I’m halfway through it (jeez, the interlibrary loan system can be slow at times), and I have a couple of questions. Michael appears as Harry’s “friend”, but he wasn’t in book one or two, was he? Was Lea, the godmother, in the first two?
I’m loving the series, but either I’m too forgetful, or Butcher is just throwing stuff in, hoping I will take it in stride. Or I suppose I could be an idiot, because I am just about the opposite of a English Lit major.
Any thoughts on the series up to this point are welcome.
It has been quite a while since I read that one, my paperbacks are still all boxed up from my move, but I believe that is Michael’s first appearance. Butcher adds people from time to time, but does a pretty good job of weaving them into the story of Dresden’s adventures.
Yeah, Butcher does that sometimes. I don’t exactly remember what takes part in Grave Peril and what later, so I can’t comment on the specific novel, but when I was starting to read the novels, I remember going to the Wikipedia website a couple of times to make sure I had continued with the right novel, because suddenly all those unfamiliar people popped up. However, keep on reading, because sometimes Butcher explains things within the same novel, and in addition, some things become clearer or are revisited in later novels.
I just read it not long ago. I had the same problem. I kept looking at the cover to see if it really said book three. I thought that they might have screwed it up in this edition. It seemed pretty weird to me. It seems like there should be a book between 2 and three. Hell the mystery bad guy is someone he fought before and it seems like you are supposed to know him. How can there be a surprise reveal that the dead bad guy isn’t really dead if you never saw him die in the first place? Or even know who the hell he is? I still don’t understand this. The only thing I can think of is that he wrote the story, or part of it and it sucked so he threw it out and started again.
He did a bad job this time. It was like part two of a story that had no part one. I have no problem with introducing new charaters that he supposedly knows for years but the basis for this book was a novel sized amount of plot that never made it to print. It was quite confusing and badly done.
I don’t remember having a problem with the way Butcher introduced Michael, but then I did read the books out of order because the library was missing the first one. Maybe that’s why I didn’t notice it. Michael is a recurring character, though, and one of my favorites.
I’ve mentioned this in another thread already, but I was annoyed to see that the blurbs for the newest book, White Knight, contain a spoiler. They give away something about a character that is introduced earlier in the series.
I don’t remember having any issues with book 3 either. I think it’s explained somewhere that while Michael and Dresden are friends, they can go for long periods of time without seeing each other. Because Michael is off doing “his” work or Dresden is avoiding Michael.
I’ll go back and find the book so I’ll have all the names and facts correct later. But I’ll just say that the problem I had was not just the introduction of a new character, it was basing the entire plot on action that happened after book two. Involving a bad guy that we never heard of. The action is all about the bad guy getting revenge for something that happened before the book but we are supposed to know all about it. It is all made worse by the fact that it is in first person. Harry is talking to us like we are supposed to know who these people are, and we don’t.
It didn’t bother me, as I recall. It seemed pretty obvious that there are gaps between the books (if only because there’s no way Harry would have time to heal up if the book events were happening in quick succession). At this point, I think the books are mostly supposed to cover events that tie into an overall arc; Harry has cases in between them. He could easily meet new people and work with them in between books. It’s also quite possible that people will pop up that he knew pre-Storm Front, or even before Justin’s death, and that he just hasn’t seen in a while.