Book(s) Report: The Dresden Files
Tom and I have been reading the Harry Dresden novels lately- having ordered all of them from Amazon in paperback and ripping through them in the evenings. (Imagine if Harry Potter grew up and had to get a job, but his only marketable skill was magic.)
The books are excellent. The author (Jim Butcher) develops Harry’s character really thoroughly early on in the first couple of books, which are essentially whodunits with a magical twist, so that when he starts twisting around that formula later, and involving Harry’s personal life, magical politics, and all those kinds of external forces, the reader has a really strong understanding of who Harry is, how he’ll behave, and why. You know what Harry’s going to do almost before he does, not because he’s predictable or formulaic, but because you know him that well, almost like a good friend.
Additionally, the reader gets a very detailed understanding of how magic works in the Dresdenverse. It’s mechanical- it has rules that are knowable both to the characters and the reader, and Butcher does an excellent job of both explaining them AND remaining internally consistent to them. In short, he doesn’t do what a lot of lazy sci-fi/fantasy writers do and just sort of wave his hands and say, “ooh, it’s magic that fixed that problem!”
So if you’re into that genre of book but hate lazy writing, I recommend that you check them out.
I also recommend that you do NOT base your assessment of the Dresdenverse on the new SciFi series based on the books. Don’t get me wrong- Paul Blackthorne is terrific as Harry. He seems to have a really solid grip on the character, and he’s been a real pleasure to watch. And I like how they’ve handled the Bob character- they clearly had to make some changes to him in order to make this pivotal character work for TV, and I think the compromise was a good one. I could seriously watch Harry and Bob puttering and bantering around the lab for an hour. But the rest of it? Meh.
I want to give it a chance, I really do, because I want the author to succeed. Hell, I’ll come right out and say it, dumb as it may sound: I want Harry Dresden to succeed. But below the jump are some weaknesses I hope the writers correct soon.
The show’s Karrin Murphy doesn’t seem to have any of the qualities that make Harry respond to her. I don’t want to blame the actress for it, because it’s still early in the show, and I don’t think the writers have given her much to work with. Murph, while being a total badass and every inch a cop, still has a certain vulnerability to her, particularly since she’s ill-equipped to deal with the supernatural forces that have become part of her job. They’ve done a good job of capturing her single-minded “cop-ness,” but they still haven’t shown us what Harry sees in her.
The show doesn’t seem to have as much committment to the details of magic, either. I realize a lot of that explanation has to be cut- they aren’t short books, after all- but part of why the books are so engaging is because you know why Harry’s spells work, and why they may not in a given situation. There must be a way to work that in without turning the show into an hour of Harry’s Internal Monologue every week.
So, I fervently hope the show gets better. Or, at the very least, that Jim Butcher keeps cranking out novels. 