Book Review: Storm Front (The Dresden Files #1)

Well, the day has come at last. I have several friends who swear by this series. I’ve seen it everywhere. It’s been around for over 20 years. I’ve even read the first book in a different series by the same author. Three years into this blog experience, I’ve finally read (listened) to a Dresden File, and overall, I enjoyed it, with some serious reservations we will discuss at the end. I ripped through the 9-hour audiobook in a single weekend.

Let’s talk about it.

The Basics:

Title: Storm Front (The Dresden Files #1)
Author: Jim Butcher
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Noir Mystery, Action
Published: Penguin Putnam, 2000

Spoiler-Free Summary:

Harry Dresden is a consulting wizard. He’s listed in the yellowpages and everything, and, yes, at the time this book was published at the dawn of the century (Doesn’t that phrasing make ‘2000’ seem unneecessarily old?) the yellowpages were still a perfectly valid place to advertise your business. We are spared a drawn-out origin story and training book and dropped right in the middle of Dresden’s professional years.

Paying jobs have been few and far between lately, but Harry soon has more than he could wish for when a distraught wife asks him to find her missing husband on the same day the Chicago police hire him to investigate a particularly gruesome magical murder. Soon, the Chicago mob, the secret wizard government, and a coven of vampires are all harrassing Dresden in one way or another as he fights to untangle the truth from a twisted web of lies and intrigue and catch a wizard serial killer. When the aforementioned wizard government suspects Harry of committing the murders himself, he must solve the crime to clear his name. Harry nearly dies more often than you or I check the time on our phones as he bounces from one deadly scenario to the next.

Why This Book Is For You:

Storm Front is a fast-paced, tightly plotted mystery which keeps the pages turning. Seemingly every suspect or witness wants Dresden dead, jailed, or both. It’s genuinely funny, particularly the interactions with the magical world hidden amonst our own, and clever, with solutions to problems beyond the simple, “I blast it with magic.” As a mystery, I would not call it completely unexpected, but it is surprising enough to keep you juggling at least two theories as evidence unfolds.

Butcher’s prose is clean and crisp. His style lets you sink into the story without the distraction of flowery turns of phrase. It’s the kind of writing that lets you forget you’re reading at all as the story plays out seemlessly in your mind.

If you love monster-of-the-week fantasy/horror shows like Supernatural, Buffy, or the X-files*, you would do well to give the Dresden Files a try.

(*or Grimm, Eureka, Agents of Shield, Warehouse 13, The Librarians… I’ve watched far too many shows like this.)

Content Warning:

I would be remiss if I did not mention the elephant in the room for early Butcher work: sexism. In my opinion, this book goes overboard giving homage to the noir mystery tradition of describing the legs and lips of every woman who enters the picture. Written deeply in Harry’s point-of-view, every woman is first and foremost sexy, and whether they know it or not, they use their sexuality to get what they want. It is a dated and one-dimensional picture of half the human population, and honestly I think Butcher can do better…

…because I have seen him do better. When I read The Aeronaut’s Windlass earlier this year, I did not detect even the slightest hint of chauvenism, so there is room for defending The Dresden Files. Apologists will likely offer one of the following arguments: The author has grown as a person in the past twenty-three years. 2000 was a different time, before ‘Me Too,’ and a general cultural awareness of the painfully common prevalence of sexism and sexual harrassment in the workplace. He was writing in the voice of the main character, and Harry’s chauvenism is a character flaw that does not reflect the author’s attitude. Any, or all, or none of these things may be true.

If you are reading this and you think this sounds like a bunch of liberal overly-sensitive hand-wringing, you will probably enjoy Storm Front more than I did. If you or someone you know has experienced this sort of prejudice, I expect you will hate it.

Where Can You Find More?

Where can’t you? Check out the author’s website for the latest. Interviews like this one abound on ye olde internet.

Happy reading, folks.