The Dresden Files (Books 1 & 2)
So after years of being aware of The Dresden Files and not reading them, partially because I was incredibly wary of the whole first person thing, I started reading fic for them and consequentially decided to give the books a shot. I've read the first two so far and have thoughts and reactions.
Storm Front was a really weird book to read after the amount of fanfic I've read. There are a lot of fic rewrites of this book, some of which use chunks of the book - lines of dialogue and so on - so there was the knowledge that the book is not a m/m romance and also, nevertheless, the feeling that it might at any second turn into one. Having large chunks of it familiar from slash fic threw me a little, as did the part where it's a kind of pulpy piece of original fiction; there were a few style things that it took me a while to get used to.
One of those was Dresden's descriptions of people. One of my main questions coming out of that book was "Butcher eventually stops this thing where he evaluates women's fashion choices and describes their outfits in weird detail, right?" Because that was not a character trait that I was expecting Dresden to have. ...and also the part where he goes into way more detail about what the women are wearing than the men, and also the part where Dresden knew the ballpark figure for a pair of women's shoes. He mentions that a pair of "pumps" he finds at a crime scene are three hundred dollars. (I do not know this shit.) This is not knowledge that I was expecting Dresden to have. I have been concocting back-stories for this. Maybe it was for a case, or, Dresden's poor so maybe he likes expensive heels and is also very aware of exactly how much they are out of his price range. There are possibilites.
I enjoyed the noir aspect of this book. I wasn't really expecting that label to feel so dead on, so it was a little surprising and a lot of fun.
I had a lot of issues with Fool Moon, and issues that I'd had from the last book sort of piled up and combined. I wanted to smack Butcher/Dresden for the repeated use of the word "bitch" in this book, and the kind of sexualisation of all of the women, and the obsession with Murphy having a cheerleader face, and the werewolf woman's sexy dance. The part where he and his subconscious have this discussion about him being attracted to Murphy rubbed me the wrong way especially given the repeated use of that cheerleader description; it felt like there was a school girl fetish or something similar happening.
So I experienced a lot of satisfaction when Murphy chews Dresden out and calls him names, basically. I feel like Dresden has serious issues with women. I think part of that old slash thing where part of what fuels slashing is a kind of failure at depicting or relating to women as people is true here, though that feels more strongly a Dresden thing than a Butcher thing at this point.
I definitely understood where people were coming from with Dresden/Marcone in this book. I mean, with Kim taking Dresden out to dinner and the steak leading to a value compromise on his part. Oh, exploitable. ...and I have read the fic that comes out of that, a lot, because, yes, Marcone would use that in his seduction and that is something Dresden would be weak to.
I've got "douchebag white knight" written in my notes from when I read this a couple weeks ago, and also speculation that Marcone might be someone that Dresden could be made to sit down and listen to, that Marcone is a person who would make that happen. (I had, um, a lot of feelings about Dresden.)
I feel like Dresden wears noir goggles all the time and that sometimes things happen that don't quite fit his vision of the world. I think that kind of disconnect is really apparent in some of his interactions with Murphy. I don't think that everyone in these books is living in a noir novel the way that Dresden is.
I kind of feel that Dresden's decided that he lives in a book because of the whole tragic past and things that go bump in the night thing that's part of his life, that when he was doing his reading in his formative years those were the types of books that were true to life for him, and so he just kind of assumed that that was what the world was really like and that became his world. ...and that the part where he's magically powerful has thrown him into the path of a bunch of other people with a lot of power and interestingly adjusted world views because of that has worked to confirm his world view. (Their world is not like other people's world; they interact with it differently.)
I feel like there's stuff to be written about Dresden and noir and how and why that's his world.
This entry was originally posted at http://kiki-eng.dreamwidth.org/84535.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Storm Front was a really weird book to read after the amount of fanfic I've read. There are a lot of fic rewrites of this book, some of which use chunks of the book - lines of dialogue and so on - so there was the knowledge that the book is not a m/m romance and also, nevertheless, the feeling that it might at any second turn into one. Having large chunks of it familiar from slash fic threw me a little, as did the part where it's a kind of pulpy piece of original fiction; there were a few style things that it took me a while to get used to.
One of those was Dresden's descriptions of people. One of my main questions coming out of that book was "Butcher eventually stops this thing where he evaluates women's fashion choices and describes their outfits in weird detail, right?" Because that was not a character trait that I was expecting Dresden to have. ...and also the part where he goes into way more detail about what the women are wearing than the men, and also the part where Dresden knew the ballpark figure for a pair of women's shoes. He mentions that a pair of "pumps" he finds at a crime scene are three hundred dollars. (I do not know this shit.) This is not knowledge that I was expecting Dresden to have. I have been concocting back-stories for this. Maybe it was for a case, or, Dresden's poor so maybe he likes expensive heels and is also very aware of exactly how much they are out of his price range. There are possibilites.
I enjoyed the noir aspect of this book. I wasn't really expecting that label to feel so dead on, so it was a little surprising and a lot of fun.
I had a lot of issues with Fool Moon, and issues that I'd had from the last book sort of piled up and combined. I wanted to smack Butcher/Dresden for the repeated use of the word "bitch" in this book, and the kind of sexualisation of all of the women, and the obsession with Murphy having a cheerleader face, and the werewolf woman's sexy dance. The part where he and his subconscious have this discussion about him being attracted to Murphy rubbed me the wrong way especially given the repeated use of that cheerleader description; it felt like there was a school girl fetish or something similar happening.
So I experienced a lot of satisfaction when Murphy chews Dresden out and calls him names, basically. I feel like Dresden has serious issues with women. I think part of that old slash thing where part of what fuels slashing is a kind of failure at depicting or relating to women as people is true here, though that feels more strongly a Dresden thing than a Butcher thing at this point.
I definitely understood where people were coming from with Dresden/Marcone in this book. I mean, with Kim taking Dresden out to dinner and the steak leading to a value compromise on his part. Oh, exploitable. ...and I have read the fic that comes out of that, a lot, because, yes, Marcone would use that in his seduction and that is something Dresden would be weak to.
I've got "douchebag white knight" written in my notes from when I read this a couple weeks ago, and also speculation that Marcone might be someone that Dresden could be made to sit down and listen to, that Marcone is a person who would make that happen. (I had, um, a lot of feelings about Dresden.)
I feel like Dresden wears noir goggles all the time and that sometimes things happen that don't quite fit his vision of the world. I think that kind of disconnect is really apparent in some of his interactions with Murphy. I don't think that everyone in these books is living in a noir novel the way that Dresden is.
I kind of feel that Dresden's decided that he lives in a book because of the whole tragic past and things that go bump in the night thing that's part of his life, that when he was doing his reading in his formative years those were the types of books that were true to life for him, and so he just kind of assumed that that was what the world was really like and that became his world. ...and that the part where he's magically powerful has thrown him into the path of a bunch of other people with a lot of power and interestingly adjusted world views because of that has worked to confirm his world view. (Their world is not like other people's world; they interact with it differently.)
I feel like there's stuff to be written about Dresden and noir and how and why that's his world.
This entry was originally posted at http://kiki-eng.dreamwidth.org/84535.html. Please comment there using OpenID.