Dead Cant Rant

I picked this book up after seeing it on an endcap display at Barnes & Noble for a couple of weeks, alongside several modern-day fantasy vampire novels. I could give a rat’s butt about vampire novels (other than the great Interview With a Vampire), but this one jumped out at me for some unknown reason, and I’m glad it did. I have now completed the first two of the six-part Dresden Files (a seventh, hardcover edition was just released) and am pleased to say that I have found a new favorite character.

Plot Synopsis

Harry Dresden is Chicago’s only publicly practicing professional wizard-for-hire, a modern-day Sam Spade cum Harry Potter, an urban blue-collar mage not unlike John Constantine who is perpetually down on his luck both with his finances and with women. He even runs an ad in the phone book, the only entry under “Wizards”.

The connection with Harry Potter really ends with the name, however. Harry Dresden deals with the rather nasty, evil, and violent things that go bump in the night, ranging from a conjured demon sent to assassinate him to a dark wizard using sex magic and the weather to power his insane, heart-exploding death spells, the businesslike and murderous head of the Chicago mob, and the vampire madam of the local bordello.

Being a private investigator is a tough job for anyone, but for Harry, business stinks. Not many people want to turn to a “professional wizard”, believing it all to be a bunch of shyster bunk. But a few people do. People like Monica No-Last-Name, searching for her missing husband. Or Police Lieutenant Karrin Murphy, director of the Chicago PD “special investigations” unit, sort of an “X-Files” unit dedicated to solving unsolved murders and other “strange” incidents. When a mob enforcer and his “escort” are discovered, in flagrante delicto, with holes in their chests where their hearts exploded outward, blood covering the ceiling and walls, Harry knows he’s up against someone — or something — serious.

I stepped closer to the bed and walked around it. The carpet squelched as I did. The little screaming part of my brain, safely locked up behind doors of self-control and strict training, continued gibbering. I tried to ignore it. Really I did. But if I didn’t get out of that room in a hurry, I was going to start crying like a little girl. …

It only took me a few seconds to control myself again — but I didn’t want to go back in that room. I didn’t need to see what was there anymore. I didn’t want to see the two dead people , whose hearts had literally exploded out of their chests.

And someone had used magic to do it. They had used magic to wreak harm on another, violating the First Law. The White Council was going to go into collective apoplexy. This hadn’t been the act of a malign spirit or a malicious entity, or the attack of the one of the many creatures of the Nevernever, like vampires or trolls. This had been the premeditated, deliberate act of a sorceror, a wizard, a human being able to tap into the fundamental energies of creation and life itself.

It was worse than murder. It was twisted, wretched perversion, as though someone had bludgeoned another person to death with a Botticelli, turned something of beauty to an act of utter destruction.

Harry is then thrown into a whirlwind of black magic, demons out to kill him, a vampire that wants him dead, mobsters who want him out of the picture, cops who don’t trust him, and the White Council hoping he will make one more mistake so they can enforce the “Doom of Damocles” sentence given to him — death, if he is caught practicing black magic. But to find the black mage, he has to skirt dangerously close to the line and risk crossing over in order to prevent more murders.

Discussion

Dresden is a fascinating character, Sam Spade with a staff instead of a gun. Butcher does a great job creating a unique and believable character, full of eccentric quirks that serve to make him more real rather than more odd. For example, his reliance on the “Blue Beetle”, an old VW Bug that has been patched and repaired so many times it has virtually no original parts left, because of his effect on mechanical and electrical items. You see, wizards tend to screw up electronics regularly, meaning when he walks by odds are good that light bulbs will burn out, radios will squelch, and bizarre engine trouble will occur. Of course, these problems always manifest themselves when Harry needs these items the most, heightening the tension to extreme levels.

Butcher also has a tight magic system, divided cleanly between two major schools: evocation, the line of sight fireball-and-explosions magic; and thaumaturgy, the ceremonial “circle” magic used in conjurations, summonings, and larger-scale magics. Harry uses both, utilizing thaumaturgy for research and evocation to spectacularly blow the hell out of entire buildings. And yes, he even has potions, though with a modern twist: kept in sports bottles tucked into the pockets of his large black duster.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the second one in the series, enough so that when I couldn’t find the next two on any bookshelves here in town I ordered them online and can’t wait to dig into them.

Final Verdict