Storm Front - Dresden Files Discussion Thread

[Michael]

Storm Front is the first of a ten book series featuring wizard for hire, Harry Dresden. Having read the first seven books, I will say they only get better as the series goes along. The universe gets richer and more populated, allowing Harry to grow and develop.

Butcher also seems to put Harry through heck in each book/

This discussion can cover the entire series and will include SPOILERS...

[Brooke]

I love that he puts Harry through heck - with these sorts of series, the author always risks the main character becoming too powerful for there to be any realistic conflict down the road. Harry gets injured, scared, tired, and sometimes he just survives on dumb luck. Plus Butcher always emphasizes that 6 months to a year goes by between each book, and Harry often mentions that the big battles that occur in each book aren't something that happens every day for him.

And the continuity! Everything seems to have a purpose, and there aren't any throw-away lines. Whenever I figure Butcher just dropped something, it pops up again.

This is definitely one of the better paranormal series out there.

[Michael]

What I like about the books is they reward those who read them in order but are still accessible enough to new readers.

Butcher does a good job of telling you enough details of previous stories to be in the loop but not making new readers feel alienated. A delicate balance and one that can be difficult to maintain.

[Erfman]

This is one of those books where I always ended up reading more in a sitting than I planned on, if a book grabs me like that I know I'm really enjoying it. Started on book two last week and I suspect future Dresden books will find themselves in my hands soon.

After finishing Storm Front I also started Netflixing the Dresden Files TV series. I'm several episodes in and while it is interesting to compare the show to the books it is but a pale shadow to the richness of the novel. The TV plots are too fast paced and simple for my tastes, it's a shame there won't be a second season for it too find a good stride.

[Michael]

Erfman--I would highly recommend watching for the two-hour version of "Storm Front" should SciFi ever re-air it. Or you could try a special antennae.

I saw it and it was much truer to the novels and I liked it a lot more than the one hour version we got on TV.

[Gbina]

Jim Butcher's writing is exhausting (and I love it!). I am always leery of picking up a Jim Butcher book because I know the next several days are going to be crazy (I am a slow reader so it takes several days). Sleep will be non-existent, work will be unbearable, and hubby will be surly because he will be ignored. ;)

The Dresden series is great and Storm Front, while not the best, is a good intro. I like the way Butcher just drops the reader right into the middle of Harry's life with relationships already established and the reader is in the position of playing catch-up. From first page on it is a reading rodeo! The characters don't sleep and neither do you. :) Very fun read!

[Deebles]

I absolutely love the Dresden Files, these books to me are exactly what urban fantasy is all about. I was hooked right from the start of Storm Front and the books have got stronger as the series progresses. Summer Knight is my favourite, but then i have a soft spot for faeries.

Whilst i have the Dresden Files TV show on DVD i was quite unimpressed, i had hoped that they wouldn't make it quite so episodic, if they had used a similar approach to the Dexter series and made one series the equivolent of a book it would have been more enjoyable. Currently it feels like a not so good version of Angel.

But anyway, love the books.

[Brooke]

I'm reading the 4th book in Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Underworld series, and as much as I loved the first book, Bitten, I've felt like the rest of the series so far is poorly written, especially compared to the Dresden Files. So my questions is, looking at the Dresden Files series as a whole, which other paranormal urban fantasy series do you think hold their own against Harry and Jim Butcher?

[Michael]

Brooke--I've not read any of the Kelly Armstrong novels, but I find your comment interesting and had some questions.

Do you think the Women of the Underworld series was a one-book concept that was expanded beyond the one-book nature of it?

Or could it be that Armstrong had longer to work and revise the first novel? (If it was her first, I often wonder if authors have so many good ideas they can all put into a first novel and they've spent years refining it, if that doesn't work against them for later novels). Could it be that she didn't have as long to write the follow-ups?

I find the process of publishing fascinating. You have Jim Butcher who had the first six Dresden novels come out in paperback first and I'm not sure how long it was between the first three. I believe it was a bit closer together than the one year gap we get between stories now. Then, you have Naomi Novak who sold her first novel His Majesty's Dragon and was asked to write two more, each that came out within a month of each other.

I can understand the theory of striking while the iron is hot, but I also wonder if the final product doesn't sometimes suffer as a result....

[Michael]

Dannii--I think the Dresden files had huge potential as a TV series, but it was rushed to air.

SciFi's schedule made the production team have to hurry to get it up, running and on the air. That's why the episodes aired out of order...the early episodes were more effects heavy and had to be pushed back due to post-production. So, you had episodes that had less post-production required airing first.

I wonder how much of that extended to writing the series. I think had SciFi shown some patience and let the series have a few more months, it would have been a better overall end product.

[Brooke]

Michael,

I went and looked at Wikipedia, and it says that Armstrong's first novel was sold in 1999 and then released in 2001. I'm not sure what went on in those two years, but if it was editing, then Bitten definitely benefitted from more work than the other books. And as is always the case with debut novels, for all I know, Armstrong could have been working on it for years prior.

The 3rd and 4th in the series, the ones I really have issues with so far, were both released in 2004 per Wikipedia. The 4th is over 500 pages long in its mass-market paperback form. That alone might answer the issue of whether they didn't get as much editing time as the first book.

Part of me does think that it might have been intended as a one-book deal...books 3 and 4 switched to a new protagonist, and I really don't like her at all. The second book was very different in feel from the first one and set up the story for this new character, so it did feel like the author (or her publishers) said, "How can we turn this into a series?" At the same time, the dialogue and exposition is so clumsy and juvenile that I have a really difficult time believing that the same author wrote all four books. So maybe it's a bit of both issues.

I've always thought that publishing demands hurt the final product. Any time an author is forced to either come up with an idea on command or finish a novel in a shorter amount of time than they had before - that has to have a negative effect on the final outcome.

[Kevin]

Women of the Underworld

I thought Bitten stolen and lost were truely excellent novels. While The more current in the series are in the same world and still written well I can not seem to connect with the characters.

I will read any that come out I hope she finds a way to retun to the cabels and stay out of the spirit world.

Dresden books

I do not feel Harry is becoming a super hero. In the novels he is forced to reach and exceed his limits. His biggest limit is his relative youth and lack of experience. Remember he is in his 30's and wizards live several hundred years.

I get a feeling that knowledge is power. Dresden is not about finess but raw smash them up power. As he learns greater finess, Partly from training an apprentise< he becomes more powerful.

Brute force only goes so far. This is true in the real world as well.

A person who cruises thru high school 140 IQ never cracks a book but gets straight A's ends up diggin ditches because he can't pass college because he never learned to study.

A person with average intellegence always had to work hard for A's And B's becomes a scientist or a doctor or a lawyer.

This average person did not have brute force but using used the abilities they had to better effect.

[rebecca j]

I like that as Harry progresses the lines between black and white get more gray - making choices of "Do I live with a touch of evil to protect someone else, or do I protect myself to their cost?" kind of questions. As he progresses he also sees how power has affected others, and starts to wonder how it is affecting him. And above all, he retains his basic humanity, has his faults and failings, but continues to try to make good choices.
Besides the books are well-written, and entertaining as hell!