I remember seeing commercials on the Sci-Fi Channel for the show The Dresden Files. I didn't realize it was a book series and didn't end up watching it. Now that I've discovered the books, I wish I had checked out the TV show. Maybe I would have found the books sooner.

Harry Dresden is the only wizard in the phone book in Chicago. He works as a private investigator of sorts and also aids Karrin Murphy, the head of the Chicago police equivalent to the X-Files. When Storm Front begins, Dresden needs money badly. So when he gets a request to find a woman's missing husband, he jumps at the chance to make some easy money. At the same time, the police call him in to investigate a murder of a pair of lovers who's hearts exploded from their chests. In a twist somewhat annoyingly reminiscent of the Hardy Boys mysteries, Dresden's two cases are related, leading him to a deadly showdown with an evil wizard in a burning building.

Jim Butcher has crafted a surprisingly creative urban fantasy with great characters and an interesting mystery.

This was fast moving, slightly obscure (why did everyone hate Harry? for instance), and the world is familiar but just different enough to create interest. I finished the book wanting to find out what happens next to wizard Harry. ( )

I'm not going to pull any punches. This book is a misogynistic piece of shit.

All I knew about it before I picked it up was the very basic premise—a wizard in modern-day Chicago, who works as a sort of detective—and that it had picked up quite a cult following. I was expecting to really like it, but before I got to the end of the first chapter, my eyebrows had risen to meet my hairline. I kept reading out of some misguided expectation that things would get better, that there could...more I'm not going to pull any punches. This book is a misogynistic piece of shit.

All I knew about it before I picked it up was the very basic premise—a wizard in modern-day Chicago, who works as a sort of detective—and that it had picked up quite a cult following. I was expecting to really like it, but before I got to the end of the first chapter, my eyebrows had risen to meet my hairline. I kept reading out of some misguided expectation that things would get better, that there couldn't possibly be such a sustained level of misogyny coming from both the character and the authorial voice. Oh, how wrong I was.

The main character, Harry Dresden, repeatedly tells us that he's a chauvinist, yes, and shows no signs of wanting to change that. It would have been difficult enough for me to get into a novel with such an unpalatable main character, but the level of narrative endorsement of his viewpoint nauseated me. The female characters in the book are there only to cry, seduce, and occasionally mother. Some of them are presented as having power of their own, but if you take a second glance at them, that power is always represented as secondary to male power, or a sham. Karrin Murphy is a hard-bitten homicide detective and Harry's friend, true; but she's undermined to constant references as to how "belligerent" she is, how small and lady-like her hands are, how she cries when he won't share information with her. Let me repeat that: cries. Bianca, the vampire—sorry, vampiress! must use appropriately gendered language!—is defeated because Dresden can see how she's truly ugly beneath all that fake beauty, and so she's humiliated and he can overpower her! All of them use their sexuality to get ahead—or try to, because clearly Harry is just too intelligent to fall for those silly women's wiles!

How about an explanation for the motive behind a murder:

I gestured toward the room. "Because you can't do something that bad without a whole lot of hate," I said. "Women are better at hating than men. They can focus it better, let it go better. Hell, witches are just plainmeaner than wizards. This feels like feminine vengeance of some kind to me."

Or how about one prostitute talking about another:

She shook her head. "No, no. Nothing like that. That wasn't her style. She was sweet. A lot of girls get like—They get pretty jaded, Mr. Dresden. But it never really touched her. She made people feel better about themselves somehow." She looked away. "I could never do that. All I did was get them off."

This isn't just Dresden being sexist. This isn't just showing us the thought processes of an un-reconstructed chauvinist. This isn't even just using noir tropes—because god knows there are a thousand and one ways of subverting those and reimagining them. This is holding up a clichéd, smug asshole of a main character as the kind of man every guy wants to be, and the kind of man every woman wants to fuck, as a mirror for how Butcher thinks. It's laden with sexist stereotypes that irritate me and in case you couldn't guess, it made me very, very angry.

