Storm Front, Jim Butcher (Book One of the Dresden Files)

I get why people like this. It's an interesting premise; noir detective-as-played-by a wizard. But it didn't work for me AT ALL, for a bunch of reasons. First, I've read a lot of noir, and Butcher is no Raymond Chandler. Second, he totally fails to use the noir premise to make the characters interesting; the downtrodden detective trope is fun to play with, but you can't do that AND tongue-in-cheek hahaha I'm so clever narration making fun of it at the same time. I didn't ever like Harry Dresden, because he seemed like kind of a jerk, and even when he was getting beaten up, which normally makes me like someone if it's done right, he did nothing for me. The other characters were flat cliches, and the constant reminders of EVERYTHING IN THIS UNIVERSE IS EEEEEEEEEVIL made me roll my eyes. Plus, there's a lot of VERY clunky exposition about why characters are bad, and tons of tell-don't-show.

City police Commissioner Howard Fairweather used Murphy and her team as scapegoats for all sorts of unsolvable crimes that he had dumped in her lap. Fairweather was always lurking around, trying for an opportunity to make Murphy look bad, as though by doing so he could avoid being crucified himself.

Which, fair enough, is a standard noir trope. But we don't meet him, we just get this paragraph dumped in the reader's lap. There's no EXAMPLE, there's no MOTIVATION there, or anywhere else in the book. Everyone hates Harry, but no one says why. Plus, it never comes back into play at any point in the book, which means it was just a lame attempt at universe building by including what Butcher thought ought to be there.

There's also a lot of grody fixation on sex, in a way that makes me think the author himself is a little ooky.

I don't know, maybe the series gets better later? I'm not sticking around to find out.

Originally posted 2008