{"id":694,"date":"2007-06-25T09:29:14","date_gmt":"2007-06-25T16:29:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/?p=694"},"modified":"2018-02-22T11:05:03","modified_gmt":"2018-02-22T19:05:03","slug":"harry-dresden-book-one-not-for-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/harry-dresden-book-one-not-for-me","title":{"rendered":"Harry Dresden Book One: Not for Me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I finished <span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0451457811?tag=nickslists-20&amp;link_code=as2&amp;creativeASIN=0451457811&amp;creative=374929&amp;camp=211189\">Storm Front: Book One of the Harry Dresden Files<\/a><\/span>, and it wasn&#8217;t quite as good as I had hoped it would be, but it was still quite entertaining. In brief:<\/p>\n<p>What I liked:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3987\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/stormfront-170x300.jpg\" alt=\"Storm Front\" width=\"170\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/stormfront-170x300.jpg 170w, http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/stormfront.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 170px) 100vw, 170px\" \/>The setting: I particularly liked Harry&#8217;s house and office, and his idea about magic affecting complex machines<\/li>\n<li>The film noir elements combined with traditional wizard-lore<\/li>\n<li>Butcher&#8217;s conception of magic and how it works: a little Latin, a staff, some magical symbols, all the things traditionally associated with users of magic<\/li>\n<li>The action scenes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>What I didn&#8217;t like:<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>The brutal and explicit plot elements, which, while mostly necessary to the story, were not really to my taste; I&#8217;ve never enjoyed reading about the seedy side of life in works of literature, and I like it even less in popular fiction; this is most definitely not a book for kids<\/li>\n<li>The demon\/vampire characters: Even in shows like <em>The X-Files<\/em> I didn&#8217;t like the stories that revolved around these kinds of characters<\/li>\n<li>The characterizations of the female characters: most of them were one-dimensional and not very complimentary<\/li>\n<li>The mob angle: For some reason, shows like <em>The Sopranos<\/em> or <em>Once Upon a Time in America<\/em> have never appealed to me, though there are some that I&#8217;ve really liked (i.e., <em>The Godfather<\/em>, <em>Some Like it Hot<\/em>); the gangsters in <em>Storm Front<\/em> seemed almost like Dick Tracy villains<\/li>\n<li>The mystery plot: If Butcher was aiming at a traditional mystery plot, he violated one of the rules of the game in not introducing a key character until very late in the story<\/li>\n<li>The writing style: I liked the first person viewpoint, but sometimes it was a bit over the top. I remember the end of one chapter when Harry, battered and bruised, said to the reader, &#8220;Do I have a great job, or what?&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As you&#8217;ve probably noticed, most of my complaints against the book have more to do with my own tastes rather than with Butcher&#8217;s writing. And I have to say that it&#8217;s significant that I finished the book, so it&#8217;s definitely not awful. Far from it. It&#8217;s just not a series that I&#8217;m going to be continuing with.<\/p>\n<p>My next book is going to be <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0380798360?tag=nickslists-20&amp;link_code=as2&amp;creativeASIN=0380798360&amp;creative=374929&amp;camp=211189\">Declare<\/a><\/em> by Tim Powers. I loved his story <em>The Anubis Gates<\/em> and I have high expectations for <em>Declare<\/em>, based on reviews I&#8217;ve read online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I finished Storm Front: Book One of the Harry Dresden Files, and it wasn&#8217;t quite as good as I had hoped it would be, but it was still quite entertaining. In brief: What I liked: The setting: I particularly liked Harry&#8217;s house and office, and his idea about magic affecting complex machines The film noir elements combined with traditional wizard-lore Butcher&#8217;s conception of magic and how it works: a little Latin, a staff, some magical symbols, all the things traditionally associated with users of magic The action scenes&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1057,5],"tags":[36,842,158,192,191,193],"class_list":["post-694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-books","tag-book-recommendations","tag-book-reviews","tag-fantasy-fiction","tag-harry-dresden","tag-noir","tag-vampires"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/stormfront.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOucj-bc","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=694"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3988,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694\/revisions\/3988"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}