Butcher, Jim -- The Dresden Files

And, now there is the "Grave Peril" audiobook - again, read by James Marsters --- it's shiny! :)
 
Storm Front

Finished Storm Front. It is a good match for the old Chandler 'Marlowe' novels, pretty well everything is there, generally running at a good pace all the way through- Until near the end, just when things are winding up for a climax, a sudden dollop of self contemplative navel gazing appears from no where. Not a biggy, but it was like coming to within sight of the finishing post of the London Marathon, in the lead, and you trip over the curb.

That aside, I think I will raid the bookshop on Friday for the rest of the series. I'm interested to see if Dresden finally gets the girl (Murphy or Susan). Besides I always enjoyed Chandler too!

Not sure about the audio version with James Masters. Think in the absence of Richard Burton, I'd rather go for Tim Pigott Smith or Martin Jarvis ;)
 
About the audiobooks, real quick... James Marsters does a VERY good job reading the books... it's like listening to a radio show... each different character has a different voice from James, and it works out so nicely, since the books are in first person, it's like you're hearing the voices of the people Harry interacts with through Harry's ears... the way *he* hears these people... it's really fun! :)


And now - BOOK 7!!!! Dead Beat - out in hardback! WOOT! I'm reading it - (duh!) - and will let you know what I think when I'm done! :)
 
Audiobooks --

over at http://www.jim-butcher.com - there are MP3 snippets from the books - will give you a decent idea of how they sound...



(merging threads together and read the post a couple posts up and the lightbulb flicked on... ;))
 
Just finished Grave Peril.

The style of writing has changed considerably. A lot of the dry cutting humour of the previous books has gone in favour of low key menace and suspence.
 
Yeah, by the time we get to Grave Peril, the writing's more refined and I think Jim's more 'comfortable' with the story and the characters.

They keep getting better... ;)

What? You'd think I was biased or something... *eg*
 
Dead Beat is awesome! (would I review one of Jim's books any other way? :))

It was a lot of fun and had some interesting character developments.


Next in the series is Proven Guilty... due to release in May 2006
 
Proven Guilty just released in hardback this week.

(My copy is on it's way.)

I'll let you know more once I've read it...
 
TV Series

Have you heard this Highlander??
from Hailing Frequencies # 338
DRESDEN FILES

We're getting a two-hour pilot movie next January, and eleven episodes have been ordered for The Dresden Files on SCI FI. Paul Blackthorne (Stephen Saunders on 24) plays Harry Dresden, a Chicago-based private detective/wizard (and listed as such in the Yellow Pages. "We're delighted to be in business with SCI FI on 'The Dresden Files,'" said Kevin Beggs, President of Television Programming and Production, Lionsgate. "We've assembled an outstanding creative team to translate the tone and attitude of [Jim] Butcher's beloved bestsellers to the small screen, and believe this series has the potential to attract a very large and loyal following."
Click to expand...
 
Re: TV Series

Originally posted by Dave
Have you heard this Highlander??
Click to expand...


Yup. Knew about that some time ago (dunno why I never put it in here) - and the pilot was *supposed* to air over the summer, but according to Robert Wolfe - it's not ready yet, so it's been pushed to January. ;)


***

Also - Proven Guilty - amazing! There is SO much in this book!

Granted - it's hard to review w/o giving away story parts...
 
*bumping this b/c of info n' stuff*

Some about the novels, some about the TV series to air on SciFi.
 
I'm sorry guys, but Harry Dresden irritates me....he is supposed to be a wizard but everytime he meets a vampire or other demon, he gets scared and runs into the shower crying! Also, I understand that some heroes crack jokes when up against nasties...but it doesn't make sense when they're fighting to save lives - of those they care about - when the odds are so great, and children's lives are at stake, to have the hero start throwing out jokes....makes no sense at all....

Harry Dresden is supposed to be this hotshot wizard....but he always runs out of magic...and hald the time, it never works....I really wanted to like this character...I just can't...
 
