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Entry tags:
Jim Butcher's Turn Coat and the Dresden Files in general
I don't consider any of this spoilery but I am posting it all under a cut just in case! Better safe than sorry, etc.
I headed home a bit late from work yesterday. Even though I've seen it umptey hundred times at this point, some of my coworkers were watching the Susan Boyle Britain's Got Talent clip for the first time and talking about it. It was a nice end to the day; maybe that's why even after fighting traffic all the way home I still had the energy to go directly to the bookstore (do not pass go, do not collect $200 - though I didn't actually spend that much *relief*) to hang out for a while.
The Dresden Files books have been coming at a steady rate for a while now and I read the most recent paperback a few days after it came out. I've been if not content then at least resigned to waiting another year for the next installment but for some reason that didn't work this time. I bought Turn Coat in hardcover.
Turn Coat is the eleventh book in this series by Jim Butcher. There are a couple of short stories scattered here and there that I've read as well. With a couple of years, supposedly, passing between each book, I'm actually starting to wonder at the timeline. I get the feeling that about 25 years of in-world time should have passed, and I just don't see that; the mortals aren't aging at that pace. This might call for sitting down with all eleven books and mapping it out. That's going to depend on how compulsive I'm feeling about it later.
In any event, I got home and sat down and read all of Turn Coat last night. At 432 pages, it is still a quick read; this book stays true to Butcher's technique of throwing Harry Dresden headlong into unstoppable events and turning up the pace until you screetch into the ending. It took me about 4 hours, with interruptions, to get through this.
There are some very interesting story developments going on here. It makes me eager for the next book. It also begs for comparison with the Rachel Morgan series of books by Kim Harrison (hint: I like those but I like these even better and I think part of that is the way Rachel is mired in emotional distress that manifests as wishy-washy action and Harry is mired in emotional distress that manifests as KICKING ASS). But I'm not sure I want to reread the 11 Dresden books AND the 8 Morgan books just for the sake of a post. *laugh*
The only thing that sticks me in the stomach with Turn Coat is that the principle supernatural bad guy in this one is a Skinwalker, a Native American construct. The authorial side of me says that, in a world like Harry's, where every brand of mythology is true, it would be contrived to never have mythological creatures from other cultures appear as major story elements. I mean, that's one reason why Harry has a Foo dog. On the other hand, I can see how the use of the Skinwalker would be exploitative. I've been going back and forth on this one since I read the summary before the book came out.
Now that I've read it, though, I still can't decide. Butcher does a good job of sketching complex characters even when we haven't seen them all that often (granted, over 11 books he's had thousands of pages to give us these impressions), so Listens-to-Wind reads as an actual person instead of a token. I appreciate that the Council is a pretty diverse crowd in general (even moreso the other Wardens and wizards that appear) but Butcher does fall into old tropes at times. He goes for the fatty=bad guy steretype and Ancient Mai's mystical ancient and unknowable/inscrutable wisdom is getting a bit thick. The Vampires of the White Court are all (somewhat predictably yet entirely unnecessarily) white folks. There are schlubby guys but all of the women are stunning or (in the case of Murphy) at least extremely cute in stereotypical ways.
So, I want the use of the Skinwalker to be just another monster Harry is fighting and if he were getting everything else right 100% of the time, maybe it would be just that and be completely unproblematic. But he's not. (I don't think that's even possible, really, and that's okay - it's why we have to talk about this stuff and work on it.) And that might tip the balance.
If you've loved the Dresden Files up until this point, you are pretty likely to love Turn Coat. Butcher is CONSISTENT, especially in this world (I'm not so impressed by his other series). This isn't a good jumping off point for a newcomer to the world - there's a lot of reference back to other big events and the book loses something without understanding how Harry has reached this point.
Because Harry has a bit of an identity revelation here - it's not so much about who he IS but about how he is perceived by other wizards. It's a small moment but I'd like to see it come back into play. He traded on it for profit so that might not be an unreasonable expectation after all.
It was really nice to get stuck in a book last night. I sat on my bed and read. I sat in the bath and read. I ate dinner and read. I stayed up an extra half-an-hour, Ed snoring next to me, to finish the last 40 or 50 or so pages. It's an engrossing world, which is why I forgive its very human flaws. Overall, I feel like Butcher is trying to be a respectful and responsible steward of the mythology he borrows. But I do wonder: Is that enough?
