Return of the Book Thread

[Evildrider]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue

It gets a little thick at times in Dresden.

But considering he's the protagonist of the series, is it really fair to call Dresden a Mary Sue?  I mean, if you apply the Mary Sue test to most main characters of extended series, they'd fail and be considered over-powered and such-like.

Definitely fair to do so. I'm not sure if your second statement is true or not - I don't read a lot of serieses that go beyond 3 or 4 books - but if it is it probably explains why I tend to prefer ensemble casts to Main Character Guy stories. I do think Dresden is, especially in the middle of the series, worse than most I can think of this way. He's at or beyond Vlad Taltos levels, which is pretty bad. The world building is neat though, and there are some really entertaining secondary characters, that is what keeps me interested.

Except that he gets his ass kicked pretty much every book and then has to sell his soul or gets some help in some way.  Not saying that he's not OP, cuz he certainly is with this next book coming out.

[Sheepherder]

Literary power creep and mudflation.

[Morat20]

Literary power creep and mudflation.

True. But they established pretty early that Dresden was top 50, easily, in terms of raw strength. And somewhere like bottom 100 in terms of "skill and finesse". Most of his levelling has been in the latter.

I think it's more of a Determinator than a Marty Stu. He gets his ass kicked all the time, he's generally swinging well outside his weight class, and gets led around by the nose alot. And as noted, half the time he ends up making deals for what's needed to do the job, with lengthy consequences.

Mostly it's the "won't stay down" as opposed to "stupidly powerful". Butcher at least regularly shows him there are guys that hit harder than he does.

Cowl cleans his clock. The Gatekeeper implies -- and Dresden believes it -- that the Gatekeeper wouldn't even have to sweat to kill him. The Merlin casually does magic Dresden couldn't imagine doing. Whats-his-face -- the guy that worked for the archive -- casually explains at one point how he'd go about killing a wizard of Dresden's class if he wanted to. "Easily". And he's mostly mortal and uses guns, not magic.

He's only a match for the lesser Denarians, and the more powerful fae can usually hand him his head. (The Eldest Gruff, as an example).

If he's a Mary Sue, the whole world is full of bigger ones.

Now Marcone -- there's a badass. :)

[Sheepherder]

I have no clue what you just said, not having read Dresden.  I just find it hilarious that fantasy sagas run into that same problem.

[MrHat]

I have no clue what you just said, not having read Dresden.  I just find it hilarious that fantasy sagas run into that same problem.

Or any series of 12+ books centered around one character?

[RhyssaFireheart]

I have no clue what you just said, not having read Dresden.  I just find it hilarious that fantasy sagas run into that same problem.

Or any series of 12+ books centered around one character?

Ding ding ding! 

Morat's explanation was spot on.  At least Dresden is also forced to reap the consequences of his actions and choices (good AND bad) as well, which helps keep the books from becoming "main character just saves the day in the nick of time and all is well... until the next adventrue (dundunDUN)".  Heck, Butcher even came up with a plausible excuse for why wizards live so long and why Harry will eventually recover from all the damage he's taken over time.  That's thinking of the fine details.

[WayAbvPar]

Thinking very hard about re-reading the whole series to get ready for the new one next month. Which means I will have to buy another Kindle (have lost 2 so far..I suck), since my copies of Changes and Ghost Story are electronic 

Haemish, I envy you. The first 2 books of the series are pretty widely regarded as much, much weaker than the rest, so you have lots of goodness coming to you. As a dog owner, you should especially enjoy Mouse. Enjoy the ride!

[Sky]

Or you could just borrow the two books from the library!

[ghost]

In memory of Banned Book Week, somebody has put out some pretty nice Banned Book Trading Cards.  It's pretty cool.  

And, oddly enough, it's from the Lawrence, Kansas, public library.   

[Chimpy]

Lawrence is probably the most liberal town in Kansas being the home of KU.

[Xilren's Twin]

Just finished up the most recent David Weber Safehold tome, Midst Toil and Trouble. I imagine that if I went and looked for what I said about the last one, it would be pretty much the same. The first half of the book is meetings and the second half is blowing up stuff. At least things blow up on screen, unlike the most recent Honor Harrington books. His use of emphasizing italics is a bit grating.

