I’m nearing the end of book 1 and this quote stood out as fantastic. Discworld level of quote, there, and I find Discworld the most quotable of all series.
"There is no truer gauge of a man’s character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power. "
I am now about 75% through the second book and I am glad I started the series, especially if people believe it gets better after the first few. I actually am enjoying the first two books quite a lot.
As I am listening to the audio, I was happy to hear that a character named Spike appeared in the second book. For those not aware, James Marsters played Spike very famously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He read the books.
I really do picture Dresden as James Marsters. He spends not a lot of time so far describing what he actually looks like.
Wait, Spike is James Marsters?!? I did not make that connection
It is worth noting that most English or British people on Buffy are not from there in real life. Anthony Head is, but James Marsters and Alexis Denisof are not. Denisof does an English accent really well. And David Boreanaz does not even attempt one. I guess Liam “Angel”'s accent went away…
Surprised I missed this the first time around. Please allow me to bloviate.
I’m wrapping up my first full re-read now in prep for the new books. I’m on Skin Game which is the final book before the coming soon Peace Talks and immediately followed by Battle Ground. Releasing July 14th and September 29th respectively.
I’m a huge fan of the books and have read almost everything, all the main books obviously as well as all the short story anthologies, haven’t touched the graphic novels yet though. I haven’t done the audio books but they have many many fans, certainly Marsters is a big hit.
Some thoughts. You really, really, really don’t want spoilers in this thread if you’re doing your first read through. There’s a few massive, earth shaking events that happen over the course of the story that really need to be experienced as part of the narrative. It’s frankly what makes the books so very good, seeds planted in earlier books eventually bearing fruit several books later in epic fashion.
The first 3 book are by far the weakest of the set. Butcher was young and inexperienced when he wrote them and in some ways it shows. Some of the plot points are very heavy handed and a lot of the characters are in some ways tough to tolerate because they are either very tropey or they don’t really act and react like normal people. One the non-spoiler examples is that Harry takes some physical abuse which would almost certainly be fatal, it’s really over the top, and there’s nothing about his wizardiness that justifies him surviving it. Jim wrote some exposition in later books that greatly moderates this effect which is to the series’ benefit.
Book 4 is great. Things really take off and this book sets up many of the best and most important storylines to come. Book 3 is equally important in terms of foreshadowing some future craziness, but it still shows some of the immaturity in his character development. Long story short, if you’re liking books 1 and 2 a lot you’re probably in for a very pleasant surprise in the later books because the good stuff gets better and the not so good stuff mostly goes away.
I totally disagree with Randolph’s criticism, though I can see a couple spots in the first few books that might make you think this especially in terms of Harry’s relative durability. In fact I think the strength of the series is how good of a job Butcher does at world building. It’s an incredibly rich and deep world with lot of structure, many competing interests and political undertones which never devolve into minutiae. It all stitches together pretty well. It is a fantasy series and like most fantasy tropes you probably can poke and prod and find spots where the various characters “powers” could be deployed in plot-breaking ways, but this series manages that better than most I think.
One common criticism which I think is fair is that it can read as a little misogynistic or objectifying of women. I don’t personally find this problematic, defenders of the writing would say that this is because Harry’s a flawed person and you’re hearing his inner monologue. This argument I think holds up, but a critic may think it’s a lazy excuse. I personally like a little sexual tension in my fantasy pulp, not everything should be as chaste as Lord of the Rings and Narnia. A more appropriate criticism I think is that Butcher doesn’t do a good job of developing the female characters into full, three dimensional people. This is particularly obvious in the early books and it gets significantly better in the later books I think, but I still wouldn’t be shocked if female readers were put off by it.
Anyways…stick with it, we got new content coming soon (casts a dirty look at GRRM).
I will try to avoid spoilers if at all possible. It’s going to be a couple years at least to read them all if I continue on that far. I have other things to read and the Dresden books get longer somewhat as well.
I think it’s more that Harry is naturally the most developed character in the series, being the lead and the viewpoint character, and he happens to be male. The female characters aren’t as well-developed as him, but then, neither are the other male characters. Certainly, at least, the female characters are competent in their own right, and do not exist solely as accessories for the male characters.
It’s true that the female characters all have agency and certainly are not reduced to accessories, so in that regard it’s sound. But especially in the early books Murphy and Susan particularly are characterized as irrational and unreasonable people, almost irredeemable, and they essentially to act as foils for Harry’s pragmatic, common sense approach. Harry suffers for their foolishness. Compare them to Michael and Thomas and there’s a big gap between how Jim develops those personalities and the roles they play with respect to Harry’s POV. The nominally friendly women are still basically antagonists in the plot. Things certainly improve once Molly comes into the story and Murphy and Susan both get balanced out a bit later on thankfully.
It’s also worth pointing out that just about every supernatural creature is unspeakably beautiful, which is built into the rules of the world, but the non-female supernatural characters (excepting Thomas) tend to be monsters of one stripe or another. There’s basically monsters and beautiful women, which I don’t mind, but it’s there.
I always thought a lot had to do with Dresden’s viewpoint - it is, after all, written from his viewpoint - and his growth as a person. And yes, Butcher does improve as a writer.
Um… did you miss the Horrible Bat Monsters? Granted, they can build their fleshmasks to look like anything, in which case, why not gorgeous, but their true form, male or female, is pretty gross.
