Book Review: Storm Front, by Jim Butcher

[inverarity]

Jim Butcher's debut attempt at crossing Urban Fantasy with Hard-Boiled Noir is not that bad, but it's not that good.

ROC, 2000, 322 pages

Harry Dresden is the best at what he does. Well, technically, he's the only at what he does. So when the Chicago P.D. has a case that transcends mortal creativity or capability, they come to him for answers. For the "everyday" world is actually full of strange and magical things—and most don't play well with humans. That's where Harry comes in. Takes a wizard to catch a—well, whatever.

There's just one problem. Business, to put it mildly, stinks. So when the police bring him in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with black magic, Harry's seeing dollar signs. But where there's black magic, there's a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry's name. And that's when things start to get interesting.

Sometimes it seems like I am the only person in the world who has not yet read Jim Butcher. I know people who looooove the Harry Dresden series, and then there are people who, well, don't. (And holy shit, the comments she gets on that post! Jim Butcher fans are really, really devoted to Jim Butcher! She doesn't get that much reaction to "Kill all men" and "Death to America.")

I'm gonna say that the inimitable acrackedmoon is not wrong in her analysis, but whether or not you actually hate Harry Dresden will depend on your tolerance for annoyingly cliched tools used to entertain you. I mean, I like reading Ian Fleming, so it would be silly (or at least inconsistent) for me to claim that Jim Butcher is particularly egregious or untalented. Butcher is not a great writer — at least not in this book — but he's not an altogether bad one, and Storm Front is a moderately entertaining caper about a Chicago wizard/PI who has the usual problems of scraping up rent, a missing person to find, mobsters on his case, shadowy nemeses who want him dead, femme fatales, and magic and vampires and faeries and a lecherous talking skull thrown into the mix for fantasy flavor.

Suspensions of disbelief are always required in UF, and my biggest one was actually a fairly prosaic concern: dude has magic powers, in a world where those are pretty rare (the book is not altogether consistent about whether the wizarding world — yeah, I'm gonna call it that — is "secret" or just generally goes incognito) and yet he's struggling to pay his bills. Okay, I get it, Magic Has Rules and you can't just conjure up a pile of gold, but still, as the only wizard in the entire Chicago area, and supposedly a pretty formidable one (despite the fact that he gets his ass kicked by everyone he meets, magical and mundane alike), you'd think Dresden could come up with more innovative ways to profit off of his talents than advertising in the phone book as someone who will find your lost wallet.

Some of the worldbuilding is intriguing (the White Court, the rules of wizardry which seem to be reasonably well thought out without being excessively infodumped) and some are just lazy (vampires, faeries, ghosts, etc., Butcher seems willing to drop the whole fantasy kitchen sink into his universe).

As a character, Harry Dresden is indeed a neckbeardy fanboy's wet dream, a clueless virgin who most of the gorgeous women he meets (all of the women he meets are gorgeous) throw themselves at, so he can manfully refuse their advances and congratulate himself on what a stand-up guy he is for not exploiting the chicks whose boobs he's totally not ogling. We get lots of passages about what a tortured bad-ass he is: his "soul-gaze" routine, where he looks into someone's eyes and they see into each other's souls and most people faint because Dresden is so, so dark inside, man! — is kind of contradicted by everything else he does, which is bumble around cluelessly, get bushwhacked by thugs with baseball bats, bullied by cops and mobsters, and try to figure out those mysterious confusing lady-creatures.

That said... the book was fun in a well-trodden way, there were some small bits that were neat, and I found it passably entertaining. Do I really want to go on and read the rest of the series? Practically every Dresden fan says that the first few books aren't very good but Butcher gets a lot better deeper into the series. That's not exactly an alluring prospect: "Read two or three mediocre books before you really get into it." But at some point I'll probably pick up the next one.

[Poll #1919287]

---

My complete list of book reviews.

Comments

[l-o-lostshadows.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't call it a great book, but I liked Fool Moon better than Storm Front.

[uneko.livejournal.com]

Really, pick up the next ones. the first book, is a first book. In the following stories.. well.. let me say that the so so dark is explained, that there is NOT a "beauty-a-book" that he beds in every story, and that the world building is build up into more depth as time goes on. I think you'd like it, if you stick with it. ANd even if you do read through 2 or 3 mediocre books to get to the good stuff, there are 11 awesome books to read after.

Also, his Codex Alrea is awesome. I recomend reading the first two of those to see if you'll like it. It's not at all like Dresden.

[clandiagonality.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't call Storm Front or the sequel, Fool Moon, great books, but I am definitely a fan of the series. I started when I was a kid when the fan-service was just that--exactly what an impressionable young reader thought was awesome. What I really like about the series, however, flawed and cliche-ridden as it can be, was how Dresden matures as a person and a character (I think in tandem with Butcher maturing as a writer). If you like anything about noir or urban fantasy, the series just keeps dishing it out for you. :)

[thirdgorchbro.livejournal.com]

I read the first, I dunno, seven or eight books in this series before I got bored with it. The writing and characterization does get better, but the main character started to get more and more powers and for some reason the whole White Court/Black Court business started to annoy me. The power creep concern was the main reason I dropped it. I can't speak to whether this was addressed in later books, or if Harry Dresden turns into a male Anita Blake.

[othercat.livejournal.com]

I like the series, though there are moments when eyes roll, specifically every time the mars and venus bullhockey shows up. Which is every few chapters when there's a girl involved.

My two cents.

[count-fenring.livejournal.com]

Fool Moon is borderline incoherent in places. Quality improves from there (the fourth book is quite good, by pulp fantasy-noir standards) but gender issues get worse rapidly after that, and are never great.

Basically, the books are misogynist as F*%K in a ren-faire kinda way, with a lot of passages of Harry manfully ignoring (but still describing in lurid detail) a lot of underage bodies. On the other hand, at one point he rides a zombie dinosaur.

[cheddartrek.livejournal.com]

I'm a fan.

But I'm one of the ones who tends to say "the first few aren't great, but keep going, they get better."

I agree it's not the most alluring prospect in the world. How it happened for me went more or less like this:
[1] Leaving on a jet plane. Need books! Hmm, I keep hearing about this Dresden Files thing, I'll grab the first two of those (one for each leg of the trip).
[2] Read them, think they're okay. Pretty good for airplane trips.
[3] Pick up the next two for my next trip several weeks/months later.
[4] Pretty much #2 again.
[5] At some point pick up book #5. Notice that things are starting to tie together. Get into it.
[6] Devour books 6-11 (all that was out at the time) before the weekend is over.
[7] Start over at book #1 again. Finish all 11 again within the next week.

Good review of it by the way. Enjoyed reading as usual.

[kdorian.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I went the opposite direction than most of the fans - I read the first few books and liked them well enough to continue (they weren't Art, but they were entertaining enough), but as the series went on I liked them less and pretty much quit after book 5.