The Dresden Files, book 5

Rereading books you've read before is always interesting, because you pick up on details you missed the previous times. Good books are ones where you learn something new, find something new to reflect upon, or revisit a thought you had before when reading the book previously.

I am rather enjoying rereading the Dresden series. I keep noticing details I might have missed before, subtle foreshadowing (or deliberate referral in later books by Butcher), and entertaining parts in the series.

This is the book that introduces Nicodemus, along with Ortega, Ivy, Kincaid, and Shiro. We see Susan Rodriguez again, which gives Dresdent some relief from the overbearing (and I'd argue misplaced) guilt he had in previous books. We have Michael Carpenter and Sanya, and oh boy this is one of those books in the series where we are introduced to just so many players in the game.

I enjoyed this book, and keep it as fan in the recommend column. If you're a Dresden fan, you won't be disappointed. I don't know how you'd take urban fantasy, though, if you prefer historical crime non-fiction, say.

Based on my notes in the book, I'm amused by a typo that's been around for a while.

The priest left my car almost before I’d set the parking break, hurried to the nearest door, and ducked inside as quickly as he could open the lock."
Page 24

Pretty sure that was supposed to be a parking brake.

And why this book is called UC_Death Masks on both kindle and audible, I will likely never know. Annoys me when I'm looking for the book.

“So if you’re not religious, you risk your life to help other people because…?”

“Because it must be done,” he answered without hesitation. “For the good of the people, some must place themselves in harm’s way. Some must pledge their courage and their lives to protect the community.”
Page 74

Sanya is awesome.

“Perhaps some could argue that I am agnostic.”

“Agnostic?”

“One who does not commit himself to the certain belief in a divine power,” he said.

“I know what it means,” I said. “What shocks me is that you think it applies to you. You’ve met more than one divine power. Hell, one of them broke your arm not half an hour ago.”

“Many things can break an arm. You yourself said that you do not need a god or goddess to define your beliefs about the supernatural.”

Page 75

“But there is a better choice.”

“What?”

“Don’t fight. Can’t lose a fight you don’t have.”
Page 177

“Fighting is never good. But sometimes necessary.”
Page 177

"The blood on their hands does not make it right to bloody my own. My choices are measured against my own soul. Not against the stains on theirs."
Page 297

How many times do we make poor choices because of others' actions? Realizing that each is responsible for his own actions, and that we are responsible for ours, and can choose only our own responses not others responses, can help us make fewer of those poor choices.

It isn’t good to hold on too hard to the past. You can’t spend your whole life looking back. Not even when you can’t see what lies ahead. All you can do is keep on keeping on, and try to believe that tomorrow will be what it should be—even if it isn’t what you expected.
Page 373

Indeed.

I had read Parasite from Mira Grant when it came out, a number of years ago. I was such a fan of her Feed trilogy and independently fascinated by the different forms of zombie fiction, so was going to read this trilogy, too.

I recall thinking Parasite was okay, not great, not as good as the Feed books, but okay. This one, ugh, this one had too many words.

Do you really need two pages of description about how you walked into a building, your brother was standing behind a plant in the entrance way, watching you, and stepped out when he recognized you? I would argue, YOU DON'T.

And YES, yes, yes, yes, we know that Sherman is a bad guy and that he did bad things, and yes, everything is about survival. Yes, we know this, because you've told us a million times.

I swear this book was written as 20 separate stories, with Grant (yes, not her real name), forgetting the previous books when writing each one. So much repetition over and over again about the same things. Too. Many. Words.

This is book two of a trilogy. I'll read the next book because my philosophy on series of which I have enjoyed one book, is that two bad books in a row and I'll stop. This would be book one of the two that would make me stop reading.

You will not find information to exonerate me. You may find more proof that I should be reviled by history. It’s all right. The broken doors are open now, and I was the one who opened them.
Page 4

Adam nodded. “Mom says you know someone is getting tired of living when they stop asking questions.”
Page 27

I wanted to tell him that he was wrong, and that his absence wouldn’t make anything easier at all—that no one ever made anything easier by walking away from it. I couldn’t.
Page 31

disheveled. “I don’t think either of us has had a life that made sense in years,” he said. “We’ve just started noticing how strange everything is.”
Page 55

I was standing in the present, and when you’re only thinking about today, history is always so far away.
Page 61

It was easy to pretend to follow social rules when you didn’t really believe that they applied to you.
Page 69

You can move out any time you need to, and that means pain is nothing but an inconvenience. Now breathe.
Page 88

The whole point of going to where the monsters are is that the monsters will always let you in.”
Page 103

Being a human was hard. It was sharp and cold and filled with choices that had no good outcomes, just varying shades and shapes of badness. No matter what you chose, you were choosing wrong for someone.
Page 157

