Harry Dresden: Halfwit for the Plot

[akirlu]

Comments

[txanne]

I begin to be glad I decided not to bother after the first one.

[akirlu]

Well, the story I had heard was that the first two Dresden books were written pell-mell on a bet, without much regard to plot or sense or anything but getting them down on the page, and then got picked up as they were. Theoretically, Butcher is expending more effort on making the books internally consistent now, but as I say, for me, more effort is not the same as enough effort. I will probably keep reading them whenever I can stomach another because in a twisted way, I find them inspirational, and because I've written a character meant to parody Harry -- which means I have to have some idea what it is I'm parodying.

But the Dresden books are clearly not for everyone.

[txanne]

Um. I find myself moved to wonder where the editor was after the books were picked up. (I do see the appeal--after all, I finished the one I started.)

[akirlu]

Yah, I started reading Butcher's books on a recommendation that they were a well-done version of Laurell Hamilton, without all that superfluous sex. Now, I didn't mind the sex in the Hamilton books per se, but I was really pretty annoyed that an interesting premise -- fugitive fairy princess working as an LA detective and dodging the relatives from Faerie -- got largely dumped, or at least deeply marginalized, in favor of All Sex, All the Time. I will agree that the Dresden books have less sex and more plot, but I don't think they're actually better, just differently bad. But all of this is anent to your comment of understanding the appeal: I think this is a sub-sub-genre that has quite a bit of innate appeal, and no really good practitioners.

[prettymuchpeggy]

All I can say is "ouch" and continue to be grateful to others for slogging through the piffle.

[akirlu]

Happy to take that bullet for you. I was going to read it anyway, so I might as well share my impressions...

[mjlayman]

LOL I'm just looking for the Mamma Mia post because I have something to put there, but came across this one first. I finished Storm Front last night for bookgroup on Saturday, and boy was it awful. I've never read any of his because I was pretty sure I wouldn't like them, and now I know. It seems a bit Marty Stu to me, too.

[akirlu]

The Dresden character reads as very Marty Stu to me as well. And yes, Storm Front is especially bad. Butcher must in some sense think so too, because at least some of the affectations of the first book get dropped in subsequent ones.

[akirlu]

It's a cute dodge, but no, it doesn't work under the internal rules of the story. Dresden explicitly says that steel counts, and in fact, he uses 'steel' shelving in self defense moments later as well as, as I say, a chain saw, a few pages later. So some ferrous content somewhere seems to be sufficient for his definition of cold iron that will hurt the fey.

[mjlayman]

Our blood has iron in it.