Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
Burnt out, over the hill autistic IT nerd and longtime SSC lurker
User ID: 3219
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
22hr ago
Fortune's Envoy (Cyber Dreams book 3) by Plum Parrot. I started the first one after finishing Daring and I'm still way into it!
I was just talking about WoT a few weeks back and while the series as a whole was kinda uneven for me (tl;dr I loved the first four and last three books, it's 5-12 5-11 that could be so-so) I still have to say it's an excellent series overall. I think @SubstantialFrivolity is dead on in observing that the wait for the next book was a significant factor in making the slog through the slower-paced books more difficult for me personally as well. More generally, with a story of such epic scope, there's almost bound to be some characters that you're eager to read more of, others that are irritating and/or frustrating, some plot threads that you find really satisfying, and other plot threads that are b-o-o-ring to the point of tears. But even with everything we fans have to complain about, it's still a hell of an epic tale at the end of the day. I'd encourage you to stick with it a bit longer (although certainly pull the ripcord if it's not grabbed you by the end of the first book at the latest) and see whether or not it picks up for you.
I'd say that the TV series was limited by what was possible at the time, more than anything else. More specifically, I don't know how much better the source material could have been treated for a modestly budgeted SyFy series. I think that Netflix or Prime could potentially do a much better job with it these days but, of course, they'd be just as likely to screw it all up for Reasons if they tried, alas.
I'll be interested to hear what you think of the series if/when you return to it. FWIW, while I know that Butcher himself has said something to the effect that the first four books are completely skippable, it was the third book that set the hook for me as a reader. Where the first two felt to me like they were more mid-level urban fantasy fare that weren't necessarily too serious, shit got real in Grave Peril, and IMO it hasn't stopped since. While there are plenty of folks that have been upset by this twist or that turn in the overall series, I'm not one of them. There have been many deeply touching moments in the series for me, more than any other that I've yet read, and some of them are made that much better by being brought to fruition over the span of several or even many books. Even the seemingly-slightest rhetorical flourishes can be pregnant with foreshadowing, and I personally think that Butcher has just gotten better and better as a writer as he's cranked them out, with Ghost Story being my personal favorite.
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