Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

[lightreads]

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


See, this is the difference between Jim Butcher and me.



. . . Well, okay, no, it’s not the difference, there are a lot of differences. He thinks women are smaller weaker men with breasts (nearly an exact quote); I do not. He doesn’t have a very good grasp on what sexual assault and rape are; I really, really do. He thinks it’s appropriate to go off on people of color who read his books and find them racist (how dare they, you guys!); I – yeah, you get the picture.



But the point here is that he thinks a book ends with a battle, and I think a book ends with, um, an ending. It’s continually astonishing to me that a guy could come up with a set of characters I’ve become this sincerely attached to when he doesn’t write any of the bits I really care about. I mean, werewolf battle with mobsters, whatever. Nice scenery, magic, it’s not like we don’t all know how this goes. But it’s like, I don’t know, it’s like Butcher thinks the tension actually lives there in the showdown of good and evil.



It really, really doesn’t. In these books, it particularly doesn’t, because the only surprise in a Dresden battle is how, never who or why. No, the interesting bits would be after the dust settles, with a number of uncomfortable interpersonal questions floating around, and the implications of power still in the air. But do we get any of that? Nope.





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Comments

[treewishes]

I wonder if it's a conscious "this is what my publisher says will sell / what I think I should write" vs a subconscious "this is what intrigues me / but I'll just not think too much about that"?

Which is just about the best argument for fanfic there is, really.