The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Info about Peace Talks from Reading the WoJ section
Bad Alias:
What annoys me is when writers go off into the weeds describing something. The closest Jim comes to this, and it's not that close, is describing Mac's for the eighth time by the ninth book (or the Blue Beetle or Harry's apartment). Martin does it with clothes. I don't need three pages every chapter for each character's clothing. I was watching a panel where an author was talking about this. He said every author has a subject that they love that no one else cares about. He said that the author is over indulging himself when the reader can tell "the author was touching himself as he wrote it." It's almost always some "nerdy" area of interest like medieval clothing, currency systems, genealogy, etc.
I read a trilogy once where all of a sudden a second character had pov chapters. I knew immediately that the main character wasn't going to make it. I was right.
g33k:
--- Quote from: Bad Alias on September 11, 2019, 07:43:41 PM --- ... What annoys me is when writers go off into the weeds describing something. The closest Jim comes to this, and it's not that close, is describing Mac's for the eighth time by the ninth book (or the Blue Beetle or Harry's apartment) ...
--- End quote ---
I'm pretty sure JB tries to keep in mind that ANY of his novels may be the 1st one a new reader reads.
So iconic elements get at least a bit of exposition for the n00bz.
KurtinStGeorge:
One thing that keeps Dresden Files novels from becoming 1000+ page tomes; that are more coffee table books than something you really want to read, is that Jim usually limits the number of side characters who will interact with Harry, and he usually keeps other secondary characters from taking up too much space.
So in one book Thomas is Harry's sidekick, in another it's Murphy and so on. And for a good example of how Jim effectively uses secondary characters, look at Small Favor. Kincade and Ivy play important roles in the story, but they never threatened to overwhelm it. Jim didn't waste time digging into pointless minutiae of these characters. He gave us just enough information to picture them, get a feel for who they are and what it's like to be around them, and then had them play their given roles.
Now I felt both Ghost Story and Cold Days dragged a bit, though I'm no book editor. I couldn't tell you what needed to be trimmed. Actually, I thought Ghost Story needed a rewrite, but that's a different topic.
However, I think there may be legitimate reasons for Peace Talks to be the longest Dresden Files novel to date. I'll give a condensed version of what I've written in other posts. Harry hasn't had to face off with the Fomor yet, not really; just some of their servitors and lessor creatures. Plus, Harry wasn't trying to fight them in Skin Game, just get away. So there's that. There's bound to be drama between Harry and various members of the White Council, amd that could get complicated. Lara Raith will undoubtedly be on hand. Then there's Thomas and Justine. Marcone may play a role; actually Jim has already said he will. Molly might be around, and then there is the issue of her new job and her parents finding out. Will Ivy be there to broker negotiations? Probably, and if she's there Kinkade probably will be as well. Finally, it's likely some other major bad guy or bad thing like Cowl or Mavra will crawl out of the woodwork.
I think most of the characters I mentioned above will either play a major role in the main story or in an important subplot. I believe Peace Talks is going to be a very pivotal book in the series; that it will lay the groundwork for much of the future drama of the last five or six books before we reach the BAT. That is why Jim will have worked all or most of the above named characters, and their issues, into this novel
What I'm hoping is that the future books will have more focused story lines that allow for Jim to limit the cast of supporting characters, and the number of words needed for these characters and their parts of the story, to a reasonable number. That's how I picture Jim being able to compact his word counts in future Dresden Files case books.
Bad Alias:
--- Quote from: g33k on September 11, 2019, 09:51:05 PM ---I'm pretty sure JB tries to keep in mind that ANY of his novels may be the 1st one a new reader reads.
So iconic elements get at least a bit of exposition for the n00bz.
--- End quote ---
Totally agree, and it only annoys me a little bit, and that's because I've probably read these books too many times.
@KurtinStGeorge: Good analysis of Jim's writing style. One problem with Ghost Story is that there are side stories. The one with Fitz just feels like a waste of time without some sort of payoff down the road. Now Jim always has that sort of thing in his books, but the longer ones are usually only a paragraph or two. Fitz took up chapters. The other side stories about all the damage he has done to his friends are a necessary part of the story, but I think that adds to why it "dragged." Part of the problem with Cold Days is that it covered most of the ground covered in Ghost Story. As I've mentioned before, it took me about a third of the way into Cold Days to realize I skipped Ghost Story.
As for Peace Talks, only time will tell. Here's hoping for Christmas or sooner.
KurtinStGeorge:
--- Quote from: Bad Alias on September 12, 2019, 03:06:22 PM ---Totally agree, and it only annoys me a little bit, and that's because I've probably read these books too many times.
@KurtinStGeorge: Good analysis of Jim's writing style. One problem with Ghost Story is that there are side stories. The one with Fitz just feels like a waste of time without some sort of payoff down the road. Now Jim always has that sort of thing in his books, but the longer ones are usually only a paragraph or two. Fitz took up chapters. The other side stories about all the damage he has done to his friends are a necessary part of the story, but I think that adds to why it "dragged." Part of the problem with Cold Days is that it covered most of the ground covered in Ghost Story. As I've mentioned before, it took me about a third of the way into Cold Days to realize I skipped Ghost Story.
As for Peace Talks, only time will tell. Here's hoping for Christmas or sooner.
--- End quote ---
You are right about Cold Days. A lot of Harry's interaction with his friends was about the fallout of Harry's absence, and we already had seen that in Ghost Story. That might be part of what annoyed me when Butters went off on Harry in Skin Game, even though Butters complaint was about the time Harry was stuck on the island, but it felt very similar to what we had seen in both Ghost Story and Cold Days.
There is an obscure website; I think they cover fantasy books, that is listing April 14, 2020 as the release date of Peace Talks. I think they pulled this date out of their collective rear end because that led me to checking multiple sites for conformation and none of them had any info on PT's release date. My guess is the publisher is highly motivated to push for a release date for this Christmas season. I hope it works out that way.
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