I personally cannot stand David weber for this series in particular. I LOVED the premise of the series but it became blindingly obvious that the author is doing nothing more than stretching out the series to make money. Every book is  exactly the same with the plot not really any closer to conclusion than it was at the end of the first book. I urge all readers to refuse giving any money to this hack.

Agree with the above.  I hate series books that are basically skippable.  Sadly, the latest Michelle Sagara book in the Chronicles of Elantra series - Cast in Peril, was the same way.  Much running about and stage setting but by the end of the book almost nothing had actually happened.  It was almost a "To Be Continued" ending, which pissed me off since none of the others books in the series had this problem.

[ghost]

Lawrence is probably the most liberal town in Kansas being the home of KU.

No shit.  I had no idea.   

That still doesn't make it San Francisco. 

[WayAbvPar]

Or you could just borrow the two books from the library!

I would want to read them before the heat death of the universe.

[Morat20]

Thinking very hard about re-reading the whole series to get ready for the new one next month. Which means I will have to buy another Kindle (have lost 2 so far..I suck), since my copies of Changes and Ghost Story are electronic 

Haemish, I envy you. The first 2 books of the series are pretty widely regarded as much, much weaker than the rest, so you have lots of goodness coming to you. As a dog owner, you should especially enjoy Mouse. Enjoy the ride!

I hear the new kindle with that paperwhite stuff and edge LED is pretty sweet. I've got the old Kindle (I'm on my second, my wife is on her second or third -- which she's lost, so technically she's waiting to buy her third or fourth)....

Thankfully she has a smartphone, laptop and an iPad, so it's not like she can't read her books.

[ghost]

I can't see a reason to buy a kindle or nook if you have an iPad. 

[Quinton]

The biggest advantages of a kindle over a 10" tablet are:
- light enough to hold comfortably for extended periods of time (like a small paperback book)
- easier on the eyes (many people find the higher contrast, non-emissive display much easier eyestrain-wise)
- battery life measured in months (see low battery alert, keep reading for a few hours, then plug it in)
- no distractions (I really don't want notifications, alerts, etc when trying to read)

The biggest downside is for full color, illustrated, or random access content, where the properties of the e-ink display become negatives.

[Ingmar]

Battery life alone is worth having a separate device, to me. The only reading I do on the tablet is PDFs.

[Murgos]

The base Kindle should probably be free at this point.  Or 10 bucks and come with a free book or two.  Two words, Market Penetration.

[Evildrider]

Anyone have input on the Dirk Pitt novels by Clive Cussler?  I'm thinking of picking a couple up.

[pxib]

Entertainly harmless pot boilers. Clive doesn't just put cliffhangers at the end of chapters, sometimes he puts one at the end of every page. He's rather famous for his impeccable research (which he goes out of his way to show, often in superfluous detail). He's also famous for how that same research is only historical. There are some amazing howlers in terms of basic science. Also Mr. Cussler shows up as a Mary Sue self insert in some of the later books, operating Deus ex Machina when Dirk is in over his head.

Turn off your internal critic and watch the pages fly by.

[Evildrider]

Entertainly harmless pot boilers. Clive doesn't just put cliffhangers at the end of chapters, sometimes he puts one at the end of every page. He's rather famous for his impeccable research (which he goes out of his way to show, often in superfluous detail). He's also famous for how that same research is only historical. There are some amazing howlers in terms of basic science. Also Mr. Cussler shows up as a Mary Sue self insert in some of the later books, operating Deus ex Machina when Dirk is in over his head.

Turn off your internal critic and watch the pages fly by.

Sounds like I'll give it a try.  I like "fluff" reads, as I am totally not critical about books and stuff as long as I feel entertained.

[Tmon]

Battery life alone is worth having a separate device, to me. The only reading I do on the tablet is PDFs.

Besides batter life, I like that my basic nook fits in my pocket, but has a much more larger screen than my phone.  I probably do most of my e-reading on my tablet, it's still nice to be able to grab the nook and go when I don't feel like hauling around anything bulky.

