The Dresden Files #1
Storm Front was recommended to me by a coworker. I’ve seen it but judged the cover harshly and never picked up the book. The hat, coat and staff combo is so cringe, I find it immediately off-putting..
Anyway, I went into this book with a negative bias. I wanted to be amazed. I should know better than to judge books by their covers. This book is well-reviewed on Goodreads and is book 1 in a 19-book series. It can’t be all bad if it’s lasted that long, right?
Storm Front was published in 2000 and follows Harry Dresden, a hard-boiled private investigator, as he gets pulled deeper and deeper into magical crimes. It’s an urban fantasy noir and includes all the standard noir tropes. Femme Fatales, a down-on-his-luck PI barely scraping by, the PI getting falsely accused, etc. The book is almost 25 years old, and I expected it to show it’s years. I listened to the audiobook, which was recorded in 2003. Narration styles have changed, and while I can’t pick out anything specific I didn’t like, the narration hit me with the same cringe vibes that the cover did.
I pushed on. All my issues in the first couple of chapters were my issues, not problems with the book. If I could identify with the characters or get wrapped up in the plot, I’d forget about any misgivings I’d had initially. I struggled with adapting to the first person perspective as it’s been a bit since I’ve run into it.
I didn’t expect every female character to be a two-dimensional vampy sexpot. I hated the way all of the women were written. Just because it’s a noir doesn’t mean the femme fatales are brainless, vapid and incompetent. Okay, the first female character, that’s fine. The second, too? Okay, really leaning into the tropes. The third through fifth? Okay, now it just sounds like someone is writing out their ultra-specific fantasies where women aren’t actually people. I’m hitting hard on this because I was so annoyed about the character’s relationship with women, his attitude towards women, and how the women were written themselves that it overshadowed any good things about Storm Front. The “witty” dialogue was so painful, not to mention the immature internal monologue. I try to be kind to things written 10+ years ago and take them in the context of their time because attitudes change and culture shifts, but this is not that. Storm Front made me feel like when I was at a gamer meet-up in the early 2000s, and one of the people I didn’t know very well made me feel very uncomfortable. I was supposed to be impressed and worship him because he was superior to everyone else we were with, so obviously, I’d want him. Huge ick.
Storm Front was an exciting urban fantasy. I enjoyed that it was set before smartphones and computers, but his magic made electronics fizzle. Wonder what he’ll do in 10 years? The magic seems to be well-defined, but it’ll be explained throughout a few books. It was annoying how Harry’s supposedly so powerful, etc., but he’s continually operating by the skin of his teeth, near exhaustion. It felt like he lurched from one event to the next with little planning or forethought because he’s apparently the only one that can solve the crime and it needs to happen immediately. Just uh, forget that there’s a magic council to enforce magical laws, one that has enough teeth for even Harry to obey. Obviously they can’t help at all. Backstory bits and pieces were dropped in but have yet to be fully expanded. This is obviously book 1 of a planned series, so it’ll be interesting to see how it develops.
I don’t like to judge an extensive series by a single book. I’ll read the following few books because there’s so much here that I usually love. If the way women are written stays flat, I’ll bail on the series. I hope that pushing through will be worth my time!