Peace Talks - What did you like? What didn't you like? What were you expecting?

[KurtinStGeorge]

I think this subject needs to be fully aired out, rather than having it pop up piecemeal in a number of different conversations.  I don't think we need to go into the story being split in two.  I believe there's another thread that already deals with that issue.  Go ahead and mention it if ties into some larger point you want to make. 

Also, you don't have to limit yourself to these three questions.  For example, you could tell us about something good (or not) that you didn't expect.  Finally, you might want to; not guess how Battle Ground will play out, but tells us what you think it should do.  And I don't mean in terms of its story and which characters live or die; like I want to see Thomas survive and become a KotC, I mean in how the story should go from here in order to finish in a (hopefully) satisfying way, or how it might tie up loose ends or salvage any weaknesses you found in Peace Talks.  I'll post my ideas later.  Dinner; I mean duty, calls   

[morriswalters]

The Audio Book is odd, I think Marsters was away too long. Mab's voice is off among other things.
Too many characters and not enough from them.
There are other things but I'll reserve those.

[wildone654]

If I'm being completely honest..... Peace Talks is the new contender for my least favorite book of the series thus far.

It did not seem to flow as well as most of the others. There was something a bit off about the whole plot progression. It was difficult to tell where the story was going, but not in a good way. Things seemed to be needlessly complicated at times, or just not really add up, but again not in a good way.

Example, why would they capture Thomas, but then beat him to death, which is essentially what they did. With so many questions surrounding why Thomas did what he did, why did they not try to question him? Or at least leave him with the ability to answer questions in the future.

It was one of those times in a plot where I got the impression "I bet if they could just talk to him right now half this story would be over".

Then enter the Titan. This has me more confused than anything. If the plan was "war on mortals" why now? If Titan lady is so powerful why have her Fomar pets been in hiding until a few years ago, and then why start abducting people for a few years before flipping the table and sitting in Mabs eye? It is hard to make sense of it, and the book doesn't spend ny time trying to.

I'm hopeful that Battle Grounds pulls everything together, but honestly if you old me this book was written by a different author I'd have believed it.

Last bit.... did the whole "gathering of the accorded folks" thing seem a bit off in scale to anyone else? I thought there were sorta a lot of groups and things signed on to those. What about the Black Court? The Erlking? I feel like the books have mentioned plenty of groups and things that were on the accords throughout the series, and those ar just what have come up as of hand mentions during Drsdens shenanigans. I always had the impression the the accords signature page looked but like the UN charter. I had assumed all these years the 'Peace Talks' were going to use a venue like saw when nose of the White Council showed up to Chicago way back when, Not a 3 story boarding house sized stone building. Did these rest of the accords not RSVP? Or was the full meeting going to be taking place elsewhere and I missed it?

[Bad Alias]

I expected more members at the talks.
I enjoyed a lot of the emotional beats of the story.
I liked the non action based tension. I'm not used to it in a DF book.
I liked how Dresden was boss on the Island. He basically didn't even have to try.

[ClintACK]

I liked seeing Harry and his friends again. Several scenes landed beautifully -- particularly Maggie.

I didn't like ending the book with most of the threads still up in the air. I'd expected some of that, but it was even worse. Thankfully, this is a temporary objection. In future, I'll be able to read Peace Talks and Battle Ground as two parts of a single novel, without the dangling threads. (I hope.)

Biggest unmet expectation -- I'd been imagining the Peace Talks as a big Unseelie Accord event, where in fact it was really a Chicago event. It was Marcone inviting all of the supernatural players in the Chicago area to discuss the fomor, rather than a world-wide anything. As a result, the talks felt a bit small -- we didn't get a glimpse of a bigger world of major nations we've never even heard of, or know almost nothing about.

[toodeep]

1.  Accorded attendees seemed really low count.  Why no black court, shapeshifter, or organizations from other countries?  I mean, you really mean that we know all the accord signers already?  There are no other signers from Asian folklore?  Odin is there, are there no other gods/pantheons with people active enough to be signers?  I thought this was going to be a chance to show the league Harry was moving up into by showing us the next tier of players, but no Drakul, really just about nobody new.