[Xilren's Twin]

I've been attempting to read Erikson's latest "Forge of Darkness" but it's been an effort.  I came to realization half way through it that I simply cannot stand ANY of the characters at all; the incessant turgid internal monologues philosphising on the emptiness and depressing nature of life are just driving me insane.  Even the action scenes, what few there have been so far, are infected by this.  I don't recall his previous series being this bad.

[ghost]

I'm about halfway through Fires of Heaven in my attempt to finish up the Wheel of Time series.  This is where I crapped out the previous two times that I've tried to read through it.  I think I've finally been able to pin down what irritates me so much about Jordan's writing style-  he feels the need to repeat descriptions and explanations over and over again throughout the book, as if you hadn't read that same description or explanation on the very previous page.  Yes, I know that when an Aiel puts on their veil it's bad news.  I know that the heron mark blade is awesomsauce and that Rand has the mark of the heron on his palms and the dragon tattoos on this biceps.  I understand that Aes Sedai are spooky creepy and have an "ageless face".  I am rather enjoying the series overall though.  I have found that listening to books is a great deal more enjoyable for some series than the actual reading of them myself.  And it breathes new life into books that I've read before. 

[Mattemeo]

Just started Gravity's Rainbow. So far, so very Joyce writes Cryptonomicon. Seriously dense prose - this is my first time reading Pynchon. It's florid as hell and I'm finding I have to re-read certain sentences or even paragraphs to work my head around. The act of making breakfast was Herculean.

[Rendakor]

I'm about halfway through Fires of Heaven in my attempt to finish up the Wheel of Time series.  This is where I crapped out the previous two times that I've tried to read through it.  I think I've finally been able to pin down what irritates me so much about Jordan's writing style-  he feels the need to repeat descriptions and explanations over and over again throughout the book, as if you hadn't read that same description or explanation on the very previous page.  Yes, I know that when an Aiel puts on their veil it's bad news.  I know that the heron mark blade is awesomsauce and that Rand has the mark of the heron on his palms and the dragon tattoos on this biceps.  I understand that Aes Sedai are spooky creepy and have an "ageless face".  I am rather enjoying the series overall though.  I have found that listening to books is a great deal more enjoyable for some series than the actual reading of them myself.  And it breathes new life into books that I've read before. 

I made it up to Book 8 on my latest reread before giving up; my big beef aside from his writing style is that there are too many characters I just don't care about who are getting the lion's share of the screen (page?) time. I couldn't get into the Malazan series for the same reason; ASOIAF seems to keep the ratio of interesting characters to shitty ones high enough that it hasn't really bothered me yet, but at the rate Martin's killing off characters...

[Cyrrex]

Wheel of Time begins to improve again on that front somewhere around...maybe it was Jordan's last book that began to turn it around.  And then Sanderson's writing is faaaar improved over Jordan's, and in my opinion makes it worth sticking around to see how it all ends.  In a perfect world, Sanderson would go back and re-write the whole series.

[Sheepherder]

maybe it was Jordan's last book that began to turn it around.

It (book 11) was.

It's hard to adequately describe how awful book 10 is though.  It might be worse than The Iron Tower trilogy.

[dd0029]

It (book 11) was.

It's hard to adequately describe how awful book 10 is though.  It might be worse than The Iron Tower trilogy.

600+ pages for one day. Small, tiny parts were entertaining, but most of it was Perrin being an emo douche. There might have been some of the over described and detailed spanking that's sort of a hallmark of the later books. 

As always, if you just want to get up to the Sanderson books, the WoT Encyclopedia has really good chapter summaries. It's how I "reread" book 10 in about 45 minutes when the first Sanderson book came out. Click the book you want and enjoy the summaries. I just noticed that some obsessive monkey went and made and added a plot thread graphic if you want want to read/pay attention to something in particular. 

WoT Encyclopedia: http://www.encyclopaedia-wot.org/

[Morat20]

Wandered through the new Weber Safehold book. I'm a little iffy on a few things, but at least Weber has the 'good guys' fuck up by the numbers sometime  (even if, of course, the heroes win the day in the end) and it's nice seeing the 'bad guys' (so to speak) stop being such fuck-ups.

