The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
I'm not a long time fan. I can't claim to have known about these books before I heard about the series on the Sci-Fi channel. But the previews looked good, and I was excited for the show to start. Patience, however, has never been one of my strong suits. So in the meantime I tracked down the books. The first book was a little harder to find, I ended having to order it online. But since the series has started on the Sci-Fi channel they have been easier and easier to find at local bookstores.
I've been hooked since the first one. They are fun, fast, easy reads. I don't really read mystery novels, so I'm not really qualified to gauge that aspect. But they feel like good mystery novels.
A little back ground. Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden is a Wizard who opened shop as a Private Investigator in Chicago. He's listed in the phone book, and has a sign proclaiming his Wizard status hanging outside his door. The novels seem to follow a pattern, but not so much that they've become predictable (I'm on number 6, and so far they haven't turned stale at all). There is usually at least one main mystery. It's usually something of enormous impact on the the "magic community" and Dresden pretty much always seems out of his league. There there's at least one side mystery. Something Dresden picked up for some money to pay his rent (yes, this wizard scrapes by to meet his rent). In the process of solving the BIG mystery, we find out that the little mystery is involved. Not in some predictable "the butler did it" sort of way. I've got to give the Author (Jim Butcher) a lot of credit. I have hit a plot that feels rehashed yet. I've got no precognitive abilities what-so-ever, but I can usually figure out the ending of about half of everything I read or watch within the first quarter of reading it or watching it. And that ruins it for me. I'd rather be wrong and surprised than right and bored. And I haven't guessed the ending to one of the twist in one of these books yet.
Somewhere in the novel, usually just before the climax of the plot so that it further distracts Harry from the BIG mystery, we are usually given a piece of Harry's past. His Mom and Dad are dead. We're told (and Harry believes) that both deaths were accidental. We are let in on bits of their death, and their lives and why Harry is more than we, or he, thinks as we go along.
I've gotta make a note about the vampires in the novel. They aren't a central piece of the story. But they have appeared often enough to be supporting characters. Butcher has rewritten a lot of the rules on vampires. He split them into three types. Those of the White Court, Red Court and the Black Court. Beyond what we need to get through the novel, Butcher doesn't go very deeply into the mechanics of vampirism. We get a little bit more with each book, but not much more than is needed to progress the plot.
Black court vampires are closest to your classic vampires. They follow a lot of the conventional rules. Holy water, garlic, crosses, daylight, all that stuff. In the world of Harry Dresden, they are all but extinct. Mostly wiped out, and even thought to be gone completely by some. They have the most brute power, but are bound by the rules more than the other two. The Red Court vampires are somewhere in the middle. They are still bad guys, but some of them have likable qualities. They have places in society (Bianca, the vampire we hear about the most, runs Chicago's most exclusive brothel). She and Harry start on relatively, "you leave me alone and I'll leave you alone" terms. The white court are the vampires we can like. They don't drink blood, they drink emotion (sexual of course). And they aren't hindered by daylight or any of the conventional vampire weapons. They also have the least brute strength.
Which brings me to a small digression. I've come to the conclusion that the truly evil vampire, the one that can be an irredeemable monster and nothing else, is dead. I haven't read a vampire book in a while where the vampire didn't either have some redeeming qualities, or wasn't balanced by some vampire hybrid (day-walkers, Dhampyre, half vampires etc....) that was more good than evil. I think that's a significant change in the vampire mythos. The sympathetic vampire has been around for a while. Ann Rice get credit for really developing it, but even before Louis De Pointe Du Lac other authors had written vampires that we were at least sympathetic towards, if not admired. There's a whole discussion there for fans of the vampire mythos.
Anyway, Butcher falls into that tradition. By book 6 there are at least 2 vampire characters that are on the good guys team.
And since I'm already digressing..... I don't like the TV series. Harry Dresden has all sorts of little quirks that make him endearing in the books. And the stories, both individually, and the larger story as a whole, has all sorts of hooks that get you addicted like home brew crack with an eye of newt thrown in. The TV series eliminated most of them. The only charming piece of the book at carries over is Dresden's "Bob in a Skull". And it's really the only part of the TV show that fans have liked so far. Mere coincidence? I think not. Some of the bits and pieces would be hard to pull off on TV. But some I just don't understand. In the books Dresden's long duster jacket is like Indiana Jones' hat. It's trivial, sure. And a little cheesey. But it's one of those pieces that makes Dresden who he is. What was it about the magic of television that forbid the wearing of a black duster and instead put Dresden in a J Crew leather jacket? I could go on.... his cat for instance. Doesn't get more than a paragraph per book. But you'd notice if Mister (he's called Mister because he's a damn big cat with an attitude) didn't make at least a passing appearance in a book. So why not buy a big cat and let him walk around int he background of the television show?
Okay, not I'm in danger of ranting. I'll sum up. Love the books. I'm going to read them straight through, and then bitch and moan about not having anything fun to read. If you have seen the television series and didn't care for it, don't let that influence your decision on picking up the first book. With each episode the show resembles the books less and less (I wonder how the author feels about that?). Recommended for both mystery readers and sci-fi / fantasy readers.
