonable criticism that there's a bit too much going on but to a degree it just stands out more because nothing's been resolved so far.

Spoiler

I'd think the Molly stuff is likely to get it's own book, as is the River Shoulders storyline and maybe Lara and the White Council issues. The Fomor pretty much have to be largely addressed in Battle Ground and I don't think it would be reasonable to play out the Thomas/Justine stuff any longer than that.

 

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7 hours ago, AverageGuy said:

I agree with all these criticisms, though the only ones that took me out of the story at the time were the Butters threesome and Hope. I've had times like that with Butcher before, though, e.g. Mouse actually talking in Changes was another bit that seemed that seemed more fanservice than good for the story.

The Hope and Ivy stuff took me out of the book. The Butters stuff made me roll my eyes, but I kept going. Though...

Spoiler

It was too ludicrous that after Harry spewed forth an ocean of ectoplasm in his kitchen, Butters didn't bring in Bob for a consultation. 

But the book is full of half-baked crap like this that leads to more unbelievable crap later. 

4 hours ago, Poobah said:

Yeah this book definitely needed more time. I don't know exactly how much of the blame to put where but Butcher certainly needs to shoulder some of it. The impression I've gotten from other fans is that it was a publisher decision to split the book but I can't really verify that. At the very least after it was split more time was clearly needed to get both books into some sorta shape where they can function as individual novels, and between Butcher himself, his editor, and his beta readers this should have been flagged up since it's so obvious. Right now though I can't imagine that even reading them as a pair Battle Ground will somehow redeem all the mess and general badness in Peace Talks which seems to indicate a bigger problem. Not really spoilerific thoughts but I'm sticking it in a spoiler box just in case:

  Hide contents

So for me having thought about it a bit I think one of the big root problems from which a lot of the pacing and plot issues in Peace Talks flows is that it's way way over stuffed with plot ideas, and as a result none of them are sufficiently developed. We end up with this patchwork quilt that's been loosely sewn into something that might look like a plot in low lighting but which falls apart under any kind of scrutiny. People have been describing this as half a book but honestly the more I think about it this feels like about 1/4 to 1/3 of about 3 or 4 different books (plus some stuff that feels more like "shit I thought up and it seemed cool so why not?").

Throughout the book Dresden gets hosed down with a near endless barrage of plot hooks, and instead of developing any of them Butcher just rolls on and introduces a new hook, a new complication, another returning character for what turns out to be a cameo that ultimately goes nowhere because uh oh we're 300 pages in and it's time for the book to end before anything has really gotten anywhere. I feel like Butcher needed to either realise that there was no way he could handle this much within the formula of a Dresden novel and have the discipline to take the axe to some/most of it so he could turn what was left into something that'd make a solid, cohesive entry in his series, or that he'd have to go way outside his comfort zone and write a single Stormlight Archive length brick if he wanted to do justice to the multitude of plots, ideas, and characters he was trying to bring together for this big world changing showdown.

Regardless of wider speculations being made in this thread, for whatever reason this is a huge step down in quality.

 

Yeah I'm not going down the road of who is to blame. But the author definitely gets the lion's share since it's his book. And the ickiest stuff is all definitely him, though I wonder at his beta readers not pointing this out. It was weird enough with Molly. Expanding it further is not helpful at all. 

 

And I agree that it feels like else than 1/2 a book, and more like a series of disjointed encounters held together by a very thin plot that's supposed to connect them.

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I didn't like the way JB changed the character dynamics, just to further the plot. It's like the behavior of the characters and their relationship have changed completely in Peace Talks. Plus the first 3/4th of the book is essentially a filler for the last 1/4th. 

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Interesting, I didn’t feel that way at all.

Spoiler

Maybe it’s because I didn’t mind the recent books - Cold Days was an easy top-3 book for me (with Dead Beat and Turn Coat), and I liked Skin Game OK (though Ghost Story is a definite bottom-3 book for me)... this one didn’t feel like it had the comfortable, lived-in feel of, say, books 4-9, but it also didn’t feel like it had the depth of worldbuilding the last couple have had either, and it felt both stitched together and stretched.

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Quote

Yeah this book definitely needed more time. I don't know exactly how much of the blame to put where but Butcher certainly needs to shoulder some of it. [...]

Yeah. I agree with pretty much all of that

Quote

Definitely an improvement over the past few books. I don't think that the books have been the same since CHANGES.

This feels closer to the classic DF.

Even if it is closer, I do not think that it reaches the same quality and that is really more of the issue here. Even if we treat is as more of a detective novel, then there is still the issue that Dresden does bareyl do any investigating of

Spoiler

why Thomas attempted to kill Etri besides one conversation with Justine. At the end of the book we barely have any hints besides one, possibly missunderstood, name and I doubt that, with the battle looming, Dresden has any time to properly investigate the case either.