Of course the Big Bad is still shoving his way across the moral event horizon, but I'm not actually finding that hard to believe. Religious wars get nasty. Just the nature of any sort of civil war.

Finished Rapture of the Nerds. Very Accelerando/Singularity Sky with Cory Doctorow -- pretty much right what it looked like.

Started The Hydrogen Sonata -- Wool is next.

[dd0029]

Finally got Caine's Law by Matthew Stover from the library. I really should have stopped at the first one, the guy got the girl, it was happily ever after and none of the real logical inconsistencies in the story had really shown up yet. This last one was all about the time flash arounds and I'm not sure Stover was quite good enough to pull it off. He really needed to take a bit more than a 100 level theology course. Hopefully the series stays done now.

Also read the much better Evil Dark by Justin Gustainis. This the second in an urban fantasy series about a Scranton, PA cop on the "supernatural squad." It reminds me of a grittier, less comical, Dresden or a bit lighter Harry Connolly.

[Johny Cee]

Also read the much better Evil Dark by Justin Gustainis. This the second in an urban fantasy series about a Scranton, PA cop on the "supernatural squad." It reminds me of a grittier, less comical, Dresden or a bit lighter Harry Connolly.

Gustainis lives in the same city as I do!  Tried one of his Quincey Morris books and it was uninteresting, though the OCI books are a bit better.  The second book ran into a common contemporary fantasy problem of using wacky religious extremists as designated Bad Guys.  Wacky religious extremists are the wacky evil terrorists or wacky evil pseudo-Nazis of go to contemporary fantasy villainy.

Seriously try the Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch (the first is Rivers of London in the UK, Midnight Riot in the US).  Part police procedural, part UF where magic after a long decline (and most wizards being casualties of WWII) seems to be on the upswing and there is a small sub-unit of London police that gets called in if things are a little odd. 

[Quinton]

Seriously try the Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch (the first is Rivers of London in the UK, Midnight Riot in the US).  Part police procedural, part UF where magic after a long decline (and most wizards being casualties of WWII) seems to be on the upswing and there is a small sub-unit of London police that gets called in if things are a little odd. 

I'm really enjoying these.  Reminds me a little of Dresden Files, but more polished in some ways and less crazy power creep. 

[dd0029]

Seriously try the Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch (the first is Rivers of London in the UK, Midnight Riot in the US).  Part police procedural, part UF where magic after a long decline (and most wizards being casualties of WWII) seems to be on the upswing and there is a small sub-unit of London police that gets called in if things are a little odd. 

I read the first one and enjoyed it but it didn't really tweak whatever it is that makes me look for the next. I'll check it out though. I think part of it is that I read Kate Griffin's most recent Matthew Swift book about the same time and that's a horse of a decidedly different color. I'd read those all the time, but it looks like she is done with that series for a moment and is starting a new one with this Stray Souls book. I just saw that it is set in the same world as the Matthew Swift stuff, so I'll probably check it out.

Anyway, about halfway through my latest Kindle dumpster dive, Bill the Vampire by Rick Gualtieri. Not terribly well written, but not all that bad either. My $3 was not entirely wasted.

[Hammond]

Seriously try the Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch (the first is Rivers of London in the UK, Midnight Riot in the US).  Part police procedural, part UF where magic after a long decline (and most wizards being casualties of WWII) seems to be on the upswing and there is a small sub-unit of London police that gets called in if things are a little odd. 

Midnight Riot was pretty decent but the later books I think are better; Moon over soho and Wispers under ground.

I recently finished The Hydrogen Sonata which overall was a fair read.  I think some of the other Culture books were more enjoyable all in all.  The plot was pretty obvious and there wasn't really any surprises which was unlike the previous cuture books for me.

I also read the two books from Gene Doucette; Immortal, and Hellenic Immortal which were a kick. The main character is immortal and has lived through all of recorded history.  There is no real magic in the world although there are some of the traditional magic creatures.  The part I like is how the author ties in actual random historical references into the overarching story line.