Storm Front (Dresden Files, #1)

by Jim Butcher

[booksandcats]

I have heard a ton of good about the Dresden Files, and finally decided to give it a try myself. ANd honestly, I am disappointed. I really liked the idea, and the outlined story, generally I am a sucker for detectives with magic powers in an urban fantasy setting. But this book did absolutely nothing for me, for several reasons.

The plot was... uninteresting. As a reader who gets sucked into stories very easily, I wasn't that interested to find out what was going to happen next, I wasn't glued to the book (which, believe me, isn't that hard to do!), I wasn't speculating in my througths about who had done it and what would happen next. I felt like the action was drawn out, nothing much happened and what did happened was very much condensed. Which works, if it's a character driven story line, but then I expect some character development or relationship development, which did not happen at all.

And that brings me to the next point. Harry Dresden. Did not like him. At all. I can deal with immature, sexist characters (I think). I can even sometimes handle them when they are the main protagonist and the one telling the story. But for god's sake, this guy did not encounter one female character, who he didn't think about seeing naked or was sexualizing in his mind/description. Which, fine he is young, he is flawed and everything, flawed characters make for an interesting read, right? For me, that's only when it's acknowledged that he is flawed, which I am honestly not sure if the author intended him to be. If you have a character who is appears to be a 16 year old horny boy, who has his first encounters with the female gender, than acknowledge that. Show that it is a problem and how it causes him problems (you know, apart from him having difficulties thinking straight around every woman) and how it maybe possibly could be something that he could work on. Don't have him proudly procclaim that he is a gentlemen of the old world. Because as most woman would agree, Harry Dresden is many things, a gentleman is not one of them.

Harry Dresden aside, I simply do not like how Jim Butcher writes Characters. I have seen lots of comments about his mysogynistic writing, and it's a fair point that there was not one woman in this book that Dresden didn't sexualize or had to save and they all seem like cardboard cutouts of real people, but honestly, it's not just the woman. Every single character in this book is a very superficial picture of an archetype. Like Murphys Partner, Carmichael. An older, heavy-set cynical cop who does exactly what you think his stereotype would do in that situation. That's just boring.

Now if you enjoyed that book, good for you, I'm glad you did and I hope you enjoy the rest of the series as well. I think for now this is it for me with this series. Maybe I'll give other books in the series a try later on (like a lot later), as many people have said that it'll become better, but for now I'm going to read a bunch of books who don't get better but ARE good (for me ;))

Sorry for the long rant haha.