Formatting Issue - Turn Coat by Jim Butcher

[whitearrow]

You might also like...

-- The Hollows series by Kim Harrison -- first book, Dead Witch Walking.

-- The Mercy Thompson books by Patricia Briggs -- first book, Moon Called.

-- The Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris -- first book, Dead Until Dark

-- The Kitty Norville books by Carrie Vaughn -- first book, Kitty and the Midnight Hour

-- The Weather Warden books by Rachel Caine -- first book, Ill Wind

-- The Cassandra Palmer books by Karen Chance -- first book, Touch the Dark

-- The Kate Daniels books by Ilona Andrews -- first book, Magic Bites

-- The Nightside series by Simon Green -- first book, Something from the Nightside

-- The Felix Castor books by Mike Carey -- first book, The Devil You Know

-- The Connor Grey books by Mark Del Franco -- first book, Unshapely Things

All are on Kindle

And if you are looking for some historical fantasy, may I also suggest His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik? It's free on Kindle

[sirbruce]

All fracking series.

[whitearrow]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

All fracking series.

Is that a bad thing? The books mentioned as the ones Buran liked (Dresden, Anita Blake, Tanya Huff) are all series, and pretty much any successful urban fantasy novel these days becomes a series, so I don't see why it's bad or surprising.

[texasnightowl]

Nice list! I'll second the Kitty Norville series rec and the Mercy Thompson series rec

[freecia]

Seconding the Ilona Andrews books, Kate Daniels series. I'm a fan of early LKH and rather enjoy Kate Daniels.
The others - I follow many of these series but have to say I didn't stumble upon Ilona Andrews (husband & wife team) until this week and stayed up way too late reading the three which are currently out.

You might also be interested in the Dante Valentine series by Lilith Saintcrow.

[FizzyWater]

Mark Del Franco's "Convergent World" series is similar in some ways. Rob Thurman's "Cal Leandros" series is also similar. Anton Strout's series looks similar, but I haven't read it. Same with Justin Gustainis' "Quincy Morris" series.

[sirbruce]

Originally Posted by whitearrow

Is that a bad thing? The books mentioned as the ones Buran liked (Dresden, Anita Blake, Tanya Huff) are all series, and pretty much any successful urban fantasy novel these days becomes a series, so I don't see why it's bad or surprising.

It's annoying to me because I like stand alone novels and I don't want it to be the case that new authors *have* to write a series in order to get published. But agents and publishers push series because that reduces their risk. You see the same problem with movies these days.

[Buran]

Wow. Many thanks to all those who took a moment to make suggestions. I'll be busily ordering up free samples later today, and seeing which ones draw me in and/or don't have writing styles that put me off.

Nothing wrong with series at all; I also enjoy standalone novels, though sometimes a series gives the author more of a chance to flesh out characters. I don't know if any of these series are their authors' first attempts at writing, too -- chances are there's one or more standalone novels out there. If I were a writer I don't know that I'd put the effort into a whole series if I didn't know if I'd get published; I'd more likely write a standalone novel and leave it at that, so I've wasted less effort if I keep getting turned down.

I do apologize for the accidental threadjack. That's what I get for letting my thoughts keep me typing after I'd written my thoughts on Turn Coat (which I did enjoy despite accidentally spoiling the plot for myself when skimming an article on Wikipedia. Oops!)

I did start His Majesty's Dragon -- I'm partway through it. I'll come back to it sooner or later, though I'm working on a library book that had no Kindle version - need to finish that one before it's due.

[whitearrow]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

It's annoying to me because I like stand alone novels and I don't want it to be the case that new authors *have* to write a series in order to get published. But agents and publishers push series because that reduces their risk. You see the same problem with movies these days.

You can always read the first book and forget that there are follow-ups.

IIRC, none of the books above were written as parts of series when first published, so all have proper endings (e.g., no cliffhangers or anything that would require you to read the next book to get a complete story).

[sirbruce]

I'm lamenting the state of the industry, not the quality of any of those books in particular.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Giddeaon

Two part issue here....

First - if anyone is a fan of Jim Butcher and his Dresden Files series, I would suggestion holding off on getting the newest release. I just purchased the latest novel - Turn Coat - from Amazon, and the formatting is horrible. There are 2 or three extra empty lines in between each paragraph making the spacing very noticeable and distracting, especially while reading through dialogue. I've purchased other books in the series and have had no issues. This edition just released on April 7th.

The Mobipocket edition has full line spaces between each paragraph. But no more than that. The MS Reader edition has 1/2 spaces (Well less then a full line) between each paragraph. As for the duplicated text, that's unique to the Kindle edition. Neither the Mobipocket or MS Reader have it.

[whitearrow]

For those who know more about this than I do, here's an example of the .html of this godawful file:

<div height="1em" width="1em"><font size="3">“So I could leave you hanging out to dry.”</font></div>
<div height="1em"></div>
<div height="1em" width="1em"><font size="3">“You could.”</font></div>
<div height="1em"></div>
<div height="1em" width="1em"><font size="3">“But if I did that, we wouldn’t find the traitor. And since you’d died in his place, he’d be free to continue operating. More people would get killed, and the next person he framed—”</font></div>
<div height="1em"></div>

(Every quote is encoded with & #147; em-dashes are & #151 -- the editor here is converting them automatically -- is there an equivalent of <nowiki> here?)

This file uses no CSS stylesheet whatsoever, just very badly thought out <div> coding in every paragraph, with a blank line purposefully coded between every paragraph.

Penguin should be really embarrassed -- did they actually pay somebody to do this? I'm no professional, but I guarantee I could do a better job.

[koland]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The Mobipocket edition has full line spaces between each paragraph. But no more than that. The MS Reader edition has 1/2 spaces (Well less then a full line) between each paragraph. As for the duplicated text, that's unique to the Kindle edition. Neither the Mobipocket or MS Reader have it.

Actually, it seems the mobi version sold by FW is the same. I had duplicate text at the start of several paragraphs (a sentence would cut off mid-stream, then restart at or near the beginning of the paragraph). The only place I noticed this was the first paragraph (and of at least three chapters). Unless they've replaced the version being sent (I had pre-ordered and downloaded the first day available), theirs is just as messed up as the Kindle version.

Karen
http://booksontheknob.blogspot.com/

[koland]

Originally Posted by whitearrow

Penguin should be really embarrassed -- did they actually pay somebody to do this? I'm no professional, but I guarantee I could do a better job.

I suspect they simply did a save to html from Word.

I wish Calibre could detect those blank DIV sections and remove them (listening Kovid? , just as it can some of the other duplicate blank lines. Then at least the formatting issue could be fixed (but I don't know how to fix the actual text where it duplicates; maybe Kovid could change the "viewer" to allow editing as well?).

Karen
http://booksontheknob.blogspot.com/

[whitearrow]

I think there could be legitimate uses for them -- putting a blank line between sections, for example.

But using them for every paragraph is just bloody stupid. As is using this type of coding instead of a proper style sheet -- it just makes the file bigger and more complicated without any reason behind it.