[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

What, my opinion isn't good/unbiased enough?

I am sorry for not mentioning you. I read it that there is the original Iron Druid Chronicles and there is fan fiction and or shared world in the same universe.

I'll repeat: Simon R. Green's books are awesome and I liked them a lot. They play around with classic stereotypes in a very fun way. (e.g. the Secret histories books are very like James Bond even down to the titles... until you factor in the magic and super-science and aliens of course. Saving the world ends up being rather more literal!)

So you are saying that Simon R. Green is NOT suffering from martysueism - wasn't clear to me. Since you didn't contradict what you said about the chronicles I was under the wrong impression it still had bad / faulty characters. Just now you have some good characters making up for it.

Is it necessary to have knowledge od the Iron Druid Chronicles to understand Simon R. Green's work? (similarly to how HPMOR is not fully appreciated unless you have fairly deep knowledge about the original - I very much enjoyed all the flaws it pointed out. But, there was so much stuff left out that sometimes it was necessary for me to fill in the blanks from Rowling's work)

"not entirely sure how particularly Dresden-like they are" == "I'm not great at evaluating whether other people will like a specific book just because they liked another specific book". However, I can say that anyone who likes the type of books I like will like his books.

I promise you, this isn't a sponsored review! (I wish I could get paid for mentioning the books I like...)

I see, I can never tell what needs to be done to fall into the "dresden-like" category. For some it is Butcher making up his own genres - e.g. steam opera for Aeronaut's Windlass. Yes sure they didn't let that fly, but some were critical about it not being real steam punk (in reviews). I enjoyed it because it is Butcher for being Butcher simply in a different world. There is fans of Butcher that like his books for good in the genre, and won't like every series. For me they are all the same with different character, different point of view (1st person for Harry, 3rd for the other two series).

It is very hard to put in words. Protagonist(s) always fighting someone stronger, very snarky, very powerful in their own right (moreso than they should be, maybe an extraordinary amount of courage including to know when to retreat and fight another day). Maybe you somehow be able to try to explain what makes the characters good in Simon R. Green's work that pushes them toward Butcher chracters?