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Read yesterday, Tuesday, July 26th.
The latest novel of the Dresden Files, urban fantasy starring Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard. The Dresden books are a lot of fun, have moments of genuine good and moments of genuine suck, and do try not to be the same book every time. If you don't already read them, this is not where you come in. Too much backstory. This is like book eleven or twelve and while book one is not great, starting somewhere in the three-four range will do you better.
A non-spoilery assessment: Fascinating. This is definitely Butcher trying new things in several directions, some of which I like immensely and some of which I would like him to stop immediately. It has one of the tighter plots I've seen Butcher handle, interwoven with entirely too much in the way of brooding about previous moral decisions and backstory. It feels like a transitional book to me, old series status quo becoming a different thing emerging (hey, the last book was called Changes), and the new voice hasn't settled in solidly but is definitely present. On the structural level, it's kind of weirdly paced; there's so much going on that I suspect that part of the reason for the aforementioned brooding is to give the reader a breathing space. There aren't many natural pauses in the plot, and Butcher knows that there need to be lulls but is obviously fighting his page count to get all the plot into it. In the past, he's done a lot of A-plot, B-plot, and one plot would provide distraction/rest when the other one was slow/heated up. This book is not run that way and consequently needed to have the pauses built into the main thread. The couple of natural pauses that aren't brooding are actually very good, though.
And this is a more ambitious novel, structurally and in several other ways, than I've seen out of him before. I admire his determination not to let his series sit where it was-- honestly, I suspect he could have written the previous sort of book forever and people would have kept buying them. So I think that despite the occasional shakiness, this is a good direction, and it's certainly an entertaining book (he got the entertaining down a while ago and it hasn't gone away, which is always the danger when you hit slice-and-dice on your series' core concepts).
Do I think this is great literature, or going to be? Oh fuck no. But this series is some of the most enjoyable idfic I read, and the better he gets at it, the happier I'll be. And this is a clear sign that he's working really hard at getting better at it, and pretty much succeeding. I'll take it.
( Spoilery thoughts. )
The latest novel of the Dresden Files, urban fantasy starring Harry Dresden, Chicago's only professional wizard. The Dresden books are a lot of fun, have moments of genuine good and moments of genuine suck, and do try not to be the same book every time. If you don't already read them, this is not where you come in. Too much backstory. This is like book eleven or twelve and while book one is not great, starting somewhere in the three-four range will do you better.
A non-spoilery assessment: Fascinating. This is definitely Butcher trying new things in several directions, some of which I like immensely and some of which I would like him to stop immediately. It has one of the tighter plots I've seen Butcher handle, interwoven with entirely too much in the way of brooding about previous moral decisions and backstory. It feels like a transitional book to me, old series status quo becoming a different thing emerging (hey, the last book was called Changes), and the new voice hasn't settled in solidly but is definitely present. On the structural level, it's kind of weirdly paced; there's so much going on that I suspect that part of the reason for the aforementioned brooding is to give the reader a breathing space. There aren't many natural pauses in the plot, and Butcher knows that there need to be lulls but is obviously fighting his page count to get all the plot into it. In the past, he's done a lot of A-plot, B-plot, and one plot would provide distraction/rest when the other one was slow/heated up. This book is not run that way and consequently needed to have the pauses built into the main thread. The couple of natural pauses that aren't brooding are actually very good, though.
And this is a more ambitious novel, structurally and in several other ways, than I've seen out of him before. I admire his determination not to let his series sit where it was-- honestly, I suspect he could have written the previous sort of book forever and people would have kept buying them. So I think that despite the occasional shakiness, this is a good direction, and it's certainly an entertaining book (he got the entertaining down a while ago and it hasn't gone away, which is always the danger when you hit slice-and-dice on your series' core concepts).
Do I think this is great literature, or going to be? Oh fuck no. But this series is some of the most enjoyable idfic I read, and the better he gets at it, the happier I'll be. And this is a clear sign that he's working really hard at getting better at it, and pretty much succeeding. I'll take it.
( Spoilery thoughts. )