Harry is a hotshot wizard - one of the top 40 most powerful in the world; however, he lacks refinement and focus. He's said so - several times. He has a TON of power, but he's not good at focusing smaller amounts of it at the things that go bump in the night.

One of the things that I really like about this character IS the fact that he can't always face the things that come after him. How boring would the story be if he walked into every situation and clobbered the bad guy without batting an eye? Not only is Harry a wizard, he's also human. His flaws are real.

Magic in Harry's world is never-ending, but not as it relates to the individual wizard. Harry says that magic comes from life, from energy, from within. Once you've tapped all of your energy stores, there isn't much you can do and, again, since Harry lacks the refinement of an aged and well-practiced wizard, he runs out of juice faster than, say, Morgan. Morgan is OLD - over 100 - and he's got excellent focus, so he can whip through the baddies better w/o draining his energy stores as quickly.

Dark wizards don't have as much of an energy problem because they don't tend to care where the energy comes from - people, weather, etc - as long as they have it. They don't always tap into themselves, so they don't 'run out of power'.

Vampires and demons in Harry's world aren't the little wimpy things from Buffy's world - these are big, nast, long-lived vamps that are truly evil and have years of experience. Demons - many of them - don't even exist in Harry's world - they are part of the Nevernever and only take forms in his world, thus making them MUCH harder to defeat, because all he can do is disrupt the energy they use to hold a form in his world and send them back to the Nevernever.

The joke cracking is two things - hereditary (his father does it too) and the author's sense of humor. It's a bit dry, but that's the character. Some people are stoic, Harry makes jokes. It's just who he is.

Will this make you change your mind about the character? Maybe. Maybe not. It's explanation about who the character is and why he is the way he is.

I've read all 8 books and I've been hooked since the first one. :)
 
This series sounds interesting.

I continually pass these set of books by at my SFF shop.

Someone tell me what they compare to and if Butcher is similar to any other authors in the Genre?

C'mon convince me of their worth...:D
 
what other authors in the genre? Comparisons are odious. :)
 
Not always, actually I find them to be quite a useful guide. I'm talking comparison in terms of prose, style, subgenre etc.. not so much "Author A is better than Author B".

Cheers...
 
As my field of SFF authors I've read is rather limited, I can't really say who he's 'like'.

The 'detecitve' aspects have been compared to Raymond Chandler, and my personal opinion is that, from a wizard perspective, he's WAY cooler than Harry Potter. Which I say b/c one of the reviews calls Dresden 'Harry Potter for grown ups' - which I don't like. It oversimplifies the story and makes it sound like a big-kid wizard at school or something. Which - it's not.

I was introduced to Jim Butcher's work via James Marsters reading the first novel as an audiobook - so I came into the books from a slightly different direction.

There are MP3 samples on Jim's site if you wanted to get an idea of what they sound like. ;)
 
Comparisons between authors are "odious"! I don't agree. Obviously, the comparison is a personal thing, but I like a general idea of the genre before I read something.

I finally read 'Storm Front' after Highlander II's persistence.
Highlander II said:
The 'detecitve' aspects have been compared to Raymond Chandler, and my personal opinion is that, from a wizard perspective, he's WAY cooler than Harry Potter. Which I say b/c one of the reviews calls Dresden 'Harry Potter for grown ups' - which I don't like. It oversimplifies the story and makes it sound like a big-kid wizard at school or something. Which - it's not.

I was introduced to Jim Butcher's work via James Marsters reading the first novel as an audiobook - so I came into the books from a slightly different direction.
Click to expand...
It was a who-dunnit in the Raymond Chandler style, and he does get beaten up and knocked out a bit, so I see the comparison. As for Harry Potter, there are wizards in the Harry Potter world who work as Aurors and search out evil wizards, so it is the kind of job Harry Potter might take when he left school. It is also a little Buffy-esque, so not surprising they had James Marsters read it.

I enjoyed it, but it's not really my thing (wizards and magic set in the present day) I never watched Buffy more than a few times. I may read the others, but from this thread book two doesn't sound that good. I'll have to read fast if I want to read them before the TV series though.
 
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