Storm Front (by Jim Butcher)

The world is getting weirder. Darker every single day. Things are spinning around faster and faster, and threatening to go completely awry. Falcons and falconers. The center cannot hold. But in my corner of the country, I'm trying to nail things down. (…) I don't want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I'd rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don't come swooping out to snatch children from their cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p's and q's. My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no one else can help you, give me a call. I'm in the book.

- Chapter 27, Storm Front

He does: Harry Dresden’s adventures sum up 14 books already, with another one coming soon. But it all started in Storm Front, the first volume of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher.

Urban fantasy was not my thing before I put my eye on Storm Front. I associated Urban Fantasy with Paranormal Romance and all the glowing vampires and six-packed werewolves that come with it. Being realistic, there’s a piece of that in Urban Fantasy, as the lines between genres grow thinner, but my prejudice was forcing me to avoid a lot of books, Jim Butcher’s series included. That changed with this:

The Dresden Files TV Show

Let’s face it: Syfy’s The Dresden Files is not a great show. Heck, Syfy never got its mojo back since Battlestar Galactica. But The Dresden Files is a fun show and, for the most part, has fun episodes. Give it a try, if you have time!

The show made me curious about the books. I could not angst teen vampires and werewolves and there was no lame romance looming around! Could it be I was missing an amazing book series? Well, sadly, I was!

Storm Front Cover 

The Dresden Files tells the story of Harry Dresden (duh!), the only wizard on Chicago’s phone book; probably not only Chicago, but let’s go with it. His first big case is recorded in Storm Front and it revolves around a missing husband and the gruesome murders of a call girl and a gangster… Yes, Chicago and gangsters: that’s new! Starting with this premise, we then meet, through Harry’s eyes, the Chicago’s PD Special Investigations team, a vampiress, magic drug addicts and even faeries.

Santa is a much bigger and more powerful faery than Toot, and I don't know his true name anyway. You'd never see me trying to nab Saint Nick in a magic circle even if I did. I don't think anyone has stones that big.

- Chapter 6, Storm Front

Storm Front starts with Harry Dresden, wizard and private investigator, called by the Chicago PD to a murder scene that has more weird in it than blood... And there's a lot of blood at the hotel room where two bodies, a call girl and a gangster's goon, were found with exploded chests. At the same time, Harry is hired by a wife to find her missing husband, but soon Harry understands that she is hiding information from him. As he works on both cases, Harry has to meet the underworld of Chicago as he begins do piece together that both cases are inherently related with the magic world. In a world of demons, vampires, ghosts and faeries, Harry has to put the clues together to solve both cases, all of this while he tries to avoid the death sentence on his head by White Council, the ruling body of wizards... 

The first novel of the Dresden Files is full of humor and is plot is complex enough and engaging, but its high point of the novel is its characters:

Harry Dresden is the main character and our narrator. His past still looms over him and his past deeds make him a target of the White Council, the wizards’ ditactorial government. He an odd ball, since while he is completely open about his powers, the Council is reclusive and secretive. In a way, while reading this book (and the rest of the series), Harry makes me think about John Constantine: both wizards, both trusting more in their wits and intelligence than in their magical powers.

Lt. Karrin Murphy is the head of CPD’s Special Investigations unit and has asked Harry’s professional opinion more than once. In Storm Front, she is in charge of a macabre murder of a gangster and a prostitute and, being a locked room mystery and full of blood kind of scene, she was swift to call for Dresden’s help. Over the course of the book, there are some burned bridges between them, but Murphy is also the reader’s connection to the real world and she more than often asks the exact question the reader is asking himself.

Bob is a skull. Well, not really, but that’s how we first perceive him. Bob is more like a genie, if you want, confined in a skull. He is Harry’s encyclopedia of the arcane because… Because Harry is lazy and Bob is handful… Also, Bob is funny as Hell (not that Hell seems a funny place, not even in the Dresdenverse, but you get the point!). Imagine a disembodied fifteen years old boy, with an overdose of hormones and a knack for reading romance novels and you get Bob’s personality. Just as an example of how Bob likes to help Harry, we have:

"Tequila?" I asked him, skeptically. "Are you sure on that one? I thought the base for a love potion was supposed to be champagne."

"Champagne, tequila, what's the difference, so long as it'll lower her inhibitions?" Bob said. "Uh. I'm thinking it's going to get us a, um, sleazier result."

- Chapter 8, Storm Front

Susan Rodriguez is a journalist working for The Midwestern Arcane, a tabloid newspaper that normally covers UFO sightings or the second coming of Elvis. Susan is also Harry’s love interest. Yes, there is a love interest, but it’s not lame, I assure you. It may involve a fight between Harry and an enraged demon while Susan is full of love-potion induced lust, but… It’s not Twilight, trust me! Susan’s role in Storm Front is not huge, but keep an eye on her!

Gentleman Johnny Marcone is the Michael Corleone of the Dresdenverse’s Chicago, putting it in simple terms. Harry forges with him an interesting relationship from the start of the novel, when Marcone offers to pay Harry so that he doesn’t investigate Marcone’s goon murder. Marcone is a ruthless, even if tidy, gangster and is apparently fully aware of the magical side of Chicago. That only makes him more dangerous as Harry finds in Storm Front.

(The character pictures were taken from the Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files comic books, published by Dabel Brothers and a review about the comics will eventually come to POPinions as well)

Overall, Storm Front is a good introduction to a universe that I learned to enjoy. It isn’t the best book on the series, not for a long shot, but it’s a funny book and an interesting supernatural mystery that proved my prejudice about Urban Fantasy wrong and opened my tastes to a whole new genre.

Plot 3/5

This rating is a little bit unfair, since it arises from comparison with the next books in the series. Even then, the plot is logical and the way the plots entwine together with a bang at the end is greatly satisfactory when you turn the last page.

Characters 5/5

Hand down, the best of the book. Harry is an amazing character, full of charm and humor and with him, Jim Butcher brings a cast of full-fledged characters. My favorite is definitely Bob, but from Toot, the faerie, to Bianca, the Vampiress, no character seems completely cardboard and that is, unfortunately, something that begins to be rare in genre fiction.

World Building 4/5

Despite being an introductory book, and a short one at it, Storm Front is full of small hints of a bigger universe that will, I promise you, unfold as the series goes by. We get glimpses of vampires, fairies, the White Council and its Wardens, demons and evil sorcerers… Sounds cheesy and it kind of is, but in a funny and entertaining way that will not disappoint you.

Excitement 3/5

Again, the rating is slightly unfair because I’m thinking in what is about to come in the Dresden Files while rating Storm Front. Even so, Storm Front is an action packed book, full of twists and turns that will force you to keep reading until the very last page and will make you take the next book in the series right away.

Overall 15/20

Like I said above, Storm Front suffers a little in the sense that, being the first book in a fantastic series, feels a little underachieving when facing the remaining books in the Dresden Files. Despite this, Storm Front is a book you should read as soon as you can… Like now! Come on, go read it! Now! 

And, just to keep you going, take this small spoiler to a future book...