Monday, September 19, 2011

The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher: Storm Front

My sister listens to these as audio books, mostly because James Marsters does the reading. She readily admits that her keenness for the Dresden Files may have more than a little to do with Marsters' delicious voice, but claims that they're fun even without this added spice. This is the first novel and introduces Harry Dresden to us in a classic noir private-dick-in-the-office scene. Except Dresden is a wizard. It's a fun idea, a kinda pastisch on noir with a supernatural twist.  I suspect that the subsequent books start suffering from that repetition of facts that is the bane of all serials, but so far so relatively snappy. A few lame one-liners. Not too many. Very filmable, but not written as if this is the author's main hope. The image of a tall, lanky guy stumbling around in trackie bottoms, cowboy boots and some sort of trenchcoat while shouting pseudo-latin spells is pretty original. Not all original (hello, Buffy) but ok. Good good. I might read more if I stumble across any.

This is the one in which people's hearts are magically ripped out of their chests by an evil wannabe wizard.

Oh, note to my sis: the love interest is TOTALLY OBVIOUS.

4 comments:

li'l sis said...

Did I say it wasn't? CONFUSED!

And you want to talk about repetitiveness? In the last book I listened to he repeatedly points out the gun rack and its contents in his mentor's car, but in the end it had nothing to do with the story. THAT annoyed me =/

BTW, it's Marsters, not Marster =P

bani said...

Fecking phone, I'll fecking change it. And you DID SO say that at first there was no love interest and now they're developing it which annoyed you, but there WAS SO.

li'l sis said...

I said there was no love interest between him and MURPHY. I do seem to recall saying that his girlfriend get's [SPOILER SPOILER] in a later book and thus they can no longer be together. So now he and Murphy are tip-toeing around each other.

But my ability to express myself verbally is notoriously bad so I guess I mightn't have explained it very well.

BUT STILL.

bani said...

And I'm saying there's totally a love interest between him and Murphy. So there. :P