Ghost Story

I know the feeling.

I have a group that I can't get interested in playtesting my settings for me.....

and unfortunately, I'm only a good GM face to face, on PbP I suck...which is weird, because my writing is quite a bit higher scale than my speech

I read it just recently.

It's a fairly typical fantasy series of the last twenty years or so, featuring the usual elements such stories have had: human-scale villain trying to take over things, inhuman "destroy everything" villainous species to provide action sequences, and odd cultures that function as both friend and foe depending on the situation.

That said, it's quite well-written. The characterizations are generally good, the action and battle sequences are good, and the plotting is excellent, with many diffferent characters trying to manipulate events. The plotting has a bit of an I,Claudius (helps that it's a Roman-like culture) or Song of Ice and Fire feel to it, without the bombast and relentless hopelessness that many people get from those works. In particular, as you might expect if you've been following the White Council storyline in The Dresden Files, the political maneuvering in the story is quite well done, with many plots within plots and unexpected alliances.

The most interesting thing about the series, and the most important thing to know if you want to read the whole thing, is that the first book is by far the weakest thing I've ever read by Butcher. It was his first full novel, though not his first published work, and it just isn't as polished as the Dresden stories or the rest of the Aleran stories. You'll notice a huge jump in writing quality when you hit the second book; from there on, the writing is as good as you'll see in a Dresden novel.

One final thing that I enjoyed about it was that while it was six books long, making up more or less a single, continuous story, it's still digestible. Six books is fairly brief by epic fantasy standards, and the story has a defined ending, something you don't always see with these multi-book epics.

Its a decent fantasy series. Generally you can anticipate some of the things from the start but what makes it interesting is it's origin.

I am having trouble seeing Pokemon in that series.

Each book about 3 times each. I like this style of fantasy, where the good guys are actually good guys, and do epic heroic things. Needless to say, I am not a fan of the Game of Thrones books.

The furies are basically a reinterpretation of Pokemon. In this case the furies were captured and bound to bloodlines long long ago. Kind of like pokemon captured and passed down from one generation to the next. If they lived that long.