Honestly, now that I think about it, I am really worried for Battle Grounds

Spoiler

Since apparently BG was just the action climax of the original PT, I suspected that it is going to be mostly action focused. Yet it appears as if BG is  longer than PT (342 pages vs 432 according to Amazon). Is that going to be all action or will some of the dangling plot threads from PT actually resolved? I really doubt that there is going to be time for the latter with the largest battle on the DF yet going on. Just imagine Rudolph attempting to arrest Dresden and/or Murphy while a Titan is attacking the city (which might be in character for Rudolph, but I doubt that any other police officer has time for that). Likewise, as I said, Dresden is not going to do investigation of Thomas' possible motives

EDIT: Now that I think about it

Spoiler

The whole Thomas might even a late addition to the plot considering how much of it feels like Skin Game: Not only does Mab again rent out Dresden to another supernatural power, but we also have the thing where the secret preparations are revealed after Harry made use of them (Goodman Grey vs., for example, the blend-in potion Harry uses. Hell Harry manages to just casually hire Grey again when it apparently took Odin's connections to get him working in the last book.

Maybe Thomas' actions where part of a later book and the split made Butcher move them up to Peace Talks to give the book more of a plot after the split left most of that with BG. That would explain why there is barely any investigation or why Thomas is almost immediately put on ice once he is out. The revelation needs to happen in a later book for the larger meta-plot to work

EDIT2: It would also explain why Thomas is moved to Marcone's place and place under ridiculously lax security (one guard place a normal door). Harry needed a reason to be there to witness the Fomor crashing the Peace Talks

 

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35 minutes ago, BLU-RAY said:

Interesting, I didn’t feel that way at all.

  Hide contents

Maybe it’s because I didn’t mind the recent books - Cold Days was an easy top-3 book for me (with Dead Beat and Turn Coat), and I liked Skin Game OK (though Ghost Story is a definite bottom-3 book for me)... this one didn’t feel like it had the comfortable, lived-in feel of, say, books 4-9, but it also didn’t feel like it had the depth of worldbuilding the last couple have had either, and it felt both stitched together and stretched.

 

Yes, for me Ghost Story, Skin Game, and Cold Days are fairly low on my totem pole. In the end, they're keeping Harry from his supporting cast and actually being a part of the Chicago nightlife. Here, he's got an actual place in the city and once more involved with the power blocks as well as people in the place. Peace Talks feels like Harry is once more a part of events going on and doesn't end with an enormous dungeon crawl in another dimension.

Mind you, Battle Grounds may destroy the Masquerade but we'll have to see.

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It's surprising to me that Cold Days is rated that highly. For me the top 3 are

1. Changes - Probably the best of all finale's. And the book which shifts the series altogether. Blends the epicness and human side brilliantly.

2. Turn Coat - That intro and lots of game changing events, a demon of a book ;-/

3. Dead Beat - Can't beat a book with a t-Rex in it! 

I'll probably have Proven Guilty and Summer Knight to complete Top 5. 

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9 hours ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Yes, for me Ghost Story, Skin Game, and Cold Days are fairly low on my totem pole. In the end, they're keeping Harry from his supporting cast and actually being a part of the Chicago nightlife. Here, he's got an actual place in the city and once more involved with the power blocks as well as people in the place. Peace Talks feels like Harry is once more a part of events going on and doesn't end with an enormous dungeon crawl in another dimension.

 

  Hide contents

Mind you, Battle Grounds may destroy the Masquerade but we'll have to see.

 

But while Dresden is back in the city, the book doesn't really feel like he dwells there. Molly's apartment could be an expensive hotel, for all the lived-in feel it has (none). 

And it really passes belief that the White Council just let things be for the few months since Skin Game when Harry has been living openly in Chicago. They knew he was alive all the way back in Cold Days, from the Gatekeeper. 

Why wait this long to confront the fact that a senior Warden is now the Winter Knight, and the Warden of Demonreach? Discussions for these Peace Talks must have been going on for a while, right? Why not confront the Dresden problem before that, rather than let him potentially destroy the Peace Talks with his typical irresponsible behavior (as his enemies in the Council see it)?

I can go on and on. The whole thing feels like someone with only a passing understanding of the previous events in the series wrote it. Like someone read the plot summaries for those novels and then wrote this one. 

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I've seen a lot of people getting the vapors over the "Ivy" mention and it seems a bit ludicrous to me to say that he's "perving" on her.  He's just noticing that a lot of time had passed since he'd seen her.  Do any of you have kids?  My aunt hadn't seen my daughter in four or five years and said she'd "grown into a fine figured young woman"  Now was my aunt perving?  I really really hope you don't think so.  I think the whole point of that scene was for Harry to realize that a lot of time had passed and he was a bad friend and he felt bad for not visiting Ivy for the last few years. 

