The Dresden Files

I'm just wild about Harry, as the song goes.

The Dresden Files are a series of books by Jim Butcher, chronicling the adventures of Chicago's only Wizard for hire Harry Dresden.
Harry owes his literary roots to Philip Marlow, since as well as being a wizard, he's also a private investigator of the hard boiled kind. Like Marlow, he's a man with a conscience that he wishes he didn't have working in a city that likes being dirty and trying to do the right thing no matter what. Also like Marlow, this makes him a man with few friends.

The series is currently about 14 books long, and set to run to something like 20. Over the course of the first 13, Jim Butcher introduces you to Harry's limited selection of friends, his rogues gallery, a collection of fellow denizens of Chicago and other parts of the supernatural world. There are vampires (three different kinds!), werewolves (at least five different kinds), ghosts, faeries and dark things lurking at the edges of what humanity knows. There are trolls under bridges, dragons that menace maidens and fallen angels waiting to snatch up souls, it's rollercoaster stuff.

Jim Butcher isn't a literary genius, but he knows how to plot and pace. He understands that character development is sometimes also about leveling a character up between books (Harry's no slouch when you meet him, but by book 12 he's a lot, lot tougher), but is also aware that it's about characters learning and growing in other ways. Butcher also knows how to get the audience cheering. Literally.

The thing about The Dresden Files is that at least once a book there's a moment of what I can only describe as Crazy Awesome. Harry gets himself into trouble on a regular basis, and usually works his way out of it too, but sometimes he does it in a way that will leave you flicking back a couple of pages to make sure that yes, he really did do that. There's one book, or rather one part of one book where the climactic battle has the most unusual combination of zombies and dinosaurs I have ever seen, and it literally made me cheer out loud.

The books are leavened with humour, warmth and intelligence but are primarily fun. They do get darker as the world around Harry reacts to him and his actions. As Harry develops, his world changes and the threats he faces change too. These aren't monster of the week books, nearly everything is linked and situations that were created in the first couple of books pay off in the more recent releases.

If there's a downside to the series, it's this: you need to read it from the beginning and hopefully in order. Get someone to lend you Storm Warning and work from there.

Right, I've ordered Storm Front (which I imagine you were aiming for rather than the rather good McGann Big Finish). You better not be pulling my chunda. I love Chandler but the few things that I've read that have tried to place him in a fantasy setting have largely gone flat...

stanmore wrote:Right, I've ordered Storm Front (which I imagine you were aiming for rather than the rather good McGann Big Finish). You better not be pulling my chunda. I love Chandler but the few things that I've read that have tried to place him in a fantasy setting have largely gone flat...

Yep, Storm Front.

I'm not pulling your chunda until you tell me what it is.