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After seeing this, Harry would much rather work the missing person case but knows that he has to take the case; it was done by magic.People aren't going to make these tasks easy for Harry though. Well I should have, for the first book, this was quite excellent.Harry Dresden is doing the best he can in his home in Chicago. He's your average guy, likes to wear sweats, t-shirts, enjoys paperback books, and casting magic. The other case is from the police and is a double homicide in which hearts were ripped out of the victim's chests while they were doing the dirty. My hope is, that like most authors, the book gets even better with time and experience. I would have liked to see more of Bob the skull but considering he isn't very mobile I guess it's not surprising he didn't appear more.Butcher is very, very descriptive with his writing and this for the most part is a good thing. Good enough that he even has a spot in the yellow pages, but no parties please. With the help of his friend Bob a talking skull and under the watchful eye of Morgan his "parole" officer (long story, read the book) he has to try to stop this man before he kills again.Harry is an awesome character.
Butcher did a great job when creating him and makes him very life like. Lt. There are some other vulgar things but none that come near the aforementioned scenes.This was definitely a nice start to the series. Harry really isn't such an ordinary guy in actuality.
The first one seems pretty straight forward, its a missing person's case but the woman is very nervous and flighty and makes Harry a bit suspicious on what's really going on with her husband. He's a wizard, and a pretty good one at that. They're my type of book and seemed like an interesting read, I was just so absorbed in other things that I never thought about it I guess. A lot of the other characters were very creative as well although since I had seen the TV series first it was very disconcerting that they changed a lot of the descriptions of them (i.e. I'm not sure why I've held off. He has faults, not a lot of luck with technology and the ladies, and this all makes him very real instead of the super-wizard good guy he could be portrayed as. Down on his luck he is overjoyed when two cases come to him at once.
They don't really want Harry getting into anything. There are a couple times when he was describing magic and the way it works that I became confused however. My fiance has been bugging me to read these books for awhile. Murphy being blond instead of the brunette in the show) and other differences. Once I got past that though I was able to enjoy the other characters more. It got kind of complicated.
Someone else is after him too, and his witnesses. I'm definitely hooked and want to see what happens next. That's right, magic. As said before people get their hearts ripped out, and there is a lot of detail on how that looks. The mob is in on it, and they have worries with a shipment of "Third Eye" (a drug that gives you the power to see beyond) competing with their regular non-magical drugs. His thoughts are that it's the unknown wizard who caused the murders, but he isn't sure who would have that much power.
This book probably wouldn't be very good for younger readers or those who don't like gruesome descriptions. Happily since I have all the other ones at home, I can start on the next book right away.Storm FrontCopyright 2000322 pages
See, though Harry's The Best, he's not too bright. There is a a large backstory that is hardly explained. Many have said that Harry Dresden is a Mary Sue (or Gary Stu) character: an ideal projection of the author. The basic setup is that people are being murdered magically and Harry Dresden, Wizard Extraordinaire (we're told this often), is called in to consult the police.
It was mindless entertainment, to be sure, and if I examine it too closely, I might be pissed off and give the story less credit. Harry, though he's The Best, doesn't have a clue how a wizard can harness enough energy to remotely kill a person. He does figure it out about halfway through the book and when we read it, it sounds so obvious that any seasoned wizard such as Harry should have figured it out almost instantly (hint: read the title). "Storm Front" doesn't feel like a first installment. It won't win any awards. He bumbles around the plot and I often made the connections long before he does.
If that's the case, I really wouldn't want to be friends with Jim Butcher.So why do I give the book three stars and not two or one star. Because, despite it's numerous short-comings, I was entertained.
It shouldn't be used as the basis of any college essays. I must admit that this is the first urban fantasy series I've read, so it might be convention to start in medias res.
I've also heard that the series does get better. And he whines a lot.
And he's a misogynist (Harry would say he's old-fashioned). "Storm Front" works as pure escapism.
But if you're bored and you don't want to think too hard, "Storm Front" might be a good read.