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51 minutes ago, Spaßvogel said:

I've seen a lot of people getting the vapors over the "Ivy" mention and it seems a bit ludicrous to me to say that he's "perving" on her.  He's just noticing that a lot of time had passed since he'd seen her.  Do any of you have kids?  My aunt hadn't seen my daughter in four or five years and said she'd "grown into a fine figured young woman"  Now was my aunt perving?  I really really hope you don't think so.  I think the whole point of that scene was for Harry to realize that a lot of time had passed and he was a bad friend and he felt bad for not visiting Ivy for the last few years. 

Umm those aren't remotely comparable. For one thing, the only thing Harry notices are her hips. She's definitely taller too. But no mention of that. I'm sure her face looks more mature. But no mention of that. No it's just the hips.

And I think people would be a lot more forgiving if we didn't also have the previous examples of Harry perving on Molly, and the examples in this book of him perving on Hope. 

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I think the best (only?) defense of Harry's behavior is the Winter Mantle's effect on his personality.  And if we really need to get into it there's also an example of Harry admiringly noticing Alicia Carpenter's figure (In the pre-Mantle books, IIRC). 

Also Spaßvogel, with all due respect to your aunt there is something qualitatively different about the male gaze which seems to be able to straddle the border between innocent and creepy and jump in either direction depending on the circs.  YMMV. 

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3 hours ago, Gaston de Foix said:

I think the best (only?) defense of Harry's behavior is the Winter Mantle's effect on his personality.  And if we really need to get into it there's also an example of Harry admiringly noticing Alicia Carpenter's figure (In the pre-Mantle books, IIRC). 

Also Spaßvogel, with all due respect to your aunt there is something qualitatively different about the male gaze which seems to be able to straddle the border between innocent and creepy and jump in either direction depending on the circs.  YMMV. 

But as you said, this behavior predates the mantle. With Molly, and maybe with Alicia, though I can't bring the specific instance to mind. I'm not quite sure how the mantle can be blamed for the latest example of a behavior Dresden has been showing for years before he had the mantle. 

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What I think is that it's Dresden the character who sometimes goes to absurd lengths of chivalry (opening doors, being unable to hit women, more willing to trust women than men) coming into conflict with Dresden the alter ego.  To borrow from the Dresden files itself there are always some men who see the women around them as prey and are constantly assessing them as potential targets. 

One of my former bosses was like that.  I'm not entirely sure why these men possess a hunger that cannot be sated, but I found it disturbing when he would openly discuss the attractiveness of women we met in professional circumstances or engage in OTT flirtations with colleagues (particularly much younger colleagues).  My father taught me never to see women like that and I found it quite disturbing being in his company.  To my regret and shame I never called him out on it.  But there are a lot of men like that.  And one of the problems with living in the Tinder generation is that there's a lot of implicit social teaching to see women like that.  Dresden's behavior is icky, but sadly nothing like as icky as real life.  

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59 minutes ago, Gaston de Foix said:

What I think is that it's Dresden the character who sometimes goes to absurd lengths of chivalry (opening doors, being unable to hit women, more willing to trust women than men) coming into conflict with Dresden the alter ego.  To borrow from the Dresden files itself there are always some men who see the women around them as prey and are constantly assessing them as potential targets. 

One of my former bosses was like that.  I'm not entirely sure why these men possess a hunger that cannot be sated, but I found it disturbing when he would openly discuss the attractiveness of women we met in professional circumstances or engage in OTT flirtations with colleagues (particularly much younger colleagues).  My father taught me never to see women like that and I found it quite disturbing being in his company.  To my regret and shame I never called him out on it.  But there are a lot of men like that.  And one of the problems with living in the Tinder generation is that there's a lot of implicit social teaching to see women like that.  Dresden's behavior is icky, but sadly nothing like as icky as real life.  

Let's put it this way: if Butcher is knowingly doing this, then he's falling short of trying to make this to be an actual flaw in Dresden's character. The way it's being written, it just comes across as a totally ok thing for a person to do. 

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Well, I think this is a massive overreaction.  Noticing is not automatically "perving" and it would be less realistic if he didn't notice.  Hips are another obvious form of maturity.  Noticing that she's started growing up does not automatically mean he's picturing it as something sexual.  "Time flies" is the whole point of that mention. 

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On 7/16/2020 at 10:03 PM, Poobah said:

Yeah this book definitely needed more time. I don't know exactly how much of the blame to put where but Butcher certainly needs to shoulder some of it. The impression I've gotten from other fans is that it was a publisher decision to split the book but I can't really verify that.

In an interview a few months back Butcher said that it was his publishers who balked when he presented them with a 300,000-word manuscript and they said that an urban fantasy novel couldn't be that long.

Given Butcher's sales (at least 6 million, and that seems to be on the low end), his long tail and the money he's made for his publishers, I extremely doubt this is the case and he could have forced them to accept 300,000 words. I suspect they talked him around by noting that two novels at half the size would result in more money than one novel at the larger size.

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