“It’s like Harry Potter meets Philip Marlowe.”

July 23rd, 2009

I’m a fan of long-form entertainment and it doesn’t get any long-form than stories that span thousands of pages over many novels. I really enjoyed Stephen King’s “Dark Tower” series and I’m eagerly awaiting the final book of Katherine Kerr’s Deverry cycle.

Earlier this year, I had the good fortune to discover Jim Butcher’s “Dresden Files”. I had seen the television series on Sci-Fi some time ago and I was interested to check out the books. In short, I started out with “Storm Front” on my Sony Reader and proceeded to read the rest of the books in a span of about three months on the Kindle. It’s a fun series and one that I highly recommend.

What works in the series:

1. Butcher has done a hell of a job creating a good cast of characters to support the protaganist, Harry Dresden.

2. The structure of the books are such that each book has a solid primary story (e.g. who kidnapped John Marcone) that gets wrapped up in each book while moving along the larger arcs that span the books (e.g. who is the Black Council).

3. While his geography is occasionally wonky (parking lots surrounding Wrigley Field, Lincoln Park Univ. of Chicago campus, etc.), Butcher uses Chicago effectively as a setting for his stories. After reading the series, I don’t think that it could have been set elsewhere.

4. The series’ protagonist, Harry Dresden, is a compelling character and an interesting take on the wizard-cum-private eye. Throughout the series, we see Harry grow and change, and his evolution as a character is both interesting and believable. Is Harry going to end up the hero at the end of the series, or will the White Council’s fear that he turns into a warlock prove justified?

5. Butcher is probably one of the best genre mixers that I’ve read. The Dresden novels are simultaneously hard-boiled detective fiction and fantasy novels at the same time. The only author who comes close to Butcher’s ability to mix and match the best from both two very different genre types is Charles Stross’s Lovecraftian spy thrillers. (See “A Colder War” for an example.)

What doesn’t work so well:

1. The occasional butchering of Chicago geography does pull me out of the story at times. I remember reading the description of Wrigley Field in “Death Masks” and spending more time wondering whether Butcher was talking about the Sox park instead of the Cubs park. This doesn’t happen often, but is jarring when it does.

2. I like how Butcher writes Dresden’s character, but I would enjoy a darker take on things. For example, I really enjoyed the multi-book arc where Harry dealt with the agent of a Fallen Angel sharing space in his head, but I thought that the resolution was a bit quick and convenient. I would have enjoyed seeing that arc turn out differently and a fall and redemption story dedicated.

3. A new book a year isn’t frequent enough for me. :-)

4. The comic book adaptations haven’t been all that great. :-(

In the end, if this series sounds interesting, check out the books. If it seems merely promising, check out the television series and if you like that, move on to the books. Personally, I’ve exhausted all the novels at this point and I’m currently rounding up the short stories that Butcher published between books.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 9:44 pm and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.