The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

I’d always wanted to do a complete reread of Jim Butcher’s urban fantasy series The Dresden Files. 

Part of the problem was that I wanted to wait until the final volume was due out, and while Butcher’s put the estimate at 20 books, he isn’t firm on that and considering that the 15^th book in the series (Skin Game) came out in 2014 and there’s still no release date for book 16, I felt that this wasn’t going to conclude any time soon. I did want to do finished series for this reread, but I don’t have many B authors to do and as the Dresdens tend to be relatively self contained (one obvious exception being book 12 Changes and it’s followup Ghost Story) I figured I could break that rule here, and mind you it’s unlikely to be the last time I’ll break it, either.

Rather than being a book by book review of the 15 published novels and the 2 short story collections this is more of an overview of the series and to a certain extent it’s impact on the sub genre of urban fantasy.

I don’t think it’s stretching things too much to describe The Dresden Files as a game changer for urban fantasy. Prior to the appearance of Storm Front (the first book in the series) the genre that people were starting to call urban fantasy tended to be dominated by the likes of Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series and Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries. Now Anita Blake tends to be thought of as paranormal romance, or as some people refer to it vampire porn, and Charlaine Harris has always thought of the Sookie Stackhouse’s as southern gothic with supernatural elements. Both also feature sex fairly prominently.

Dresden was different. Harry is a wizard for hire, he even advertises in the phone book. While he’s a wizard, he’s more Phillip Marlowe than Merlin. The conceit made was that he was as much a hard boiled private eye as he was a wizard. He did much the same work as a PI, he just used magic to get the job done a lot of the time. The books, especially the early ones, do have a very noirish feel to them. The feel is continued by Butcher deciding to set the books in and around Chicago. He also makes the setting feel older than it should, by giving a side effect to Harry’s use of magic, it also affects most magic users, use of the power tends to foul up complex machinery, mostly anything invented post WW II. It creates some interesting obstacles for Harry and gives him a reliance on his ever growing list of allies.

Two other points of difference were the fact that while creatures such as vampires and werewolves do exist, their existence is not common knowledge as it is in the Anita Blakes and the Sookie Stackhouses. The other was the lack of sex. Harry’s not a monk, and he does have sex, but it never becomes a focus of the story the way it did in other works. To my count by book 15 he’s had 4 significant romantic connections; his adolescent crush Elaine, the reporter Susan Rodrigues, Karrin Murphy and Anastasia Luccio, and he didn’t sleep with them all.

The first few books were very standalone, and they began the work of introducing and setting up Harry’s support crew, and his list of enemies and frenemies. Some of these form what I feel are the best and most multi layered of the characters (‘Gentleman’ John Marcone and the Leanan Sidhe are two that spring to mind).

Reading them back to back as I did, and it took me the better part of the last 5 months, gave me a fairly good insight into how Jim Butcher developed as a writer, although it has to be said that his characters are largely a case of what you see is what you get. They pretty much remain as they first appear in the books. They do go through some changes depending on their situations, but essentially they’re still the same internally as when the readers first encounter them.

The early books were a little formulaic, Storm Front concerned itself mostly with an evil sorcerer, although it established that a staple of urban fantasy; vampires, were significant players in Harry’s world. The second book Fool Moon introduced werewolves and with book 3 a religious element entered the series when the Holy Knight of the Sword Michael Carpenter made his first appearance. I always liked Michael as a character and his large family, I never guessed how important his pre adolescent daughter; Molly, would become at that time, though, which is a clue to how while the stories have always been firmly rooted in the urban fantasy genre, they’ve become more like a high fantasy epic in scope.

Over the first few books Butcher set up his world and introduced his characters. The first five or so books were quite episodic and this was probably because before that the writers deal with the publisher hadn’t looked that many books ahead. By book 5 there was a significant amount of public interest. Each volume wound up high on the best seller list, the author had a hardback deal and later on there was even a regrettably short lived TV show.

Around book 5 or 6 the major cast of characters had all been introduced. Mainstays like Harry himself, Karrin Murphy and Bob the Skull were always there, and other peripherals came and went: Bill Borden and his pack of werewolves, the fairy warrior Toot Toot, Thomas the White Court vampire, Michael Carpenter and his family, Susan Rodrigues. Ebenezar McCoy and Waldo Butters the polka loving medical examiner. There were also Harry’s animal companions, Mister the cat and Mouse the dog, who turns out to be much more than he originally seems. There were others like Mac the bartender, Father Forthill, Kincaid and Ivy.

That was where I think Butcher decided how big this was going to be and the series arc seemed to be set from book 7 on. They’ve remained quite self contained, except for Changes and Ghost Story, but have become harder and harder to pick one up and read it without feeling as a reader that there’s a fair bit of story unread.

Since The Dresden Files made it’s appearance with Storm Front and succeeded spectacularly, it’s opened up the genre and moved more into a detective style of fiction rather than the more paranormal romance side of things, where the relationships are the focus rather than the plot.

In the past I’ve described the Dresdens as the literary equivalent of fast food. They’re attractive and easy to digest once in a while, but a steady diet of them would ultimately do the reader more harm than good. I still stand by that, and after largely shot gunning the entire 15 novels followed by the 2 short story collections that’s only firmed the opinion. I did enjoy it, but it wouldn’t be something I’d want to do again in a hurry.

When I read the second short story collection: Brief Cases, for the first time last year I tore through it and my overwhelming feeling was that it was great to read about Harry and Co again. Kind of like spending time with a friend I hadn’t seen for a while. Part of that was because I do enjoy the books and part of it was that the 15^th book; Skin Game came out in 2014 and readers haven’t had another Harry Dresden since, although book 16 is promised.

15 novels and the better part of 20 years is quite an achievement and I think it’s not only a testament to the sheer readability of Butcher’s writing, he’s no prose stylist, but he is easy to read, he has a lot of what author and critic Jo Walton once described as ‘I want to read itosity’. There are also the characters. The cast is diverse from all sorts of backgrounds and they’re quite relatable to the majority of Butcher’s readers.

The books like their major character rose from humble and unlikely beginnings to become quite powerful and much talked about. When people in the books mention wizard, everyone knows that they’re talking about Harry, and now when readers mention the words urban fantasy, Harry Dresden is often the first name of plenty of people’s lips.

I’ve already started the C’s, but you’ll need to wait for a bit to find out who it is, I promise it won’t take this long or be this big.