Bookshelf Badgering: the Dresden Files

One of the book series I would recommend hands-down to any of my friends, without question or hesitation, would have to be the Dresden Files. I won't bother explaining individual plots to you but will hit what I like about the series and let you enjoy each story should you pick 'em up.




Now, the Jim Butcher-written series has been going on for awhile. I am madly in love with this series and that is for good reason; it takes familiar noir-style detective elements, spices it up by setting in magic-and-monster-riddled Chicago, and has a very Whedon-like sarcasm to the dialogue. You can't go wrong with a guy like Dresden, with some great lines peppering the detective dramas unfolding each book.

Butcher does a great job from the beginning of "Storm Front", the first volume in the series, of tossing us into the acerbic-wit narration of one Harry Dresden, detective, wizard, chivalrous-to-a-flaw, and constant subject of Murphy's Law. While things might not always go as planned, he's always getting the job done. This sarcastic, gruff, loveable hero is pretty great to accompany on his jaunts through Chicago, usually working as a consultant for the chicago police department's more supernatural cases. But of course, when one can find you in the Yellow Pages under "wizard", you tend to get a lot of skeptical glances and funny looks.

Yet as this series trudges boldly onwards, the world you get enveloped into is further enmeshed in a very solidly built mythology; you've got most of the familiar forms of urban-fantasy creatures breaking through the barrier into the reality of our world and wreaking havoc on the city. Vampires, Ghosts, Demons, Werewolves, the fairies and their councils, dark wizards, and later on even Paladins and Demigods.

One of the best parts of the book series, I feel, is the book length. These suckers are, for the first few books, literally an afternoon's read tops if you burned through it, and progressively get a longer without becoming a Stephen King tome, while keeping the visual immersion and the attentive collar-grabbing action and suspense of one of King's immense fantasy reads.

Now, i would not do justice to the series if I didn't mention the TV adaptation of this fine novel collection. the TV series, quite frankly, is half-assed. They tried to duplicate the toss-you-in-the-pool feel of the first book, exposition almost being an afterthought to making you simply accept and ride along as the story develops approach; However I feel that they actually dumbed down and neutered the light-hearted balance to the supernatural crimes. and when they did go for humorous, they lost a lot of what made the balance between gory death and wry humor so appealing; Also, they moved too slowly or WAY too fast on the other elements of the series, like the Council or the Wardens. It was like they KNEW they'd get canceled and spent the second half of the season trying to cram in long-term exposition to amend for how hand-holding the first half was.


that being said, if you've read most of the books, eleven in total currently and still going strong, the adaptation provides a dash of Dresden when you need it between finishing and the next book :-P


this book gets 10 out of 10 Stakes-through-the-Heart.