There was a Ninja, some woman with green hair named Gertrude, probably my sister Vengeance, and Lord Skywalker. You know. The one that likes to snorkle.) colabed on a story! Semiautomagic! Patreon reward for nuclearcore. · 12:14am Oct 12th, 2018
Welcome back, readers! I continue to dig myself out of my Patreon reward blog hole (which brings to mind all kinds of great images, I’m sure) by moving on to more book reviews as requested by nuclercore. In this case, I’ll be tackling The Dresden Files book series, hopefully covering one a month for… well… there’s fifteen of them not including side-stories, so for a while…
For those who don’t know, the book series centers around private investigator/wizard Harry Dresden and takes place in a modern setting full of cars, computers, and a whole host of other technological convinces that tend to break around Harry and wizards in general. It also houses ghosts, goblins, demons, trolls… etc… If you’ve ever looked at the D20 modern RPG stuff, it’s like that with an emphasis on the fantasy and supernatural elements and also similar in that most people on the planet think of all of that stuff as ‘make believe’.
I mean… for good or for ill, maybe at least one person reading this knows what I’m talking about…
In Harry’s world, magic is a very real, often dangerous thing, or to crib from the book's tagline: “Magic. It can get a guy killed.”
Truth be told, it’s a book series that many people have come up to me and asked why I haven’t consumed it entirely and I have to look them dead in the eye and admit. “I don’t know. I consider it a personal failing on my part.” I’m all about them settings that successfully blend fantasy elements with sci-fi or even modern elements so I can’t help but think about the basic setting and mentally go.
So hopefully the fact that I’m getting preemptively paid to do something I enjoy will help.
I have managed to get around to reading the first book Storm Front, though, so I’ll jump right into talking about that. Since I’m covering an entire book instead of a chapter or two at a time, I’m thinking I’ll try to avoid any major spoilers.
In fact, I also kinda have to cover a bunch of world-building stuff, so if you need deets about this book, you might have to read it or track down the Storm Front comic which makes for a decent abridged version.
The paragraph blurb is that work is slow for Harry because there’s not always a lot of stuff for a private-eye wizard to do. Luckily Harry lands a few cases immediately, thus saving us from being completely bored waiting for something to happen. These turn out to be a missing person case to find the husband of Monica Sells, a husband who has been dabbling in magic, and then a ‘what the eff happened to these bodies?!’ case. The later courtesy of a friend he has in the Special Investigations Unit of the Chicago Police Karrin Murphy. Things rapidly build from there with Dresden getting contacted by a crime boss to drop the police case. He doesn’t of course, because again, what a boring book this would be if he did, and then, later on, he ties a new magical-drug that’s hit the streets and at different times crosses paths with a warlock, vampire Bianca, then Warden of the White Court Donald Morgan… amongst a few other mostly non-magical peeps. Oh, also Dresden’s ‘roomies’ Bob, an air-spirit that’s sort of Dresden’s bond familiar and Mister, Dresden’s 30+ pound cat and one of my favorite characters by virtue of being a fat cat.
By now, some of you are maybe getting Vampire the Masquerade vibes here.
Which uh… hopefully(?) more of you are familiar with.
As mentioned, from a setting standpoint I love this series. Even if Jim Butcher is clearly pulling together ideas used in other settings that blend fantasy/supernatural/and modern, he has some unique takes on things that make the world fascinating. One thing I have mixed feelings on, ones I may continue to harbor as we go along, is how prevalent magic is in the world Vs. how much the general populace knows about it. On the one hand, it’s clearly prevalent enough that seemingly most law enforcement person would come across something magic related… In this case, we have both a double-homicide and drugs that are causing a bit more insanity in the users than the average psychotropic. It’s clear at least one local organized crime element takes magic somewhat seriously. We also have places like MacAnally’s tavern which pretty much exclusively serves wizards, so magic practice is prevalent enough that some people can make their living just catering to those who do. Yet Harry is often seen as a charlatan by some in the police force (despite having pretty much demonstrably helped them before) and most people just think it’s hogwash. Sure, there seems to be a willful ignorance factor suggested, but, again, magic still feels prevalent in the world even if it’s not super common, and there doesn’t seem to be any setting equivalent to the Men in Black types keeping magic secret or International Statues of Wizarding Secrecy in place. So while it’s nice that there are enough people in the setting that we’re not encountering “Magic isn’t real!” every few paragraphs, when we do get those disbelievers it comes off as a kinda strange sticking ones finger’s in their eyes and going “La-la-la! I can’t hear you!”
