Posted on June 3, 2015 by
Mabrick
This was a tremendously fun book to listen too. I’ve not read nor listened to any Dresden Files books before, but I now feel like I’ve been missing out on a helluva lot of fun. Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, the protagonist, is a snarky, cynical and deadly serious modern-day wizard. He started out as a supernatural private investigator and has since become… more. It’s complicated.
If you are into hardboiled detectives, you should enjoy Harry Dresden. He is a well filled out character with history and back story enough to slake any lore purist’s thirst.
One of the aspects I particularly enjoyed about this book was the hardboiled aspect of the story telling. I’ve always been a fan of Mike Hammer and Mickey Spillane; the first person introspective narration, the often gritty environment, the earthiness, if you would, of it all. Jim Butcher definitely knows the style, and parlays it into an urban fantasy that’s believable and impossible at the same time. Perhaps that’s because he’s had 14 other attempts at getting it right, but the ease at which he pulls it off tells me otherwise.
And it’s not just Harry Dresden who’s a rounded character with history. Almost all of them, and especially Harry’s friends, are fully realized people. they are real. Now, that part is because he’s had 14 other stories over which to develop them, but that doesn’t make it any less joyful when one of them does exactly what you knew they would do because that is who they are. Don’t get me wrong. That doesn’t mean they are predictable. The exact action they take almost never is. Only the overarching character traits, such as the fact that Michael Carpenter will always be good and oppose evil. It’s not just his job, it’s who he is.
The storytelling is also very much action oriented. I can see why movie and television have been very interested in these stories. This book is no different. It would adapt well to becoming an action movie with plenty of chase scenes and very intense character interactions. I mean, when the Genoskwa… oh wait, spoiler – sorry. And when Karrin drew Fidelacchius… wait, more spoilers. But the chase scene was awesome! Then there was what happened at the Carpenter’s house the second time, which I’ll not go into because – you guessed it – spoilers. But you grok what I mean.
And lastly, like any good series, Jim Butcher leaves plenty of clues on what might be the next book’s plot arc, or even the next three books. I don’t see an end coming any time soon for the adventures of Harry Dresden and company. And you know how long wizards live.
The one negative thing I will say is the end of the heist relied on a tomato surprise to work. Don’t get me wrong, in a lesser writer’s hands it would have been awful, and this was not. But the story needed just a little more foreshadowing of what happened and I don’t mean the “remember when I did this” sort of reveal that explained away the sudden plot twist. It would have been easy to foreshadow this in the story IMO. It could have been done right at the beginning. And I don’t mean move the entire explanation scene of how it came to be to the front of the story. All Jim Butcher had to do was mention it in passing, and right after Mab picks up Harry from Demonreach would have been a perfect place in the story. It would have been front loaded with plenty of opportunity to be overlooked. Then I would be saying, “I can’t believe I missed that!” instead of, “Really, you’re going to do it that way?” Fortunately that wasn’t the climactic scene, which was every bit as nail biting and rewarding as one could hope.
But all in all the book was well worth the time it took me to listen to it. It isn’t literary in the genre sense as I wrote about in my Nebula Nominee list final thoughts, but it is highly entertaining and all in all an excellent and world to lose oneself in when the mundane world gets too pushy.