Fiction 28 Mar 2007 03:35 pm
Storm Front
Storm Front (Book One of the Dresden Files)
Jim Butcher
I was driven to read this book by the recent SciFi channel version of this series (”The Dresden Files”). I watched the first episode of the TV series, then I went to the library and grabbed the first book of the series (which is not the same story as the TV episode).
My thoughts: it’s a bit of “Buffy”, a bit of “Harry Potter” and a bit of “Magnum, P.I.”. Our hero, aptly named Harry, is a wizard that manages (just barely) to earn a living by acting as a free-lance consultant to people in need of magical expertise; this can mean people who need to find something or the police looking for a murderer. Harry is, in fact, the only wizard listed on the yellow pages in Chicago; you’d expect business to be better. In this first book, Harry is hired by a worried wife to look for a missing husband, and by the police to look for the person responsible for a particularly gruesome double-murder.
The premise sounded good; good enough to make me interested in reading the book, anyway. The execution… not so much. Everything feels a bit “cliché”, the characters are very predictable (as are some plot threads) and the language is a bit overdone.
Still, there’s some promise there, and there seems to be some back story for the characters waiting to show up; also, maybe the author will find his footing in the next instalments. I plan on giving the book series one more chance, but I’m not so sure about the TV series.
