I never liked Steampunk. I've liked some examples of it, but rather despite the genre, not because of it.

Admittedly, some are more to my liking than others. Hopefully this one will be closer to my tastes.

 

I basically want Final Fantasy 9 before all the stupid shit at the end. Is that too much to ask?!

 

Late reply, but honestly, it's not that I dislike steampunk per se, it's more that I've never read anything good in the genre. I haven't gone out of my way to find and read them, but the ones I have are romanticized notions of the time that require large suspensions of belief.

 

Have you read The Difference Engine? It's the father of the genre and gets everything right

 

So I have a copy of this now and it's interesting. Certainly different from Codex Alera/Dresden Files.

Prologue+2 Chapters in so far...

Spoiler

It's a bit of an info-dump. He's building an entirely new world from scratch and it reminds me of Furies of Calderon where I had trouble really getting into it at first. A whole ton of names and ideas being thrown out, but that's pretty common in this genre from my experience. I'd say at the end of 20 pages I have a ton of questions that need answers, but I have some grounding in what this world is and context is keeping me afloat for now.

Also...he does have a hat. It's too early to tell if it's a constant presence, which would be hilarious.

 

How did you get a copy a month early?

 

My mom found a "Uncorrected proofs for limited distribution -- not for sale" copy at half price books.

Pretty excited.

Spoiler

Also it's in third person alternating like Codex. Talking cats included as well.

 

That is ridiculous.

So jelly I'm jam. Although I imagine there will be a bit of a difference between that and the final product.

 

It can also be found on various torrent sites, which I will refrain from linking here.

 

So I want to post quite a bit about this book. It took me a whole week to finish because of work, but it was great. Would I get into trouble legally for talking about it? Never had to think about something like this.

 

I don't see how you could. You should have freedom of speech protections, so long as you don't post the actual copyrighted content. You've signed no NDA, and it isn't your fault the book got leaked ahead of schedule. Your copy was even purchased legally, so you can't be liable from that angle either.

And that's assuming anyone important would care, which they probably won't. I'm not a lawyer, though.

 

And on the off chance that anyone noticed, the content of the post might matter a bit too. I suspect the powers that be wouldn't get too upset if your review boiled down to "The book was awesome, go buy it once it's out," while they might get annoyed if you dropped a bunch of spoilers while bashing the book. But then, folks in the forum would also be pretty annoyed if you spoiled too much of the plot.

 

Please for the love of god use spoilers when you post about the book. Stuff that spoils stuff anyway. I'd love to know general thoughts, but don't wanna get spoiled etc.

 

I'm currently reading it as well, very good so far.

As a cat owner, Rowl makes me very amused.

 

Sounds good to me.

The book was really great. Spent a lot of the week very tired because I was desperate to keep reading. Captain Grimm nearly always wears a hat and I hope the book covers never show it.

It's an intensely interesting world that, in true Butcher style, addresses the minor things to make it seem very real. It's a good balance of the steampunk streety feeling and the amazing aerial combat. I want to read tons more about both. Also, the "merchant ship" thing is a bit misleading in the summary. There are merchants and there are fleet ships. Grimm doesn't do any merchanting in the book and has no plans to. It's essentially privateering.

I will say that while it follows the same pattern of switching between 3rd person perspectives, they are all very interesting. I'm not sure how I will feel upon rereading, but I know that with Codex Alera I oftentimes found Amara/Isana parts very, very boring and I never felt anything close to that here.

Spoilers inside. Don't read if you don't want to know shit about the books. It's more about mechanics of the world than the plot, but still.

Spoiler

The book was great. It's dense to get into the first few chapters, but you orient yourself pretty quickly. It's quick to action as well, high stakes without being world ending. It is heavily reminiscent of Codex Alera in some places. The book mainly takes place in a diagon alley-esque type of steampunk world, atop spires that protect humanity from the horrors of the surface world that has been long since abandoned. Levels of the spires are called "habbles" that are kind of like town-states with inter-habble commerce and travel. The spires, built by the 'makers' (precursors to current humanity that are somewhat revered), are nation-states unto themselves, and the book details the beginnings of a war between two spires.

The world runs on the ether, a mysterious energy that pollutes the skies with mist and makes men go mad and blind if they spend time in the open air without goggles on, and most devices are powered by some form of ether, which is also generated by power crystals, which are wired for specific purposes. Lumin crystals generate light while "gauntlets" (the preferred infantry ranged weapon) are hand mounted copper cages containing power crystals that fire blasts of energy but can overheat if used too frequently, melting the copper casing and injuring the wielder. These gauntlets work the same as ships cannons, which fire significantly more powerful blasts. Ethersilk is a natural product of silkweavers, spider-like monsters, that is used to line clothes to resist ether blasts, propel ships on etherwinds, and probably other ways I forget. Since humanity lives atop these artificial constructs, some things that are common on earth are extremely valuable there, like wood. The spires are built from the ground, so wild creatures from the surface world can make their way up the spire through the ventilation/service tunnels and cause tremendous amounts of pain to humanity. Cats are therefore employed to hunt them down and keep their spires clear. Cats play a huge role in the book, a force unto themselves that broker truces with the humans but mostly keep to themselves. They come with all the wonderful personality that Butcher imparted onto characters like Mouse and Mister, brought to words and conversations in a manner not unsimilar to Kitai.

When not in the spires, the book goes to the airships. The airships are interesting, powered by crystals that generate etheric energy to circumvent gravity and unfurl large ethersilk sails to catch etherwinds to propel themselves. They can also use regular sails to catch regular winds and steam engines to steam something something, but both those are secondary modes of propulsion and seem to be inferior in every way, used as backups or supplementary methods of direction.
The world seems to have a much larger atmosphere, with large swaths of the lower altitudes being covered entirely in gigantic mists. Mistmaws reminiscent of krakens in codex alera (in terms of threat to the ship, the description was limited) live in these mists. Ships avoid the mists for this reason, but tactically use it to retreat/flank/ambush/hide.
Ships also have 'shrouds' that offer some protection against ether cannon fire, not unlike a forcefield, and the combination of these factors leads to the ship battles being incredibly interesting. It feels like Butcher really, really enjoyed writing Captain's Fury and wanted to expand that here. Ships have somewhat accurate canons but they aren't laserbeamz or bullets, they still fire cannons that can be avoided if not aimed properly. Ships vary in size greatly so an amazing mix of aerial and naval combat becomes exciting and interesting. It has a feeling somewhere between Treasure Planet (google image that), Pirates of the Caribbean, and Star Trek.

I've said a lot, but there's so much more to say. Highly recommend it.

 

It's directly and absolutely against site rules

And DLP is the one place I really take that sort of thing to heart.


EDIT: after receiving a reply, I realize it's unclear that I was referring to people wanting links to torrent sites not being allowed.

After all, I'm the one who got physical copies of Cold Days (and I think Skin Game) and posted spoilers first on DLP - A major point of pride :3

 

No, sharing or discussing warez is against the site rules.

Discussing a book you bought at a book store, regardless of whether they mistakenly released it early or not is not explicitly against the sites rules. (Mods feel free to correct me here)

Now if you were to link to a torrent of the book, that would be against the sites rules.

 

I was referring to linking to a torrent site as others were in fact discussing.

 

Where? The only mention I can find is Orm's, important bit bolded.

Churchey was asking if he could get in legal trouble for talking about the book.