A little sample from the upcoming Molly-centric short-story.

http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/07/dangerous-women-jim-butcher-excerpt

 

Jim Butcher's short stories are nothing to write home about.

 

Sod off, Stalin's~.

Nothing in the story thus far to make me overly excited, but it's going to be interesting to see what Molly was up to and what was going on in her head at the time.

As for the other stories... I agree with Ched. Even Hand was cool.

 

Sup, motherfuckers. It came out today and I just got it. Will have some spoiler tags up in a bit.

 

Fuck yooou. Where did you get it? I waaaant it

 

Amazon is a thing, as are pre-orders.

Okay all, here we go:

Spoiler

The basics that you already know: It's about fifty pages from Molly's perspective.

What you don't: Andi and Justine are the other major features. Thomas gets kidnapped and Justine goes to Molly to ask her to rescue him. Problem one: He's being held by the Svartalfs, who are badasses. Problem two: Said badasses intend to sign a treaty with the Fomor.

Things get worse from there. As the name implies, there is a Bomb involved and it's how Molly ends up with that apartment in CD. It sort of ties into Even Hand, too, with the brother of the Fomor Marcone killed out for revenge.

We also learn the Fomor are being ruled by an Empress and learn that there are different types of Servitors. Listen for possible reoccurring villain?

Highlights:

Getting in Molly's headspace.

The Rack.

Smoking hottie.

Molly showing her stuff with magic.

Minor Quibbles:

I think Freyja only did that with four dwarves.

 

How many times are Molly's nipples mentioned?

The answer to this question will directly impact my likelihood of buying it.

 

The power of Racks are brought up a number of times, but I don't know about nipples--I do not have a count off the top off my head or know if they're mentioned at all, but I will endeavor to rectify this.

For your sake, of course. >.>

 

Read it. Liked it.

Spoiler

:3 Lea.

The Andi/Molly confrontation was somewhat irritating. I feel there were much better arguments that could have been used, either by Andi-licious out loud or Molly in her inner monologue.

Listen keeps on being cool.

The Fomor was a bit underwhelming.

I want more of the Svartalves.

I would have liked more consistency in Molly's ability to sense emotions and stuff. It almost looked like Butcher forgot about it at times.

Molly's magic is awesome.

The tone was good, although I went in with the expectation of something darker. I wouldn't say I was pleasantly surprised, but I was okay with it.

No nipples.

Skin Game can't come fast enough.

 

No idea how to use Amazon. I guess I should find out. Either that or wait until I can find it on the internetz.

 

...wait?

 

Home of Blackbeard to the rescue. It was good. Not awesome, but good. I rather enjoyed the interaction between Lea and Molly. Interesting to learn where she'd gotten that knife from. Explains a bit where Daniel learned how to fight.

Vague enough?

 

I thought you were Taure for a minute. What's with the avatar?

 

How are the other short stories? GRRM's and Sanderson's for example.

Is this collection worth buying, is what I am getting at. = P

 

GRRM's story was OK, Nothing really special. Haven't read Sanderson's yet.

As for Bombshells it was OK, I have never been a huge fan of short stories myself, You either like and want them to continue, and get disappointed when they don't, or their not really long enough to really get into.

Short Stories from the Dresden files are certainly in the first category. For the most part they provided a wonderful opportunity to flesh out other characters and their mind-scape as the Dresden files are told from the first person perspective of Dresden, and side line issues and characters can get ignored.

That all being said, I'm not sure I really liked Bombshells, maybe because I was wanting Skin Game and didn't get it or something else. it wasn't bad, it just didn't grab my attention or admiration like some other Dresden Files Short Stories.

 

Before reading Worm I may have appreciated Bombshells a lot more.

Molly is kind of a badass, sure, but she's far better in the books. Without going into too many details, an initial confrontation was pretty weak, to the point of being OOC, but the story blended decently into the start of the last book.

Spoiler

I really disliked the fact that she had issues in the start, was fine during combat, then seemed to become so much better when she learned that Harry was alive. The characterization seemed inconsistent - but I guess he did that because a loopy!Molly would slow down the fight scenes.

GRRM's was disappointing. Had much higher hopes for him, than for Butcher.

 

Spoiler

That actually made sense. It's social confrontations that should be hard on her, especially (but not limited to) after Changes, more so than physical fights. So struggling during the thing with Andi was expected and handling the Svartalves crisis like she did was also consistent with what we know about the Rag Lady persona.

Add to it that speaking with Harry at the end of Ghost Story has probably helped her with the guilt (one part of it at least), and there you have the possible explanation for any inconsistencies you might see (I don't, not really).

 

Also, it makes since that she's better in physical confrontations then social ones--she's spent over a year largely avoiding people while picking fights with the Fomor and other baddies. That's her element now.

And since I forgot to mention it earlier:

Butters++