Storm Front by Jim Butcher
(First of the Dresden books)




(That's three and a half canaries, but who's counting?)

When I first picked up Storm Front by Jim Butcher, I was prepared to fall in love. It was an urban fantasy series that had snagged itself a strong enough fanbase to get one TV show season on the air (a series I watched and of which have no clear memory).
Harry Dresden is a PI. He specializes in finding lost things—especially people.
He also happens to be a wizard-on-retainer for the Chicago PD.
On the same day the down-on-his-monetary-luck Dresden finally gets a PI case, he’s called in by the Chicago PD to investigate a brutal murder that has the distinct whiff of dark magic.
I’m a sucker for these kinds of stories. It was a done deal I’d make friends and whip my way through these books.
That didn’t happen.
I ground to a halt in the second chapter, irritated by a narrator who was trying too hard to be witty and a story that was hitting just too many paranormal detective cliches. I switched over to Inkheart by Cornelia Funke and thought of it no more.

A few weeks later, TheOtherCanary kicked me yet again and I reluctantly uploaded an audiobook version of the story onto my mp3 player. James Marsters-Spike-from-Buffy-the-Vampire-Slayer’s reading gave Harry Dresden voice a world-weary wryness that chucked that first problem right out the rolled-down windows of my car. Harry’s narrative voice no longer grated–I’d been reading the book wrong.
But the story itself still dragged, and I left off reading. That was two months ago.
Yesterday, on a whim, I started idly leafing through Storm Front again, and, on page 107, I realized that something extraordinary had happened. Continue reading →