In this first novel of the Dresden Chronicles, Butcher does a creditable job blending fantasy and detective genres. Harry enjoys but must fend off the attentions of nosy but sexy reporter Susan Rodriguez; he tries to negotiate his relations with Detective Murphy; and meanwhile is wondering how to defend himself at his own trial only a couple of days off. Harry uses every trick he can think of to defend himself, and meanwhile must grapple with the hardest question of all - whether he'll kill to defend himself. He leads a lonely existence accompanied primarily by a housecat and an skull-dwelling air spirit named Bob. I thought Butcher's style was a bit too cute in the exposition, but after a while it leveled out. He has the usual private-eye ambivalent relationship with police who rely on him for advice on solving magic-related crimes but who also suspect him of committing them. Wizard Harry Dresden - listed in Chicago's Yellow Pages - is behind in the rent of his dusty office. Suddenly the action explodes with more or less non-stop mayhem as forces unknown come after him.
He's on the outs even with the wizards' White Council, which is about to bring him up on capital charges.With all that hanging over his head, he gets dragged into a case where a prostitute and a gangster's main enforcer are murdered from afar by a wizard's spell. Meanwhile he tries to make a few bucks extra finding a woman's missing husband. I liked this after it got going.
I would describe Harry Dresden as a private investigator who practices magic. While his profession is wizard, the book reads more like the typical PI novel. The book was enjoyable, and I will likely continue with the series, but Dresden definitely lacks the complexity I have enjoyed in protagonists such as Joe Pitt (Charlie Huston) or Felix Castor (Mike Carey).As is, the novel certainly has it place. I would still hope for a little more development as the series moves forward.
And that's but one example of many. Such little 'glitches' in performance are completely understandable - what isn't understandable is the failure to correct them: to take the extra 20 seconds to go back to the start of the sentence and reread, allowing the editor to cut out the mistake.The upshot of all this is the audio equivalent of a poorly typeset and inadequately proofread book, where bad spellings, typos, incorrect punctuation and mis-set words all distract the reader and detract from the enjoyment. In the first 3 volumes, I think he never once pronounces "writhe" correctly (a word which, listening, I realize Butcher really likes) - he pronounces it "wreathe" (as if it were a Christmas wreath). This review is about the audiobook production, not about Butcher's text.The GOOD: Marsters has a great voice for the character - deep enough, evocative. Since the recordings were not produced in book-publication order, the improvements in these "middle" volumes may reflect the quality of the most recent audiobook productions. Perhaps the narrator paused to swallow or something.
But, apparently, that didn't happen.Less glaring, but still distracting, are the occasional improper pauses - breaks in the middle of sentences, inappropriate to meaning or context.
"Runes" gets pronounced "ruins".
I wouldn't buy a $40 hardback book filled with obvious typos and printing errors - and the same goes for the audio format.I wish Buzzy had spent the very little bit of additional time and money that would have been required to produce a quality product.ADDENDUM: By about the 6th book in the series, the quality of the narration improves markedly - the number of both awkward pauses and mispronounced words decreases (Marsters learned to pronounce 'writhe' yay).
His reading pace is quite slow, but on a player or system that can speed it up about 33% it's fine.The BAD: What would be an enjoyable performance is marred by the incessant mispronunciation of even simple words.Hard or unusual words or phrases would be one thing - though if a company like Buzzy is going to all the trouble (and, no doubt, expense) of producing an audiobook, you'd think they'd spend a few extra dollars to get in a coach to teach the narrator how to pronounce Latin, or classical words like "Charybdis".But Marsters consistently mispronounces common words.
These constant audio gaffs really spoil what is, otherwise, a quite enjoyable performance by Marsters.It's bad enough that, while I'll happily borrow a copy from the library, I won't be buying these audiobooks.
"Exorcise" gets pronounced "exercise" (what, are you making the evil spirit do pushups).
Heck, he even once pronounces "bow", the gesture of respect, as if it were hair "bow".Again, it would have been a simple matter for the narrator to look over the text before hand and highlight words to check before reading, or for the publisher to have a "proof listener" to catch such errors and fix them up after each session.
sufficiently that they no longer prevent nearly the distraction that they did in the earlier volumes.
I haven't gotten to the recordings of the later volumes yet, some of which, I think, were made before the ones I'm listening to now.
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