Fantasy Buddy Reads discussion

This is a Buddy Read for Brief Cases by Jim Butcher starting May 13, 2023.

Spot!

Started today...

Fistful of Warlocks: I wish Dresden had time to write this theoretical five book story involving Luccio & Kemmler & maybe Wyatt Earp...

B is for Bigfoot: (view spoiler)[nice little snippet of Dresden doing a job for Bigfoot, and making life easier for a loner kid... (hide spoiler)]

For some reason I really like these Dresden shorts... has me kinda excited for Twelve Months, which I assume will have more smaller problems to solve, amid replacing his lost toolset finally and other spoilery things...

AAAA(A) Wizardry: good little warden classroom lesson, here...

I Was a Teenage Bigfoot: (view spoiler)[this one and the last one really feels like it's playing a bit fast and loose with using magic around Muggles, but I liked the stories and characters we'll probably never see again... (hide spoiler)]

Cursed: (view spoiler)[always nice to see a real world thing explained in a fantasy book... (hide spoiler)]

Bigfoot on Campus: the best thing about these Bigfoot stories being added later, is they manage to have their own mini story arc, which is nice... (view spoiler)[and River Shoulders is gonna appear in Peace Talks / Battle Ground... (hide spoiler)]

Even Hand: Marcone is definitely a character that feels like it was a long time coming, finally getting into his head a bit... mega-spoilers for people that haven't read Peace Talks + Battle Ground yet: (view spoiler)[this is also notable for being shortly after Marcone swiped Thorned Namshiel's coin on the train/kidnapping, so I definitely think the injury and magic workarounds are to hide his true power at this point... and Justine's time in captivity here is the most likely time for her to have become Nfected by Nemesis, a clear ally of the Fomor when they show up in the coming two-parter (hide spoiler)]

Bombshells: nice little Charlie's Angels story...

Cold Case: (view spoiler)[this is the one that leads to many questions about Maeve and her Nfection... this is the first time it's made clear that the Summer/Winter Lady are forced into the Virgin archetype... but Maeve clearly wasn't locked into that for a long time... should have been way too obvious that Nemesis was warping her, unless it's just that most people are clueless about Nemesis and that he CAN infect people...

Also, poor Carlos... (vague re-reader only spoiler and speculation on unpublished books) (view spoiler)[between this and what happens in Peace Talks... he's a bit of a budding Morgan 2.0, maybe?... we'll see, when he returns in Mirror, Mirror... (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)]

Day One: BUTTER'S FIRST QUEST... love this short story, and the implications about his Knighthood... ode to gamers...

Zoo Day: so many secrets here... shame they'll probably never be shared between characters... nice to get into Maggie's head and Mouse, too...

Jury Duty: I wonder if Jim Butcher had to serve Jury Duty... between this and The Law, I feel like Dresden had a bit of a courtroom bent in recent short stories...

#1 - Luccio is awesome! I second your sentiment - we need that western with her:)))

#2.... Loved the little Bigfoot!

#3... That was interesting... The boogie man was freaky and the family kind of cute...

#4... Little Bigfoot again! I love this kid! Fabio is lucky Dresden isn't a stick in the mud...

#5.... Hahaha! The Cubbies are our Cardinals' forever rivals, so I am ok with the curse:))) I guess it was lifted for 2016 - we were all rooting for them:)))

#6... Marcone ... Justine and the Fomor... Good to get into Marcone's head...

#7... Bigfoot on Campus... Boy, those Bigfoot guys can be scary, if pushed... It is interesting that (view spoiler)[ the typical White Court Vampire can't kill him off-hand since he has such an excess of Life Force. I wonder if this is a match made in heaven, if whatever she feeds off of can regenerate fast after... Still, I don't particularly like the idea that everyone is thinking of the poor dude as food, or a battery for whatever they need... (hide spoiler)]

#8... Hahaha! The Charlie's Angels nod was cute! (view spoiler)[ Well, it seems that Molly really is in love with Dresden, not just a childish infatuation, and she knows she can wait for a long time for him... Hmmmmm...

Also, am I the only one who finds these Nordic Fae disturbing??? I didn't like them in the highschool Bigfoot story either... (hide spoiler)]

@Choko: (view spoiler)[yea… the Svartalves aren’t great… nice allies tho… they were only introduced to the main series recently, as the source of Molly’s apartment…

The Bigfoot/vampire story skipped right over the fact that a true love match as a first time breaks most of the White Court vampire curse… that was the whole point/result of the pornstar book with Bobby/Gowan Commando and the youngest Raith sister… (hide spoiler)]

Exactly! I was expecting something like that to happen, but Butcher never brought it up... I was wondering if maybe she wasn't truly in love with him...

Choko wrote: "Exactly! I was expecting something like that to happen, but Butcher never brought it up... I was wondering if maybe she wasn't truly in love with him..."

I at least thought it explored an interesting alternate dynamic... (view spoiler)[parent vampires perpetuating the curse to feel better about their own selfish decisions... (hide spoiler)]

That was a great observation by River Shoulders... I also appreciated the veracity of it...

#9... Cold Case... Yeah, a lot of meat to this one... I had no idea (view spoiler)[ that the Winter mantle of the daughter has to stay a virgin!!! So Maeve had been Nfected for a long time and Mab has to have known it! Why didn't she act earlier? Because she was her daughter??? I just can't believe it...