I headed home a bit late from work yesterday. Even though I've seen it umptey hundred times at this point, some of my coworkers were watching the Susan Boyle Britain's Got Talent clip for the first time and talking about it. It was a nice end to the day; maybe that's why even after fighting traffic all the way home I still had the energy to go directly to the bookstore (do not pass go, do not collect $200 - though I didn't actually spend that much *relief*) to hang out for a while.
The Dresden Files books have been coming at a steady rate for a while now and I read the most recent paperback a few days after it came out. I've been if not content then at least resigned to waiting another year for the next installment but for some reason that didn't work this time. I bought Turn Coat in hardcover.
Turn Coat is the eleventh book in this series by Jim Butcher. There are a couple of short stories scattered here and there that I've read as well. With a couple of years, supposedly, passing between each book, I'm actually starting to wonder at the timeline. I get the feeling that about 25 years of in-world time should have passed, and I just don't see that; the mortals aren't aging at that pace. This might call for sitting down with all eleven books and mapping it out. That's going to depend on how compulsive I'm feeling about it later.
In any event, I got home and sat down and read all of Turn Coat last night. At 432 pages, it is still a quick read; this book stays true to Butcher's technique of throwing Harry Dresden headlong into unstoppable events and turning up the pace until you screetch into the ending. It took me about 4 hours, with interruptions, to get through this.
There are some very interesting story developments going on here. It makes me eager for the next book. It also begs for comparison with the Rachel Morgan series of books by Kim Harrison (hint: I like those but I like these even better and I think part of that is the way Rachel is mired in emotional distress that manifests as wishy-washy action and Harry is mired in emotional distress that manifests as KICKING ASS). But I'm not sure I want to reread the 11 Dresden books AND the 8 Morgan books just for the sake of a post. *laugh*
The only thing that sticks me in the stomach with Turn Coat is that the principle supernatural bad guy in this one is a Skinwalker, a Native American construct. The authorial side of me says that, in a world like Harry's, where every brand of mythology is true, it would be contrived to never have mythological creatures from other cultures appear as major story elements. I mean, that's one reason why Harry has a Foo dog. On the other hand, I can see how the use of the Skinwalker would be exploitative. I've been going back and forth on this one since I read the summary before the book came out.
Now that I've read it, though, I still can't decide. Butcher does a good job of sketching complex characters even when we haven't seen them all that often (granted, over 11 books he's had thousands of pages to give us these impressions), so Listens-to-Wind reads as an actual person instead of a token. I appreciate that the Council is a pretty diverse crowd in general (even moreso the other Wardens and wizards that appear) but Butcher does fall into old tropes at times. He goes for the fatty=bad guy steretype and Ancient Mai's mystical ancient and unknowable/inscrutable wisdom is getting a bit thick. The Vampires of the White Court are all (somewhat predictably yet entirely unnecessarily) white folks. There are schlubby guys but all of the women are stunning or (in the case of Murphy) at least extremely cute in stereotypical ways.
So, I want the use of the Skinwalker to be just another monster Harry is fighting and if he were getting everything else right 100% of the time, maybe it would be just that and be completely unproblematic. But he's not. (I don't think that's even possible, really, and that's okay - it's why we have to talk about this stuff and work on it.) And that might tip the balance.
If you've loved the Dresden Files up until this point, you are pretty likely to love Turn Coat. Butcher is CONSISTENT, especially in this world (I'm not so impressed by his other series). This isn't a good jumping off point for a newcomer to the world - there's a lot of reference back to other big events and the book loses something without understanding how Harry has reached this point.
Because Harry has a bit of an identity revelation here - it's not so much about who he IS but about how he is perceived by other wizards. It's a small moment but I'd like to see it come back into play. He traded on it for profit so that might not be an unreasonable expectation after all.
It was really nice to get stuck in a book last night. I sat on my bed and read. I sat in the bath and read. I ate dinner and read. I stayed up an extra half-an-hour, Ed snoring next to me, to finish the last 40 or 50 or so pages. It's an engrossing world, which is why I forgive its very human flaws. Overall, I feel like Butcher is trying to be a respectful and responsible steward of the mythology he borrows. But I do wonder: Is that enough?