The plot point of technology that relies on anything more than simple mechanics breaking down around wizards is something I could probably take or leave, but that’s totally personal. I do wonder if this was done simply so Harry himself can have more of noir detective feel.
The characters of this book I mostly adore or are at least are greatly interested in. Harry himself is written well in that, for all his power, he often gets blindsided and caught without his magical toys, so that his struggles feel real. In fact, I kinda feel he got beat up a little too much this book and only really gets his act together towards the end.
There’s gonna be quite a few instances of Dresden getting walloped and caught off guard before he becomes worthy of how bad-ass he looks here.
Other characters like Karrin, Mister, Bob, Mister, MacAnally, and Mister all come off as very well rounded and I’d love to see more of them.
The writer and execution of the story itself is… okay… Just… okay. A lot of that likely has to do with this being Butcher’s first go of the series and I believe Butcher himself as said something to the effect of him not believing the first three books were quite ready for ‘prime-time’, but his publisher didn’t want him to skip them. There’s nothing too egregious for me to point out here except for the ‘mystery’ aspects of this story come off as a little weak from a reader’s perspective. Dresden the character can be forgiven for not connecting the dots right away, but from an outside perspective it’s like there’s a major puzzle piece, like a corner piece, that’s just sitting there for two thirds of the book and Dresden just doesn’t see how it fits.
A notable exception to the above is how Butcher describes characters. Every time he has to describe a new character the book explodes in poetry that paints a vivid image of who we’re looking at. A someone who often struggles with the “chore” of describing characters, I find his descriptions as something to aspire to.
In short, if you like reading, fantasy, and noir, and combining two or more of those things sounds like a good time, this book is worth a read. It may not be the best novel ever, but it’s the first in a long line of better novels, or so I’m told.
Alright, thanks again to nuclearcore for his support! If you want to get in on this, I probably don’t have enough time to pick up another entire book series, but will happily talk about a whole host of other stuff!
Catch you in the comments!
Actually this is very true to life, just replace magic with child sex trafficing and then wonder why Hollywood, the Catholic Church and multiple government institutions around the world are still allowed to exist...
My major issue with the series (granted I'm only barely into the fourth book) is that after the first you can't go two chapters without him alluding to x, y, or z that happened in the previous novel(s).
Thanks, Chief, I just read that. Could we please stop getting exposition on why anything electrical forever hates you and that one time you fought the loup-garou or the shitty mage who couldn't be bothered to read the fine print in spells?
The 30lb cat is not fat. He's all muscle. And is indeed the best character. Bob's pretty awesome too.
I remember d20 modern. The system and setting have amazing cool bits unfortunately saddled with the experimental design decisions that somehow survived whatever spotty playtesting it got.
One of my favorite bits is a table in the monster manual equivalent (probably cribbed from Alternity) that gives a simple way to generate horror movie monster weaknesses.
"Elvis Memorabilia" is on it.
4951941
I think it might be more for the sake of anyone who decides to skip previous books, so that future books don't turn into one big series of "wait, when did THAT happen?" or for those that go a long time between picking up new installations of the series. Someone like me who is very forgetful is very thankful for bits like those.
4951948
Yeah, I understand that. It just gets aggravating when it is done to excess. It's like watching a show that dedicates more than ten minutes out if a 22-minute episode to "last time, on _____" when a single recap episode every season or two will work just as well and is less annoying because you can just skip it. Apparently, the later books get better for keeping it to one or two lines here or there, rather than consistently every three chapters.
4951963
On a semi-related note, I sat down and watched like the first 10 eps of Naruto with my daughter. It's absurd how often it recaps even right at the beginning.
4951966
And it just got worse!