2.  Book was waaaayyyy to wordy.  I think a good 25% of the book was summarizing what had happened in the previous 15 books, short stories, or graphic novels.  Telling readers what they already knew if they have read the entire series.  It really made especially the first half of the book a slog.  I found myself skipping whole pages on the first read through as he dropped the same summaries of people we know or things that have happened before into this book that he dropped into previous books (or at least it sure felt that way).  By the BAT Jim is going to have to decide if he is writing for readers of the series or not, because if he continues to write each book so it can be read by a new reader, its going to be 75% summaries of previous books and only 25% new text, and I'm not sure I can take that.

3.  Murphy drove Thomas and Lara to the boat after meeting them outside.  That put very strong moral restrictions on activities for no reason Lara would accept.  Why wouldn't Lara have arranged her people to pick up Thomas and take him to the boat in a limo - a limo with 3-4 women in the back for Thomas to feed upon immediately?  She knew he was being treated badly while being held, she could assume he would need to feed. 

[Mira]

3.  Murphy drove Thomas and Lara to the boat after meeting them outside.  That put very strong moral restrictions on activities for no reason Lara would accept.  Why wouldn't Lara have arranged her people to pick up Thomas and take him to the boat in a limo - a limo with 3-4 women in the back for Thomas to feed upon immediately?  She knew he was being treated badly while being held, she could assume he would need to feed.

What car did she drive?  She couldn't drive the M.M. because her feet can't reach the pedals, so you'd think Lara would arrange the transport.

[Avernite]

I think the peace talks should've had talks.

Day 1: What we saw
Day 2: talks in the background, Harry's heist
Day 3: talks, and recriminations about where Thomas went, then poof, Titan

It feels to me like day 2 and 3 were squished together to reduce the booklength, but then it was no longer necessary when the book was split anyway.

Also I would echo the 'why were the Fomor ever hiding'. Do they really only have a titan, king, and a handful of mooks? That could explain it, Winter/Faerie didn't win by killing their tough guys, but just by reducing their footsoldiers so much that the only actions open to the Fomor were slugging matches. The last years have rebuilt at least low-level mooks, and now with Winter occupied by Fomor-allied Outsiders they see a chance... but they can't have enough mooks to really beat Chicago (right?)

However, I did very much like Harry not being a noob with the island, but really using its potential. Sad for Thomas, and I liked Lara's analysis of what he just did.

[Mira]

I think the peace talks should've had talks.

I totally agree, then we would have understood who were for the Fomor joining the Accords and who were against and at least a vague reason why.

I agree that at times it seemed way too wordy.

[Bad Alias]

I liked seeing Harry and his friends again. Several scenes landed beautifully -- particularly Maggie.

I didn't like ending the book with most of the threads still up in the air. I'd expected some of that, but it was even worse. Thankfully, this is a temporary objection. In future, I'll be able to read Peace Talks and Battle Ground as two parts of a single novel, without the dangling threads. (I hope.)

Biggest unmet expectation -- I'd been imagining the Peace Talks as a big Unseelie Accord event, where in fact it was really a Chicago event. It was Marcone inviting all of the supernatural players in the Chicago area to discuss the fomor, rather than a world-wide anything. As a result, the talks felt a bit small -- we didn't get a glimpse of a bigger world of major nations we've never even heard of, or know almost nothing about.

All of this.

3.  Murphy drove Thomas and Lara to the boat after meeting them outside.  That put very strong moral restrictions on activities for no reason Lara would accept.  Why wouldn't Lara have arranged her people to pick up Thomas and take him to the boat in a limo - a limo with 3-4 women in the back for Thomas to feed upon immediately?  She knew he was being treated badly while being held, she could assume he would need to feed.

Didn't Lara say it wouldn't be enough for Thomas to drain someone entirely?

Day 3: talks, and recriminations about where Thomas went, then poof, Titan

I think that could have been a much more satisfying book, but I'll wait until I've read PT and BG a few times to decide.

[knightedbishop]

I was disappointed. I’m hoping I can chalk this up to Jim’s long break and as he gets back into his groove the writing will improve. I expect Battle Ground will be about the same quality given they were originally one book. I’m still grateful to have the books. Not every book can be amazing, especially given how many he’s written. I will read as long as he keeps writing them. I enjoy the characters and visiting them in each story Jim tells.

I liked many of the free standing scenes that didn’t seem to advance the main story. Harry’s talk with Maggie exposition on how he prepared for her care if he died. The practice fight between Sanya and Butters and the revelation that angels are likely bound to the nails of the Cross. Harry summoning Molly and their conversation.

