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Cargando... Dead Man's Handpor James J. Butcher
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Grimsby is the underdog every reader wants to root for - he's not particularly talented but he really, really wants to achieve his goal of becoming an Auditor. I enjoyed the world building and the way in which magic exists in this world that is like ours but is just slightly different - and more magic. There's a nice mystery to solve along the way and a grizzled and grumpy mentor and a magical trickster/side kick. Can't wait for the next book! *I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily* Hello Fellow Reader, I wanted to do this review without mentioning the other Butcher but unfortunately that seems impossible. I'm a Dresden Files Fan and urban fantasy are one of my comfort genres so I knew I absolutely needed to read this and wow and I so freaking happy I did. I can say that so far I currently prefer son over father. Dead Man's Hand reminded me of a buddy cop movie. One older no nonsense veteran and the cinnamon roll rookie can accurately describe Mayflower and Grimsby. Butcher created such an interesting world and despite it being fantasy and magical Butcher does a good job at making things realistic and believable. The story was very action-packed and fast-paced that I devoured the book pretty quickly because I wanted to know what would happen next. While I predicted who the bad guys were. I actually didn't mind that too much because I really enjoyed this book. Overall, an amazing start and I can't wait to read the next one. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Pertenece a las series
Fantasy.
Fiction.
HTML:In the tradition of his renowned father, James J. Butcher??s debut novel is a brilliant urban fantasy about a young man who must throw out the magical rule book to solve the murder of his former mentor. On the streets of Boston, the world is divided into the ordinary Usuals, and the paranormal Unorthodox. And in the Department of Unorthodox Affairs, the Auditors are the magical elite, government-sanctioned witches with spells at their command and all the power and prestige that comes with it. Grimshaw Griswald Grimsby is?not one of those witches. After flunking out of the Auditor training program and being dismissed as ??not Department material,? Grimsby tried to resign himself to life as a mediocre witch. But he can??t help hoping he??ll somehow, someway, get another chance to prove his skill. That opportunity comes with a price when his former mentor, aka the most dangerous witch alive, is murdered down the street from where he works, and Grimsby is the Auditors?? number one suspect. Proving his innocence will require more than a little legwork, and after forming a strange alliance with the retired legend known as the Huntsman and a mysterious being from Elsewhere, Grimsby is abruptly thrown into a life of adventure, whether he wants it or not. Now all he has to do is find the real killer, avoid the Auditors on his trail, and most importantl No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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The concept for the plot is fine: a hunt for a MacGuffin while solving a murder shrouded in mystery. The execution of that story line could use a little tweaking because you pretty much suspect the "surprise" villain from the early pages, but he isn't the first author to allow that, and it shouldn't bother you all that much. The fact that the MacGuffin turns out not to be totally a MacGuffin was welcome.
The world is interesting, though world-building is a little sketchy. Other series with "magic among normals" settings, like the Dresden books or Kim Harrison's Hollows books, leave you with a far better sense of the backdrop after their first volume. I needed the Unorthodox, the Department, Elsewhere, etc. fleshed out a bit more in order for the world to come alive. Maybe subsequent volumes in the series rectify this.
The stilted dialogue was a little harder to overlook because it kept throwing me out of the story. For example, real people do not use names and/or epithets in every third line when addressing another—that's something reserved for Wesley talking to Humperdinck in the ending of The Princess Bride. Butcher could have cut out 90% of the ", witch" instances, and it would have been far less jarring to the ear.
But the real issue I had with this book is the characters. Grimsby, in particular, kept making these sophomoric attempts at humor. Not only were most too juvenile to be funny, they were inconsistent with the "panicked guy" character finding himself in that situation. The fundamental problem, in my opinion, is that they weren't written as tics of a frightened mind. That would have been fine. But Grimsby was far too self-satisfied in delivering his snarky one-liners to be convincing as the character he was supposed to be.
Mayflower, well, he just never really managed to carry off the "tough guy" persona to live up to his apparent legend ... not that we have any idea of what the legend surrounding The Huntsman actually is. And that lack of idea probably contributes heavily to why he fails to emerge from two-dimensions into a real character in the reader's mind.
And motivations? Why was the villain doing what he did? Why was the villain's sidekick/patsy doing what he did? Why, other than plot convenience, did so many people do what they did?
Oh, and using the epilogue to drop the name Elizabeth Bathory onto a character that heretofore has been a good guy is either a heavy-handed spoiler alert or extraordinary mis-casting.
So, in summary, if you want ... inevitably ... to compare this with any of his father's series, it doesn't fare well. If you want to compare it to Kim Harrison's series (since she wrote the cover blurb), it doesn't fare well. If you can manage to do none of those, then it's neither good nor horrible ... a beach read for a little escapism, but not something to hunt for the next installment with bated breath. ( )