The book also fails on pretty much every technical level I can think of: I have no idea why it's set in Chicago, or why the location was emphasised, because there's absolutely no sense of place to it. For all Butcher told us, it could all have been taking place in Seattle, or Denver, or Kansas City. The plot is silly, illogical, and by rights everyone should have been dead of Stupid within the first two chapters. The writing style displayed an absolute cloth ear for language. I'd imagine that he was trying to recreate the terse, staccato style of noir detective stories, but didn't realise that in order to do so, you need more than short, simplistic sentences. You need to be attuned to the rhythm of what you're writing, to know how to turn a handful of words to best effect, and Butcher neither knows how to do that, nor how to write realistic sounding dialogue at all.

I have not read such offensive drivel in a long, long time. Avoid ( )

Storm Front is quite possibly the best series introduction I've seen. It's sharp, engaging, and fast-paced enough that you literally don't ever want to put the book down.

First-person narration is a tough thing to do right, in my opinion, but when you've got a narrator like Harry Dresden, it's pretty hard to go wrong. Harry's snarky, sort of a goof, and always interesting. Without his first person asides and comments in the narration, the story wouldn't be nearly as interesting, I think, because Harry can seem pretty gruff and stand-offish, and it's hard to really connect with a main character like that. Unless, of course, you're in they're head, and they're telling you what wacky hijinks they went through last time they tried a love spell, or how they're just a sucker for a damsel in distress.

The supporting cast is amazing. You have Susan Rodriguez, a reporter for a supernatural tabloid who is way too talented for her paper, but too invested in reporting the supernatural to get a better gig. She's sleek, she's sexy, and she's got a way of making Harry more awkward than usual, if that's even possible. Bob is a spirit in a skull, if you can believe that, and he's sort of Harry's own version of supernatural Google, with a fetish for sorority girls and romance novels. And, my absolute favourite, Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, of the Chicago Police Department, Special Investigations Unit. Murphy's a 5-foot-nothing blonde with (as Harry points out at one point) delicate lady's hands and an attitude that can easily take on Harry's ego. She knows Harry's the real deal, and she expects him to help her, and is about the toughest, bravest, most endearingly stubborn female character I've ever had the joy of coming across.

The worldbuilding is just stellar, my favourite detail being that any sufficiently advanced technology is liable to short circuit, act up, or just start working alltogether. And, of course, the newer it is, the more likely it is that it'll freeze up in a bad way, and quickly. Harry's little basement apartment is lit with oil lamps and candles, and heated by good, old-fashioned fire. He uses a rotary telephone (which doesn't always work), and his ancient VW Beetle is no longer one colour, thanks to all the replacements he's had to make on it. My favourite little bit is when Murphy stops him at her office door while she shuts down and unplugs her computer, so he won't fry it. Priceless. The magic is all really awesome, too, and Butcher has clearly put a lot of effort into it.

As far as plot, you really can't criticize this one too much. There are enough plotlines to keep your mind busy and engaged, and all of them get resolved clearly and neatly by the end of the book. The climax and resolution happen in about 50 pages, which seems like not nearly enough time to get through all the action that needs to happen, yet it never feels rushed or forced.

Harry's life is in very real danger on a lot of fronts for most of the book, because not only does the mysterious black mage have it out for Harry once he hears about him, but he's not really on the good side of Chicago's local mob boss, and the Warden that the White Council (the Wizard governing body, as it were) assigned Harry after he barely escaped execution for killing another person with magic (self-defense was the only reason he got out of it) thinks that Harry's behind the killings going on in the city, and is more than happy to take the appropriate action if that is the case. The appropriate action, of course, being execution.

Of course, in the end, the scruffy wizard with the ridiculous coat and the barely-running junker saves the day and gets the girl. That's how these things go. ( )

Great one-night read. Set in "modern" Chicago, Harry Dresden is a detective who is also a sorcerer. Or a sorcerer who is also a detective, depending on what day it might be. I enjoyed the short-lived TV series so I thought I'd like the books, too. So far, I was right. Completely enjoyed it - it was a fast and fun read. I apprecieated the blend of sorcery and sleuthing. Definitely will be looking for the rest of the series. ( )