The best DF stories...

[heidi_storage]

...are fun and have Moments of Awesome. Skin Game has bad things (e.g. Murphy's injury) and emotional moments, but I like it because it's a fun heist story and has Butters' Jedi moment.

Dead Beat...well. I don't need to point out the awesomeness of Harry riding a zombie dinosaur.

Cold Days has an exhilarating climax in which Harry smacks down Santa Claus and leads the Wild Hunt. (Actually, any time the Erl King is around tends to be enjoyable--my favorite scene in Changes was the duel in his domain.) Gard's appearance on the island in Small Favor gives me all manner of cheap thrills.

It's why Ghost Story and the two latest books are among my least favorites. They just don't have enough fun, or moments when I want to yell "Yay!" Agree? Disagree?

[Avernite]

I think Battle Ground did, for example when Sanya and the shotgun brigade smashed the Fomor van.

I do agree Ghost Story and Peace Talks didn't so much. For Ghost Story, because Changes had sucked up so many awesome moments and it kinda was the point that that awesome came at a price... and for PT because it was only half the story, the build-up phase.

[ZhonLord]

Not every story can be positive, or have moments of pleasant relief.  Remember, Harry's been fighting a literal war as the Winter Knight from the moment he was revived at the end of Ghost Stories. He hasn't gotten a true respite until literally the epilogue of Battle Grounds, while building a bicycle for Maggie.  He can't get by on improv and luck any more, the stakes are too high and the enemies too competent.  Those "Moments of awesome" will naturally be replaced with "moments of survival" more often than not simply because of what Harry is up against.  Against the Outsiders, survival is often the only victory possible.

That said, how could you not count the Flight of the Valkyries Pixies as a Moment of Awesome?!  Harry literally showed the entire world (or more accurately the beings in it who matter most) just how powerful the Little Folk can be and how much they're capable of accomplishing. There's huge ramifications here, they'll be treated with a respect and wariness they've never enjoyed before. And the way they took to the skies after getting their orders, and the things they accomplished...

[heidi_storage]

You both have pointed out scenes that should have been really cool; I just felt fatigued reading Battle Ground, because there was one epic fight after another. It had a numbing effect.

[morriswalters]

The story arc starting with Grave Peril and ending with Cold Days represents, in my mind, some of his best writing to date.  Dead Beat, Proven Guilty, White Knight, Turn Coat and finally closing out with Changes, are the strongest in books in this run.  It has a strong and scary antagonist as represented by the Red Court, and the fleshing out of the supporting characters is finished. Cold Days answers a lot of the questions raised in this arc and features the death of Maeve and the reveal of Nemesis. Mab's purpose is revealed and Harry finds that his choices in Turn Coat will have a price.

Peace Talks and Battle Ground are a confused mess.  There are two good books in there somewhere, but they didn't show up in print. I would love to see a fan cut which rearranges the books.  That book would have ended with Thomas in a cell and the reveal of Justine in that finale. And then had the Battle of Chicago as the focus of the second book. Just my personal opinion.

[vincentric]

I have to disagree there. As Harry reveals in his talk with Justine on the boat, the whole of Peace Talks and Battle Ground was just a big diversion to get the Walker onto Demonreach. Sure, the Outsiders would have liked to taken down Mab and the Accorded Nation leaders and major powers present, but their main goal was breaching the island's defenses after their direct assault in Cold Days failed.

[morriswalters]

I have to disagree there. As Harry reveals in his talk with Justine on the boat, the whole of Peace Talks and Battle Ground was just a big diversion to get the Walker onto Demonreach. Sure, the Outsiders would have liked to taken down Mab and the Accorded Nation leaders and major powers present, but their main goal was breaching the island's defenses after their direct assault in Cold Days failed.

And that is the precise problem. You have a book full of battles in Chicago and the main point is focused on Demonreach. Jim doesn't seem to have a good grasp on war.  Knock, knock.  Accorded nations we intend to destroy you. But here, take some time to get ready to defend. Oh yeah, Harry take a boat ride to the island, but have a fight with Eb, because it isn't like you have anything else important to do. Dump Thomas, trash Lara, and then set it up so Molly can ride in and save your ass on two sharks when you fight a mini Kraken on the way home.  Much sound and fury which accomplices precisely nothing accept setting up going back and revealing Justine. 

Battle Ground suffers from being written in first person which doesn't work well with the scope of the action.  Harry has to be in every fight, which makes him a whirling dervish.  Jim then kills Murphy and turns Harry into a raving maniac, not giving the reader of the story time to breath and absorb the loss of a character that has been a center piece of the action since book one. And then disappears her body to a Norse version of the afterlife.

This shares one of the failings of Ghost Story, this first person view. In that book Jim had to stretch to give Harry a piece of the action, when making Harry a true bystander unable to influence the action of the book might have been a better choice.  Your mileage may vary but this is my POV.

[Bad Alias]

my favorite scene in Changes was the duel in his domain.

...

Agree? Disagree?

My favorite thing about Changes is Harry gets to go into the final fight without a bunch of injuries that hold him back. I think it allows for more awesome.

The story arc starting with Grave Peril and ending with Cold Days represents, in my mind, some of his best writing to date.  Dead Beat, Proven Guilty, White Knight, Turn Coat and finally closing out with Changes, are the strongest in books in this run.  It has a strong and scary antagonist as represented by the Red Court, and the fleshing out of the supporting characters is finished. Cold Days answers a lot of the questions raised in this arc and features the death of Maeve and the reveal of Nemesis. Mab's purpose is revealed and Harry finds that his choices in Turn Coat will have a price.

Agree. Comparing those books to these books help illustrate why PT/BG aren't as good as they could be.

As Harry reveals in his talk with Justine on the boat, the whole of Peace Talks and Battle Ground was just a big diversion to get the Walker onto Demonreach.

In the GP-CD story arc, we have vampires as the main villain with the background threat of what turns out to, likely, be Nemesis.¹ Here we have the foreground threat of the Fomor and the background threat of Nemesis. The background threat is done in such a way that I'm not worried about it at all. It doesn't add anything to these books. And the Fomor seem to be a parade of arrogant incompetents who are only good at having mooks. They don't feel half as threatening as the Red Court did to me.

That's half my problem with PT/BG. Continuity errors are the other half. If I notice them, they drive me crazy, and there are so many in these books. I have other problems with these two books, but I don't think there big enough to warrant much complaining.

I'm going to have to read them a couple more times before I can firmly say where they fall on the DF scale of quality. (It's kind of like how I told a friend who owns a restaurant that his signature item was he least good item because it was just good, and everything else was fantastic. I don't think we've had a "bad" book yet).

1: The threat could be all sorts of shadowy figures plotting in the background. The Black Council, the Circle, and Nemesis could range from one threat to several distinct threats with all sorts of degrees of interrelatedness somewhere in between.