I’ll also point out Thomas’ father is said to be equally gorgeous - the reason there aren’t more sexy guy vamps from that family is, of course, because Papa Vamp kills the boys.
A little further along Mavra (Black Court vamp) is pretty clearly a decaying, reanimated corpse.
So there are horrifying female monsters aplenty even early on in the series.
Butcher improved a lot and I really don’t have a lot of criticism for the last handful of books. Most fans use that excuse, that Harry’s basically an immature misogynist in the early books and all the flaws of the writing can be chalked up to having a flawed narrator. I think that’s bullshit, it’s a retcon at best. The writing is the writing, Jim’s admitted that he was immature as a writer early on and he certainly wasn’t intentionally going next-level meta by making Harry some commentary on the gender dynamics in the world or taking the piss out of tropes in classic nior.
I don’t think the Reds really get a pass on the “too sexy for my flesh mask” criticism. Their saliva basically turns you into a sex fiend and the females pretty much exclusively took the form of insanely hot prostitutes. The male Reds like Ortega certainly weren’t lookers.
But yes, the zombie Marva is a counter example. Can’t think of many others that don’t spend most of their time dressed up like a smoke show. Since I just got done reading Cold Days it makes a decent example when you look at the main antagonists, you have Mab, Maeve, Lily and Sarissa each running the spectrum from supermodel to porn star on the female side and then you have the Red Cap, who barely gets a description, the Raw Head, Sharkface, Fix and Ace on the males side of the equation.
It’s been years since I read them, but I took that as more of their naivety towards the supernatural world than anything to do with their gender.
Harry’s approach is bizarre and nonsensical, until you remember to include magic. Murphy was one of the most pragmatic characters I’ve seen (until maybe Decker on Lucifer), but that’s no help when the world does not operate on pragmatic principles.
The series is a lot of fun overall… but one comment I haven’t seen anyone else make is that it drives me BATTY when Butcher keeps throwing in “of course, most people didn’t believe in (some supernatural thing)… most people won’t believe something unless they can see it for themself” or something. It pops up over and over again, and in context it seems like he thinks he’s making a profound comment about a weakness in humanity. But he’s not just wrong, he’s DOUBLE wrong:
(1) Skepticism is a strength. It is exactly the right approach to take. Sure it would be incorrect to believe in the supernatural if the supernatural did in fact exist. But then it wouldn’t be supernatural, it would be natural, etc. But basically he’s criticizing skeptics in the real world (who are, generally, correct) by comparing them to skeptics inside his fictional universe (where they are incorrect). Which is just silly
(2) And people believe all SORTS of ridiculous things. If zillions of people believe in astrology (which doesn’t work), then in a universe in which magic did exist and a real functioning wizard advertised himself in the Chicago yellow pages and there were vampires all over the place, you bet your ass people would believe in them in enormous numbers.
It is necessary reasoning to explain why this is set in our own world, a world in which we, the reader, are “unaware” or at least unbelieving as to the supernatural. It is not unique to Butcher, it is a literary device I have seen in most urban fantasy.
Eh. Sure it strains credulity that in Harry Potter, muggles could be so completely unaware of the magical world. (Or that the distinction would even have meaning). But that’s OK, I just go with it. But at least the narrator in HP books isn’t sneering at muggles for being so skeptical that they refuse to ever believe in things.
Relatedly, Harry claims to be the only wizard in the Chicago phone book. But in any sizeable city in our world, you’ll find a fair number of people making their living selling magical services. I know of multiple shops in Cleveland where one can purchase spells, and there are probably more I don’t know of, since I’ve never even actually tried looking for them.
Now, presumably, those spells don’t actually work. And presumably, there are people in Harry’s world also who claim to have magic powers but don’t. So maybe he just means that he’s the only real wizard making a living that way. But that’s not what it sounds like he means.
I think the difference is that Harry isn’t holding out as a fortune-teller/card reader/“psychic”, he’s a private investigator wizard which is a bit different.
Yes, we even get to meet a few later on… although maybe it’s more “minimally magical” than completely muggle. Well into the series you encounter people/situations that have led me to believe most people could learn at least some magic, at a low level, if they could be bothered to put in the time and effort although most are never going to be at more than a very minimal level no matter what.
This is a strange criticism to me. As mentioned up thread I just finished binge reading the entire catalog and I can’t say that I saw this trope used at all after the first few books. Sure, Harry mentions it a handful of times when he’s dealing with the straight police and when talking about Murphy and Susan’s early silliness, but it’s not a beating a dead horse kind of thing. Plus it is an absolutely necessary bit of world building in order to explain why the non-magical world isn’t constantly freaking out over the events of the books. Lots of the stuff Butcher wrote in the early books was a little heavy handed, so I get that, but it’s way less pervasive than the whole Muggle thing in HP.
Butcher is NOT criticizing skepticism generally. He’s also not saying that no straights believe in the magical world. He’s simply saying that when people see something they can’t explain, on average, they assume there’s some rational explanation. This isn’t a stretch, that’s how MOST people operate.
Thanks, guys - this thread has inspired me to re-read the series, starting with Storm Front. Wow, it does show how much Butcher has improved as a writer over time.
Harry was younger and less experienced back then.
I finished the second book today and began the third book. I hear the series improves and I already find them to be pretty good.
