Storm Front

by Jim Butcher

I read this book for Once Upon A Time II Challenge. I don’t remember if I read another participant’s review of another book by this author or whether I just stumbled across it at Amazon.com but the Dresden File series sounded interesting and a quick read. A couple weeks ago I saw an entire window display of Jim Butcher’s newest book Small Favor (Book 10 of the Dresden Files) in an airport book store, so apparently he is popular. Storm Front is the first book in the series and is about Harry Dresden a professional wizard in Chicago. He is down on his luck and in trouble with the White Council when he is called in by the police to assist with a double murder investigation that involves black magic. Dresden deals with fairies, demons, vampires, and black wizards with aplomb and even manages to go on a date. In the course of the book things go from bad to worse but (as this is the first in a series as we might suspect) our hero eventually prevails.

It was a fun light read that I read in one sitting while flying cross country. It was certainly entertaining, I enjoyed the characters, the humor and the plot twists. I found Dresden an interesting character and it made me want to read more books to find out more about his story. (Exactly what did he do to get sentenced to the Doom of Damocles and what is that? It doesn’t sound good.) As I find with all these type of mystery serials I found it very formulaic and I certainly won’t be recommending it to my book club but when I am looking for something fun and light I will definitely read more in the series.