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[seekingferret]

I have finished Skin Game, which means that a)I have read all of the thus-published Dresden Files novels and b)I have read all the 2015 Hugo finalists for best novel. The completist in me is very happy about both of these.

The reader in me is more happy that I don't have to read anymore Dresden Files books. I enjoyed some of them, but I found the series in general to be often tedious and repetitive in theme, plodding in pace, lacking in detail and emotional nuance, and just generally overly broad. I will say that if I had to accept one of them as a Hugo finalist, it would have been Ghost Story over Skin Game. Skin Game was not the best of the series by any means.



I also finished Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews, which I definitely enjoyed more than the Dresden Books as an urban fantasy detective story with a really great feel for the pace and grit of a pavement pounding pulp novel. The investigative details that the Dresden books tend to gloss over are the meat on which Andrews hangs their worldbuilding, and the result is a post-apocalyptic fantasy world that feels really, really convincing.

I loved how salvaging magic-ruined buildings is a dynamic economic problem, with complicated and corrupted bidding processes that are only the first step in a process that includes inspections and regulations in addition to the almost mundane danger posed by magical beasts. I loved how Andi took care of her neighbors and friends, how Atlanta felt like a community instantly in a way Butcher's nebulous and ill-defined 'Chicago magical community' only rarely did. I loved how Andi struggled against the inexorable pull of family before finally caving to the new reality of her evolving desires, and I loved how The Pack served as both a literalizing metaphor for that process and also a legal and social entity that she could struggle against.

I've started jumping back to Magic Bites, the first book in the series, which so far doesn't look as good, but I'm looking forward to digging deeper into this series.



Meanwhile, I have started reading Philip Roth's The Great American Novel, which is Roth's baseball novel, as well as Roth's parody of the idea of great literature, even as it is his homage to great literature. The prose is just ridiculously fun. Roth's not my favorite writer, but I'm hard pressed to name a living writer whose sheer literary craft I admire more. Good golly, the semantic density he achieves!

Comments

[calledtovienna]

I thought that Changes was pretty good, and Ghost Story was pretty OK. Mostly, though, I guess I am forever tainted by remembering how excited I was after Changes&Ghost Story to leave behind all of the old characters (most of whom seemed to have resolved their plots) and move on with Harry Dresden, Winter Knight storyarc.

Unfortunately, both Cold Winds(?) and Skin Game have been all of the same characters coming back into the narrative without a lot of reasons that I would personally find compelling (ex: Why is Michael in Skin Game? Hasn't he... retired as the Knight Of the Cross? It doesn't really fit thematically (except maybe a little near the end) and it doesn't really make a lot of sense narratively, except maybe, Butcher saying 'hey it is those guys, so bring in this guy now'.) (ex2: Doesn't Harry Dresden have... like.... fae friends? I mean, I guess not, because he is an asshole, but you would think that if he can choose literally anyone to help out against Nichodemus && Hades, there are enough creatures slinging superpowers & loyal to Mab who can have his back... instead of the mortal and super-breakable Murphy, yeah?). So, my disappointment is large enough that I might fail to even pick up the next one (though I do say that a lot).

[seekingferret]

Yeah, Skin Game doesn't make a whole lot of sense as a book other than to say Jim Butcher probably read Timothy Zahn's Scoundrels and said "Ooh, I'm going to write a fan-servicey heist novel now, too." Nicodemus's plan makes even less sense than Harry's... "Let me get together a bunch of my enemies and constrain them with very broad fae-designed obligations that are always, always, always filled with loopholes."

[calledtovienna]

Yeah. Which is fine -- I mean, it is a fanservicy sort of series, and having a fanservicy book where everyone robs Hades by robbing Johny Marcone because, once again, why not, would have been great. But there are better ways to do it, and maybe that is not the right place in the chronology for it. (Also, Hades telling Harry that Harry is great just sounds like a deleted scene from another book, before Harry was the Winter Knight and we knew that he was McCoy's(?) grandson and basicaly by now, everyone knows that he is great, so having Hades say it has no advantages at all).

[seekingferret]

Yeah, the Hades scene was really kind of startlingly ineffective and annoying, especially compared to other scenes in recent books where Butcher has tried to represent Higher Powers... the conversation with Mother Summer in Cold Days, the conversation with Vadderung in Changes, etc...

I'm also kind of bothered by Marcone's ascension to being a big enough player to make deals with people like Hades and Mab. That kind of comes out of nowhere for me, and seems like it only happened because the heist plot couldn't have worked otherwise. And meanwhile, as you say, Murphy is as mortal and breakable as ever.

Butcher kind of has a habit of postponing dealing with the consequences of major plot changes. After the book where Harry sets off a war with the Red Court, we get a book mostly about the Fae and barely mentioning vampires.