Cold Days by Jim Butcher

[fenchurch]

So I actually started reading Cold Days right after it came out (there was a delay of a day or two for reasons that still make me grumble) and I was tearing right through it... and then stopped. I was a little more than halfway done and I just couldn't bring myself to finish. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy it... in fact, I was liking it a lot. It's just that the angst level had already built pretty high and I knew that it was only going to get worse before the end (at which point I was a whole lot more likely to have my heart ripped out than to have a tidy ending). To quote the character Charles Gunn from the TV show Angel: "There's always more down."

Over the next month or so, I kept picking it up and putting it down and wondering why in the world it was so hard for me to finish. It's not like I didn't know what I was in for when I started it... and despite the fact that the Harry Dresden books have a history of heart-ripping, I really do love the series. And then I was talking to someone last week about why I'm not going to see Les Miserables in the theaters, even though in the lead up to it I was very excited about its release. I'm still reeling from my dad passing away right before Thanksgiving and still fighting off depression over it and I just don't want to deal with that level of sadness and pathos. And it was like a light went off in my brain... I was dreading that expected heart-ripping much MUCH more than normal. Once I realized what was going on, I found I had no trouble picking the book up and plowing through to the end.

And now, on to talking about the book (don't worry, it's non-spoilery). I liked it. It wasn't quite what I was expecting and in some ways is just another setup book for the larger plot, moving characters into new places for where they need to be in the greater storyline, but it has a pretty decent plot of its own to keep it entertaining. There were at least two points in the book where the writing got a bit awkward and it felt a bit like the writer had inserted a personal rant/lecture into the story (where it didn't really fit) and there were some moments where I felt like I must have missed a chapter or a page somewhere, because of conversations that made no sense referring to things I didn't recognize. I guess, to some extent, the writing didn't feel quite as tight as it has in the past... probably the best way I can think to describe it.

As I mentioned, the ending was much more satisfying than I was expecting... but it still left me wanting to go back and reread Storm Front or one of the other early books, because I really miss that Harry Dresden, when he was just a professional wizard for hire and this "larger storyline" stuff was much more in the background, just teasing us from time to time.

BTW, I *hate* that I'm being forced to use the new entry form here... it's horrible to use, doesn't give me all the options I want and sucks like huge sucking thing.

Crossposted from my Livejournal.

Comments

[sp23]

I don't even try posting at LJ anymore; I almost entirely cross post from DW. And now that I don't have a paid LJ, I hate commenting there, too, since they don't allow me to preview my comments.

As I said on Facebook, I'm way behind on the Dresden book. In fact, it's probably fair to say that I'm not much of a fan. I do have the first three or four books though, and I keep telling myself to just *read* the damned things. Maybe I will get into them if I can read them as opposed to listening to the audio books, which I also have.

[sadbhyl]

I know what you mean. I'm torn about the direction of the series as well. On the one hand, I miss poor Harry battering his way through the edges of two (or more!) societies to do his job and make a living. But on the other hand, if Butcher had kept doing that, the series would be running into the same problems most series do after five or six books, repeating themselves into boredom when I'd give it all up anyway (I'm looking at you, Janet Evanovich). The way he's writing it, it's a long progression in a bigger plot, and it's really amazing to go back and see seeds planted even in the first books that are just now starting to bear fruit. I'm certainly not bored yet, and still waiting anxiously for the next book, especially after THAT ENDING OMG.

[typographer]

I noticed one of the rants. Or at least one place where I had the same thought, and was curious as to why Jim inserted it there. Since so often he slips in little things that later turn out to be important, I was half expecting it to turn into something at the end. But it didn't.

Pausing here to think about it, my mind drifted to one of the Stephen King's infamous gaffes. Specifically, in the original Cujo, there's a long extremely detailed explanation of how fuel injectors can be working perfectly fine, with no sign of any trouble when you drove the car to someplace. But when you come out and try to start the car, they don't work, and the car is completely dead.

The explanation is absolutely spot-on. The only problem is that King gives this as the explanation of why the family's Ford Pinto won't start.

No Pinto ever rolled out of a Ford factory with fuel injection. They all had carburetors.

What happened, of course, is that King had driven somewhere in his own car (not a Pinto), had parked it, then come out and it was completely dead. After getting it towed to a service station, he asked the mechanic what happened. So the next book King wrote, he used the explanation without thinking to check to see if the problem applied to the car he had given the family.

This is a very long and roundabout way of wondering if it's simply a case that Jim was researching a location, let's say, he stumbled upon some commentary about topic A tangentially related to the location that got his dander up, so when he set a scene at the location in question, he put the rant about topic A into a character's mouth.

Or something.

I dunno.