I felt so bad about everyone in this story... Poor children and their parents - they just got them freed from the monsters, only to send them off to a never ending war... Just sad... (hide spoiler)]

#10... Day One... This was good! It's always fun finding out more about Butters. And to think he was planned as a throw away character! The world is better with Butters in it:)))

#11... Zoo day.... Ooohhhh! So sweet!!!! Yes, Mouse! People are heart stupid!!!! And dogs are there to teach us how to love <3<3<3! I wonder if we will see his "shadow" again... And the boy...

Maggie is going to be awesome! She is already, but she is going to get even better!!! I absolutely adored this story!

#12... Jury Duty... I am not sure how I feel about this one. I guess it had all the nice things a Dresden story usually does, but things just didn't add up... It was a bit helter-skelter... Just don't see things working out as neatly as they did. Overall, despite this story being kind of weak, the rest was pretty good:)))

#9: I just remembered some details, assembling a response to this… (view spoiler)[ Mab was bamboozled hard in book 3… just before we met the courts in book 4… Lea received the Nfected athame at the Red Court party and shared it with Maeve… now Mab’s daughter and 2nd in command are infected… so is Cait Sidhe at some point… Maeve had been messing with the Winter Knight before infection, now he’s out of commission… Mab was a Queen under siege… she cured Lea, was so angry she couldn’t talk for a few years… basically stuck in a holding pattern until Dresden became Knight… now she’s getting her house in order…

The fact Maeve and Aurora are her own children doesn’t help… Mab has only been Queen a few centuries I think… I believe she was a human in the Middle Ages… (hide spoiler)]

Yeah, I often feel bad for her, but then she does something really cruel as Fae do, and I want to shake her out of it... Overall, I have much more compassion for her than I think I should, but as you pointed out, she has been under siege for a while now... And obviously, she and the Winter Court are what stands between humanity and The Others and we really need them...

I'll be here sometime I'm guessing end of this coming week.

I'm starting this today. Looks like it is 12 short stories. If this collection is anything like the last one it should be fun :)

Narilka wrote: "I'm starting this today. Looks like it is 12 short stories. If this collection is anything like the last one it should be fun :)"

It is... there's a Bigfoot trilogy, and then a sprinkling of stories through the early years, then a bunch from around book 10-15...

Timelord Iain wrote: "Started today...

Fistful of Warlocks: I wish Dresden had time to write this theoretical five book story involving Luccio & Kemmler & maybe Wyatt Earp..."

Yeah. Maybe he'll do a side series after the main Dresden Files is complete. We can hope. Fistful of Warlocks was a great start to the book. 4 stars.

He also has ideas for a Goodman Gray series, but no time... there's a Goodman Gray story somewhere... might have been part of the 20th anniversary stuff in 2020... gives you some insight into his unique PI business...

B is for Bigfoot was a sweet little story. That also explains the reference in the last book about him helping a Bigfoot in the past and contrasts just how horrible the one in Skin Game was.

I loved all of the Big Foot stories:)))

AAAA Wizardry had an interesting style format. Not sure I'd like a whole book like that but for a short it worked well enough.

I Was a Teenage Bigfoot (view spoiler)[It's nice to go back to the same characters. Once he figured out what was going on I was pretty sure it was the head guy. Hilarious that it was so he could grow hair lol (hide spoiler)]

Haha! That was very funny:)))

Cursed might be my favorite so far. (view spoiler)[I actually googled that curse and it was real! Go figure lol Great way to work that in and another type of fae too. I loved how they ended just watching the game and knowing the curse would fade eventually anyway. (hide spoiler)]

Even Hand. Another POV I thought we'd never see. I liked this look into Marcone's thought process. (view spoiler)[And that little reveal at the end was a nice touch. He knew about Justine's role all along. Makes sense when I think about it in hindsight. (hide spoiler)]

Bigfoot on Campus was great. I liked that mini 3 story arc. So funny, but not unexpected, that campus security didn't believe Dresden lol Nice of them to give him a peaceful place to sleep :D

Narilka wrote: "Bigfoot on Campus was great. I liked that mini 3 story arc. So funny, but not unexpected, that campus security didn't believe Dresden lol Nice of them to give him a peaceful place to sleep :D"

The Bigfoot stories benefit from being written much later, and closely together, so they're pretty much the only purposeful story arc in the short stories... most of the rest sound like a kid procrastinating on their homework until the deadline...

Timelord Iain wrote: "most of the rest sound like a kid procrastinating on their homework until the deadline... "

Butcher does say he finishes these shorts because he's at deadline a lot doesn't he hah

Bombshells - Like you all, I enjoyed the nod to Charlies Angels. It also explains how Molly came by her apartment between books.

Choko wrote: "#9... Cold Case... Yeah, a lot of meat to this one... "

Yeah, this was a rough one. (view spoiler)[Molly is not in for an easy life. And since I think her role is like the Winter Knights and there is currently only one exit strategy... Depressing. It also explains why the Winter Lady ends up semi insane. (hide spoiler)]

Jury Duty is just another day in the law system. Not a bad story but nothing special when compared to the others in this collection.

Day One - YAY BUTTERS GETS A POV!!! So great that (view spoiler)[the Almighty speaks to his knights in language they understand so Butter's gets a World of Warcraft-style quest lol Seems he's going to do just fine, especially with training from the Carpenters. (hide spoiler)]

Zoo Day - Aww, nice to see the different POVs. Not sure I'd want a whole book like this but it worked for a short story. Mouse is still the best boy ever :) What are the odds of Maggie not having power? LOL