Storm Front

Storm Front really disappointed me. This is the first book in the Dresden Files, and it has a reputation online for being incredibly mediocre, and even still, I felt let down by it. Despite being compulsively readable, this book doesn't rally manage to tell that solid of a story due to a number of small issues compounding together to bog the book down. I'm still going to continue with the series, but as of right now, I'm going to struggle to recommend it to people, as I don't have many positive thoughts on this book.

The first major issue that I have is the characters. They're, to be quite frank, shit. By the end of the book, I couldn't point to a single character that I genuinely enjoyed reading about, as most of them fit neatly into generic archetypes and never grow past them throughout the story. This is doubly true for female characters, but I'll get into that a bit later on.

The biggest offender for this in my opinion is Dresden himself, who we spend the most time with, but has zero development throughout the story. He starts the same as he ends, which is really disappointing, because Dresden is riddled with flaws. He's a cynic, a chauvinist, and arrogant to boot (despite multiple major cock ups due to said arrogance), and only manages to make it through the story through sheer luck. He has one of the worst PoV voices that I've ever experienced, however I've been assured that this gets better, which makes a lot of sense, since it would be incredibly difficult to make him worse.

I can't really talk about Dresden without talking about how much of a sex pest he comes across like. This man can't interact with a woman without thinking in depth about her curves, the things she can do with her body, and how hot she is. It's cringe inducing. Even more so when it seems like all these women want to throw themselves at his feet. It's just tedious, and reads like a teenage boys self-insert half the time.

But the only reason the side characters aren't worse than him, is because they're barely characters. They're cripplingly simplistic, with not even their dialogue really giving a sense of their character (with one exception being Linda, but she sadly ends up playing into Dresden's constant sex pestery). This was a major for me, since characters are generally more important to my reading experience than the plot of the story.

However, the story itself is really barebones and predictable, so even if I was more of a plot reader, I don't think my rating would really change. There's a central mystery that we follow, and it starts off really interesting, making me genuinely curious how it's going to wrap up. And then the very obvious answer is given to us a quarter of the way through the book, but Harry, who again, has a massive ego about his magical skills, can't work out the incredibly obvious answer. This isn't even an answer that's obvious through knowing about story structures for generic detective stories (which this very much is one), this is just basic critical thinking that Harry seems to lack, despite repeatedly showing that he isn't dumb. I don't give the spoiler away, just in case you do read it, but it is, at least in my opinion, really obvious. This obviousness makes Dresden feel really inconsistent as a character, and I hope that gets shored up soon, because 16 more books of Dresden being conveniently moronic will get old fast I think.

I also had issue with how many really concepts and storylines are hinted throughout the book, especially considering what we actually ended up with. There's the murder of his girlfriend, the creature that lurks in his shadow, the NeverNever. All of these really interested me, and we got nothing but setup for them. It made the book feel like an extended prologue for the series, which is a real shame, because if we'd started with some of those concepts instead, I feel like the book would have flowed way better.

Something I really appreciated about the story though, was it's pacing. This would likely be a one star read for me if it didn't have the really tight pacing that it does. This book doesn't waste a page, and I love that. Everything we see is done to further the story, which is what allows this book to still be a page turner despite the flaws it does have. If this book had slowed down, I can't say I would have been able to finish it, since especially towards the end, my interest was beginning to wane, and only the pacing kept me going.

All in all, I'm really hoping that the next books in the series improve on the promise that this one shows, so I'm very likely to continue on with the series down the line. I am aware that the series doesn't pick up until around Book 3 or 4 for most people, so I'm prepared for Fool Moon to still be a bit of a problem read for me, though I'm looking forward to continuing the series despite the issues present in Storm Front.

The book sits at 2/5 rating for me, it wasn't quite bad enough to justify one star, but it wasn't that good either. I can't really recommend it, since I didn't vibe with it all that much, but if you enjoy books like James Patterson's longer form series, I think this one would click for you.