Houston Southard

Jim Butcher - The Dresden Files

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Cheeky wizard detective in modern day Chicago. Pulpy private eye mystery meets urban fantasy. 1st-person narration from a Frankenstein-ed Gandolf meets Sherlock meets Merlin.

The Dresden Files unequivocally dominates urban fantasy, but they're more than their face-value adventure thriller horror episodes most love and some have come to find tiring. Sure, it can get old watching someone book after book beat the absolute shit out of him, but as he battles paranormal politics, closeted vendettas, impossible choices, trauma-compensating humor, and breaking the mold, Dresden's discipline, the high stakes, the massive world, the flawed characters, the crazy central story, they all evolve and leave you wondering holy shit, how much of this was planned from the get-go.

Several layers deep, this story is really about an impulsive protagonist training his mind to wield extra magic, the nitty gritty grind of acquiring better focus. The magic system is not far from reality, because wizards are just people with tiny genetic mutations enabling them to manipulate energy that's already around, all mostly operating within the laws of physics. Wielding it well requires mastery. Mastery 25-year-old Storm Front Dresden has little of, but that 40-year-old Battle Ground Dresden has in spades. Over the course of his adventures he ends up battered, sad, and mad, both less human and more human, and resolved thru his bones to complete a job yet unfinished.

I grew up with Dresden, but we almost didn't get him at all. Like the main character, Jim Butcher tried resisting his teacher's formulaic, drone-style genre writing but eventually gave in just to prove to her how awful it'd be. What came out was his thesis project, Storm Front. That was over 20 years ago. Looking back, sometimes it pays to be wrong.