What author did you read a book by and didn’t like, but gave them another chance and loved it?
I’m so glad I gave Edith Wharton another chance. I read Ethan Frome and thought it was fine. On a whim I picked up The Age of Innocence and fell in love. Now I’m buying anything I can by her. I recently read The House of Mirth, and can confirm she is one of my favorite authors now. Anybody have a similar experience with an author?
Jim Butcher.
I tried the Dresden books and just hated them. Like, all characters are assholes and women are mostly sexy cardbords and just… noped out of that one very quickly, swore to never touch anything by him ever again.
A few years later a dear friend started talking about how great Codex Alera is. I picked up the series mostly because I trust her and I am so glad I did. Like, it’s not great, but it is a genuinely fun fantasy adventure, also makes me wonder about Butcher, because it turns out he can write nice characters and women that are not two dimensional (though I feel the need to point out that it is very early 2000s fantasy, like, you can really tell. But it’s still fun)
I like his cinder spires series. I’m not as keen on the Dresden books. I liked Codex Already.
Dresden files slowly begin to get better. There’s some cliche tropes I agree but it goes some interesting places/ the stakes get way higher/important characters die…
Yet Dresden is still Dresden. I got 10 books deep and he is still a creep. Some MCs just ruin the stories they are in.
This is not trying to excuse how Butcher writes women, because I do find it gross, but I think the difference between Dresden Files and Codex Alera is that Dresden started out as an ode to old school hard-boiled detective novels, which gave Butcher some cover to let his sexism fly unchecked. Again, this is not an excuse, because he didn’t have to write his women as hollow sex vamps to evoke the hard-boiled aura he was going for; he chose to do that. Plus, there’s plenty of scenes where Harry is trying to be chivalrous, and you can tell that Butcher has no idea how deeply misogynistic his idea of chivalry is (a good amount of those scenes are just masturbatory fantasies wherein Harry eventually decides to do the “right thing”)