LogFAQs > #926469158

It's like Butcher doesn't understand how first person perspective works, because if he did the same rampaging action in Codex Alera -- and I read the first book, and that ironically ISN'T so obnoxiously fast -- it would have been fine because that's third person, multi narrator. The story doesn't live and die by the reader's attachment to the main character. But first person? First person requires a bond between the reader and the narrator, and right now that bond is simply that Harry is the guy holding the camera, talking into the mic but never actually demonstrating how he feels.

If Harry isn't an engaging character, then we need to have strong involvement from the rest of the cast. The truth is, nobody's on-screen long enough to fill those shoes. In this latest book, Michael comes close. I like Murphy and Susan, but they aren't around often enough. Harry is flying solo or simply zipping past the other characters so quickly that it needs to be his charisma that sells the novel. And he has none.

Harry's also lost his credibility as anything other than maybe a comic book character. He takes so much damage and keeps going, with no real healing, that I don't understand how he keeps moving forward. The books also pretty well establish a general idea of what he can do, and then he intermittently seems to invent superpowers. (I'm angry now, so I'm going to burn this whole house of vampires to the ground, even though my magic was so weakened I can barely light a candle.) I know it's well-known that Butcher's writing is summarized as putting his main character through as much shit as possible, but the problem is that not only does he get fucked up beyond human capacity but he also has to find ways out of those problems that aren't always believable. Simply saying "because magic" is not an excuse at this point.

The books seem to each focus on some mystery that he randomly conveniently "solves" at a moment where he's completely fucked over and fucked up, and then he rallies himself (for the thirteenth time, but THIS one is different because now hw knows what he has to do!) And then most of the ending resolves itself in fairly anti-climactic fashion. For instance, I was pretty disappointed when I saw how he addressed the hexenwolf murder squad. Two of them killed each other, he somehow becomes a more capable wolf than they are and murders the other two.

So it's all bad then?

No, it isn't. I liked parts. Harry does heroic things and he does them for heroic reasons. The very end of the third book, from the point where he leaves the Nevernever, was well executed. And maybe gives signs of why people will inevitably tell me the fourth book is where it finally "gets good." I can certainly see signs in the writing of why someone would like Jim Butcher's writing. And he throws so many darts at the action scene dartboard that quite a few of them hit. The novels just have a few too many holes in the rest of their construction for me.

Like, I don't feel as if I should be able to say I like my own writing better. Well, for narcissistic reasons, obviously, I should. But not objectively. But I kinda feel that way. Of course, if I offered to let you read book one, I'd have to give the caveat that it gets better...because it does. And that's precisely why I had no problem with eventually accepting I might need to read more than one book to appreciate. But I've read three now, and it really hasn't improved. So sorry, legion of rabid fans, but I'm out.

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also, yay for writing posts so long they have to be broken in two.
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