You're thinking of Nuhuh's fic, Demon's Feign, Merlin's Pain. He uses the Ancient Mai from the TV series there, who if I remember correctly could take the form of either an older woman or a very young one.

 

Damn. It figures Nuhuh would write a story good enough to make me forget that it's not actually canon.

 

OK, so general consensus is that it does get better later on. Thanks guys. Guess I'll just slosh though Fool Moon as an audio book while playing on the Xbox or something.

 

The audio books are brilliant, though even they are way weaker. They start getting really good at about number five. In my copy of Summer Knight, there's literally a part where James Marsters goes "Oh hang on, that's not right. Fuck." and then starts over a sentence.

By Death Masks, the production value is far better. As for books... The big storyline gets started in book three. Some of the stuff in 1-2 has been retroactively shunted in as also relevant, but you'll get referenced it and it sorta isn't.

So yeah, jump to number three. It starts off a bit slow but at about the middle point shit gets real and it never really stops.

Not sure why people hate on Blood Rites. The finale isn't the strongest and sure, the WC stuff is lame... But you also get Kincaid and he and Harry are hilarious when they're together.

 

Yes it gets better. Power through the first few books. Its worth the effort

 

Yes, it gets much better after the first few books. The early books feel more like standalone noir PI stories, which isn't a bad thing per se but not great either. After that though they really pick up into a fantastic quintessential urban fantasy.

 

Am I the only one who read and enjoyed all of the books, like a lot?

 

I think the first two books pale in comparison to the later ones, but as I was reading them I enjoyed them.

 

You have to remember that, at least at first draft stage, Butcher wasn't taking Storm Front seriously. He wanted to write epic/high fantasy, and his creative writing tutor was encouraging him to write something more urban fantasy flavoured, so he bashed out Storm Front to prove just how awful it would be...and here we are today. It's probably also worth noting that he wrote Fool Moon and a decent chunk of Grave Peril in between finishing Storm Front and it being accepted for publication. Put all that together with it being early in his writing life anyway, and it's no wonder that they don't seem as good as later entries.

That said, I don't think any of Dresden is flat out bad. Some are better than others, the worst for my money being Blood Rites, which suffers from the A-plot being really daft (like, comedy episode of Castle daft), but every book so far has at least something to enjoy about it, even if it's just a few cool action scenes.

 

I hate starting in the middle of anything. I did skip the first hundred or so pages of LoTR the first time around, though. Dresden Files beginning isn't that terrible, it's just meh. The books are pretty short, too. Read all the books, expect it to kick into high gear fourth book.

I will add that DF is the only long series I know of that gets better, not worse, as it goes on. Butcher actually takes chances and does some pretty insane stuff.

Like Joe level crazy.

 

Frozen turkey is still one of the funniest moments in the series. Probably only beaten by 'The building was on fire and it wasn't my fault' (another Blood Rites one) and the doughnut.

 

FTFY (Lara is pretty great too though)

Blood Rites was my favorite my first 4 times through the series, it's Proven Guilty now.

OP: where are you at now with the series?

 

Meh. I find it to be almost nothing but filler. The porn stuff is just not interesting. The White Court (and Raiths in particular), are the least interesting vampires - vampires as sexual predators is nothing new, and I see the whole thing as Jim just trying to fill in the niche. Lara is interesting, just not in this book. The entropy curse is just Plot Reasons for Jim to have Things Happen that he thinks his readers will find cool. The only thing I found remotely interesting in the entire story is the subplot with the vampire nest that Harry calls in Kincaid and McCoy for.

 

Mouse doesn't do anything in Blood Rites. Now, if we want to talk Proven Guilty, then Mouse is pretty awesome in that.

 

While I agree that the series gets better after the first two/three books I don`t really agree with it getting better endlessly. In my eyes the last few books (after Changes) were not nearly as good as those preceding them and while I hope that the next one will finally get the series back on track I can`t help but fell sceptical about it, especially after the disappointment his latest book (The Aeronaut's Windlass) turned out to be.

 

I thought Skin Game made up for Cold Days, and I actually did like Ghost Story.

Blood Rites, yeah, I'd rank it fairly low on the whole.

 

I didn't mind blood rights at all. The whole point of the book really was to introduce us to who Thomas is. Also to introduce Mouse and to burn Harry's hand. It also has one of my favourite opening scenes. The actual story was a bit weak, but the main story wasn't the point of the book really. It's definitely not one of the best, but it's not one of the worst either. First three books still retain that title.

Ghost story is important, it needed to happen, lots of important shit happened in that book, but it's not something I enjoy much on rereads. I think I might skip it this time round.

 

Well, if your a fan of Harry Potter then you'll hate the Dresden series. I watched the TV show and it was terrible. No romance, no epic duels, nothign worth reading or watching about. If you want something new, I sexy that you read the Eragon series instead of dresden since theres nothing worh reading in it.