Book Review!

I've always been sensitive to the criticisms of a critic. Those that say that a critic who cannot write fiction should not react so vituperantly or virulently to the finished product of a process they don't understand.

However, the critic is a reader. Ideally, he/she is a very good reader. And ideally, when reviewing something (rather than studying it), the critic will be communicating to other readers the value of the work to them. Or at the very least, he or she will make clear any bias, and better reasons will be given for disliking or liking a popular piece than can be had in simple rhetorical flare.

It is difficult to do these reviews. It is also rewarding. Rather than giving such a one at this time, I'm going to review the first two books of the Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher. Quick and dirty.

The Good

Well, if you like a good, gripping, engaging story, the Dresden Files are good at generating them. With a wizard, a supernatural alternate modern Chicago, a detective story frame, and tons of charged build-up, the pacing is good, a page-turner, so to speak.

The first story was predictable to me, mystery-wise. There were really no surprises at all in the plot after the first hundred pages or so. The second story was much better at obscuring tiself for the most part, except that I figured out what one of the characters was early on as well. Maybe not a bad thing, but don't read expecting excellent mysteries here. They work well. The action helps them work.

Ah, yes, the action. Dresden is an impulsive wizard, even as he constantly says he should be wise and tricky. This gets him in a lot of trouble, and through the book he gets increasingly bruised, grizzled, and sleep-deprived. His magic is conducted under rules that mean it isn't the deus ex machina cure to every situation, a reassuring constraint which makes Dresden more endearing, because like Indiana Jones he takes a lot of hits. The magic is fairly traditional; chants are Latin gibberish used to focus, circles help focus the magic, and the magic itself comes from feeling, from the soul.

Harry Dresden is a good character. Murphy is a good character. So is Susan, and others as well. When the characters are in the foreground, they are fairly stable, and it's easy to become obsessed with their interactions. When the police chief (Murphy) tries to arrest Dresden over a misunderstanding, I want to take them out of the story, set them aside, and explain things. Good characters, good intentions, a mixed up world where trust is always an issue.

The Bad

The minor characters become more one dimensional. I know, this is like saying the odd numbered pages are on the right in a book. But there is one bigger problem I spotted with some of Jim Butcher's characterizations.

Dresden is a very gendered soul. He is a self-professed old fashioned man. This is fine. However, there are frequent times when the narrator (Dresden) is describing a woman. Of course he goes over the more attractive features. But then he uses that shortcut word that irks me, "feminine." She is so feminine when she does that. So on. The trouble for me isn't necessarily that the women are feminine, but that he's using such a shortcut word. Feminine can mean a lot of things, and the literary part of me would prefer if he tried evoking more specifically what he meant instead of loading a lot of it into this word.

That's the most major problem, and it can probably be chalked up to it being popular fiction. In the sense of descriptions and thought-provoking writing, it's about average. Yes, the modern world is crazy. Okay, another woman has lipstick on and is feminine, and you find her hot, Dresden. If you can get past that (I could), then it'll turn out to be a pretty good read.