“Humans have been trying to clean up the world ever since they figured out soap and water. I think that’s what their Devil really taught them. There’s a lot of bollocks in the Bible about humans learning modesty and shame when they first sinned, but I don’t think they went ‘oh no, I’m naked.’ I think they went ‘oh no, I’m filthy.’ That was the true fall from grace. You can’t be a part of nature if you’re trying to be clean all the time.”
Page 189

It is an unfortunate truth that the inconvenient, when ignored, tends to become worse rather than becoming better.
Page 314

“Help is commonly reciprocal between equals, a matter of duty from inferiors, and a matter of obligation from superiors,” said Anna, in the same calm, barely inflected tone that she had used before.
Page 345

“We become entirely different people every seven years, and our minds let it happen because it’s slow, it’s graceful, and even then, we cling to childhood pleasures and high school goals like they somehow had more relevance just because they happened earlier in our developmental cycles."
Page 353

It’s not selfish to want to exist. It’s a function of the survival instinct buried in all complicated organisms.”
Page 362

The reality of her original identity’s death was years behind her, taking most of the anger with it. But not, I realized, the rage. They were two different beasts, close enough to seem identical when seen together, but unique enough that one could endure without the other.
Page 378

“Because it’s easier. It’s so much easier to say, ‘This is a story, and there are heroes and villains, and there’s an ending, and when we get there the book will close and we’ll all live happily ever after.’”
Page 394

It would be terrible to have an entire species with bellies full of mingled love and hate, anger and fear, walking around and thinking that they controlled the world.
Page 399

Every human was the result of social and cultural recombination, picking up a turn of phrase here, an idea or a preconception there, the same way bacteria picked up and traded genes. Nothing was purely its own self. Nothing would ever want to be.
Page 400

Even when things were at their worst, some people could be counted on to be absolutely terrible.
Page 425

This day just kept on getting worse, and I was ready for it to stop anytime now.
Page 438

The urge to survive is a powerful thing. It can drive even the most primitive of organisms to do things that should have been impossible, because they don’t want to die.
Page 449

That’s my fault as much as it is anyone else’s, but as I do not have the power to revise the past, I choose not to dwell on that.
Page 479

“I promise I’ll do my best not to,” he said, and that was somehow better than an outright pledge to never do it, ever, under any circumstances would have been: he was human, and fallible, just like all of us. He could make mistakes. Pretending that was never going to happen wouldn’t do anybody any good, but it could leave us unprepared for what was yet to come.
Page 496

I swear I have read this book before. I mean, how could I not have read this book before? It is the vanguard of cyberpunk from which so many following books expand.

Yet, when I started reading this book, I was puzzled that it didn't seem familiar.

How could I not have read this book? I am no longer sure I had, to be honest. Case is a hustler, stole from his employer, was blacklisted. He's hired by Armitage and Molly, and takes on a project where they break into some high security place (digital and physical) to steal something. The book is about that mission.

Reading Neuromancer now, 30+ years after its initial publication is an odd experience, given that many of the terms and concepts Gibson describes are just common place. While avant-garde when published, so much has been become modern technologies, maybe inspired by the book? Unsure, but likely.

I really like Gibson's style of writing, similar to Kay's style of show-don't-tell. Of course, I like the book. Of course, it's recommended.

‘How you doing , Dixie?’
‘I’m dead, Case. Got enough time in on this Hosaka to figure that one.’
‘How’s it feel?’
‘It doesn’t.’
‘Bother you?’
‘What bothers me is, nothin’ does.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Had me this buddy in the Russian camp, Siberia, his thumb was frostbit. Medics came by and they cut it off. Month later he’s tossin’ all night. Elroy, I said, what’s eatin’ you? Goddam thumb’s itchin’, he says. So I told him, scratch it. McCoy, he says, it’s the other goddam thumb.’ When the construct laughed, it came through as something else, not laughter, but a stab of cold down Case’s spine. ‘Do me a favor, boy.’
‘What’s that, Dix?’
‘This scam of yours, when it’s over, you erase this goddam thing.’
Chapter 8 somewhere

“Doesn’t hurt?” The bright eyes met his. “Of course it does. That’s part of it, isn’t it?”
Page 108

"I try to plan, in your sense of the word, but that isn't my basic mode, really. I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans, you see..."
Page 118

The Finn grinned. “It doesn’t much matter. You gotta hate somebody before this is over.” He turned and headed for the back of the shop.
Page 166

“And the Yak, they can afford to move so fucking slow, man, they'll wait years and years. Give you a whole life, just so you'll have more to lose when they come and take it away. Patient like a spider. Zen spiders.

"I didn't know that then. Or if I did, I figured it didn't apply to us. Like when you're young, you figure you're unique. I was young."
Page something

"How do you cry, Molly? I see your eyes are walled away. I'm curious." His eyes were red-rimmed, his forehead gleaming with sweat. He was very pale. Sick, Case decided. Or drugs.
"I don't cry, much."
"But how would you cry if someone made you cry?"
"I spit," she said. "The ducts are routed back into my mouth."
"They you've already learned an important lesson, for one so young... That is the way to handle tears."
Page 177