I liked Ethniu’s entrance and the response it garnered. I liked Harry binding Thomas.

The whole titular idea of the peace talks was amazingly underwhelming, as many have said. Few participants, no actual talks. The lack of any revelation about the why behind Thomas’s assassination attempt.

[vultur]

I totally agree, then we would have understood who were for the Fomor joining the Accords and who were against and at least a vague reason why.

I think the point was that the Fomor never actually intended to join the Accords anyway - the call for talks was just to get a bunch of important Accorded powers in one place with Mab so Ethniu could demonstrate Mab's inability to enforce the Accords in front of all of them.

So there was actually nothing to discuss. The Fomor just show up and start a fight with Mab.

[Mira]

I think the point was that the Fomor never actually intended to join the Accords anyway - the call for talks was just to get a bunch of important Accorded powers in one place with Mab so Ethniu could demonstrate Mab's inability to enforce the Accords in front of all of them.

So there was actually nothing to discuss. The Fomor just show up and start a fight with Mab.

But that isn't the point, it isn't what about what the Fomor intended to do, but the politics surrounding the talks.  Who were against them joining, who were for?  Who were in favor of appeasing them for the sake of peace?  Imagine Christos having a real Nevil Chamberlain moment convincing everyone that this was the way, then the Fomor show up to start a fight, oh better yet, play nice for a little bit so Mab and perhaps Marcone look like fools, Thomas is brought up, then all hell breaks loose.

[Snark Knight]

I was surprised there was no real plot angle of investigating why Thomas attacked the svartalves, or if he was framed. It's just an assumption that someone was holding a threat to Justine over him.

Seems to me there was a glaring lack of consideration whether he was mind-whammied into it, or took on the hit to buy something powerful's protection for Justine to survive the hit. I favour the mind-whammy theory, because while Justine is in danger, she's not quite two months into the pregnancy. He has time to look for less radical alternatives than assassinating a moderately friendly figure for a favour.

Plus, I'm surprised Harry wouldn't at least internally consider the possibility of an N-fected svartalf staging it to frame Thomas as part of the black council pressure campaign against Harry.

[huangjimmy108]

PT is not bad, it is just not enough. We are used to eat a full meal. Each book of JB always covered all the aspect and tied all loose ends accept for those JB deliberately left hanging on purpose. Now we are only served half a plate of food with all those loose end unexplain.

Of course we feel there are too much recap of previous books. In the first place, JB has left this series hanging for 6 years instead for just 1 year like previous books, so he need a bit of a summary. Secondly this is in fact only half a book. Battleground is bound not to have so many recap, because all the recap is already done in PT. If the 2 books is combine into one, the percentage of the recap will drop a lot.

Of course we don't have answers about Thomas. Again, this is only half a book. I can also understand why the spartalf don't questioned Thomas. Firstly, it does not matter much. Like it or not, Thomas has drew blood and retribution is unavoidable. Secondly, it is a stressful time. All of the powers that be is in Chicago and Thomas's matter will not escape their eyes. Under such a premise the spartalf cannot afford to show any weakness. Fellow accord members they may be, but they are all predators just the same. Showing all the other powers the ruthless and vicious side of the spartalf is more important than anything at the moment, otherwise the spartalf as a nation will lose their prestige. This is the same reason why in book 11, the white council have to kill Donald Morgan even if they know that Morgan is mostly innocent. The sacrifice is nescesary so that other powers don't look at the council as prey. Of course the spartalf know that there is more behind the scene, but the urgency of the matter does not allow them to do anything else. Why do you think the spartalf agree to transfer Thomas to the BFF building? Don't they know that it will make it easier for Lara and Harry to rescue him? They obviously know, but they did it anyway. It is politics. The spartalf cannot show weakness, but they also don't want a war with the white court vampires either. Once Lara ask Harry to introduce her to the spartalf, the spartalf now has a ladder to step down without showing weakness. If Lara manage to make Thomas disappear without a trace, they have to focus on finding Thomas first before any war can happened. The spartalf can open one eye and close another. Big problems becomes small problems and small problems becomes no problem. Vadderung and Farofax attitude said it all. They obviously seen Harry and Lara carry Thomas out breaking who knows how many rules of hospitality and unceli accords, as old powers Vadderung and faro ought to be angry, but did they say anything?