#james butcher

[mbrainspaz]

Me: AAH! HE USED THE WORD DEFENESTRATED!

coworker: what?

Me: in my audiobook! He used DEFENESTRATED!!!!

Coworker: what’s that mean?

Me: it means ‘thrown out a window’! But nobody actually uses it except to make fun of the word DEFENESTRATED! He just tossed it in there like it was nothing!

Coworker: I learned a new word today.

Me: WHO DOES THAT?!

[lovelyballetandmore]

James Butcher

[boxfivetrades]

double show day 

[lovelyballetandmore]

James Butcher

[the-nephelococcygian]

Recently picked up Long Past Dues by James Butcher.

The main character gets beat up every other chapter and its a tense mystery. It’s great.

[dude1818]

Dead Man’s Hand

This weekend I read Dead Man’s Hand by James Butcher. I thought it was the start of a new series by award-winning urban fantasy author Jim Butcher; it’s actually the debut urban fantasy novel by his son. Very confusing

Tl;dr: It was fairly enjoyable, and some of the worldbuilding felt new and original. I have no interest in continuing the series

It’s a fairly standard premise: it’s set in a world exactly like ours, except some people can do magic. This isn’t a secret though and is well-integrated, so there’s a government agency that deals with regulating magic use and cleaning up after magical mishaps. Witches (gender neutral) can apply to work for the Department, and the ones who don’t still need to apply for permits to practice magic and develop new spells. There is also some amount of fantasy creatures in this world like vampires, werewolves, and fae that are handled by the Department, but that’s not really explored in the first book

There are a couple of really cool aspects of the worldbuilding. The first is the Elsewhere. The idea of an invisible magical world overlaid on the normal world isn’t new, but I like Butcher’s take on it. Normal people can’t interact with the Elsewhere, but witches can. This is a very bad thing, because it’s a warped hellscape reflection of the real world full off monsters that like to eat witches. All witches wear a magical mask to block out the sight of the Elsewhere. You can also physically enter the Elsewhere via mirrors, at which point you’re playing with full Faewild time-fuckery

Butcher’s version of familiars was also pretty cool. They aren’t regular animals or magical constructs. Instead, you take the parting spirit of an animal and pass it through a biomechanical construct to get an imprint of its soul. You don’t trap the soul, but repeat this process a bunch of develop the platonic ideal outline of what the animal is like. It’s very interesting

The plot was fairly mid. Buddy cop story featuring the snarky new kid and the gruff old retiree, trying to solve a solve a murder and recover the MacGuffin on their own, while the Department is dogging their heels. I could see the structure of a really good story in there, but this is Butcher’s first novel and he doesn’t quite have the skill yet to pull it off. Reminds me of Weir’s Artemis in that way. I can see you enjoying it if you’re really into that kind of thing (or Jim Butcher’s novels), but the ending sets up that the rest of the series is going to be more of the same, and that’s not for me

[realcrookedreviews]

Like father, like son

Like father, like son

For those of you who don’t know, I am a huge Jim Butcher fan. I love the Dresden Files and Cinder Spires and I’m trying to work my way through Codex Alera (high fantasy like that isn’t usually my cup of tea). Jim has a son who just wrote a book, and color me friggin surprised that Jim has an adult son because he does not look old enough to have an adult son. Jim’s son is James. This will…

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[brandonraykirk]

James Butcher Survey (1857)

James Butcher survey on #HartsCreek #LoganCounty #WV (1857) #Appalachia #genealogy #history

James Butcher survey, 50 acres on Smoke House Fork of Big Harts Creek in Logan County, VA (1857)

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