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It Was a Dark and Stormy Night…
By bukkhead | March 26, 2008
BOOK REVIEW: ‘STORM FRONT’
by Jim Butcher
368 pages
Published by Penguin Putnam, 2000.
I saw the rack of books and I was intrigued to write the author’s name down and Wikipedia him later. That was enough to send me to my library’s website and reserve the book. A few days later, it was ready and waiting for me. A few days later, I finished it, and put the next book in the series on reserve. That was my approach to Jim Butcher, the Dresden Files, and Storm Front. It’s a fun little book.
Legend has it that Jim wanted to write fantasy novels, but no one was buying. So he penned this one, the story of a modern-day wizard, one Harry Dresden. Harry is also a private investigator, thanks to the world’s now realizing there is, afterall, a real supernatural element to existence. That was good enough to land Butcher an agent, and then a contract, and as of now there’s seven books in the series. And the happy ending is that Butcher is now getting paid for his fantasy novels too.
So this is a novel where the fantasy genre meets the mystery genre. And Butcher fills it full of cliché’s from both. Dresden is a broke, rent-late PI; he has a rough, gruff, mean and tough contact in the Chicago police; he’s brought into his first case by a mysterious woman in his threadbare office; he has a cat, a disembodied spirit living in a skull, and a wizards council that can’t wait for him to screw up just one more time so they can execute him. Did this thing write itself?
What’s fun about getting into a fantasy series is to see how the author builds the rules of his world. In Dresden’s Chicago, murder via magic is an extreme no-no, vampires are really beasts, the circle is all powerful, and spells require emotional energy. In this, Butcher is very consistent, and also much in his favor, his does not use mere inventiveness of physics to decide the plot. In this way the book manages to stay true to both genres, being less a mixture and more a marriage of the two. Shadowrun fans, beware: this is not that. This is something else.
All said, the Storm Front is a fun read although Butcher does spend the last few pages blithely explaining away all the loose threads, as if his deadline loomed, his agent was satisfied that the good guy won, and all that was needed was a neat wrap-up. A bit amateurish, as if the plot was ever the point. Yes, the novel is in the first person, but the reader should never have the chance to remember he’s being told a story.
But, this is, technically, a “first” novel, so one assumes Butcher will get better as he goes. One hopes, anyway. Because while I have no complaints, I do know I’ll need more than merely a lack of complaints to push me through the series. He’s got the invention, now he needs to do something with it.
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