Why I like The Dresden Files
Dec. 16th, 2009 03:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theweaselkingI don't remember who specifically recommended 'em, but I saw the first three books on sale as a boxed set and picked 'em up on spec.
I liked those so much I went to two different bookstores to get the rest. It would have been just one and a second trip next month or something, but the only book missing from the first store was *book 4*, and I wanted to read that one next.
It's fluff, it really is. Standard-grade entertainingly-written modern-magic stuff, but there's one thing that really makes Harry Dresden stand out from the rest of the good-modern-fantasy set[1]:
Harry's competent. He knows what he can do, he does it, and he's not afraid of it. He isn't terrified of pulling out his Big Guns in case he loses control the way most modern-fantasy protagonists are. He's not delusional about how his powers work or about what he can or cannot do. He's sometimes overconfident or simply *wrong* about something, but there's none of the whole "we mostly don't form Megazord immediately every time because we like to give our enemies hope" shit that is depressingly common in the depths of the mire that is the subgenre.
Plus, really, Dresden's a jerk. It's a selling point.
[1]: This set does not include Buffy The Vampire Shagger or any of her dozen identical clones.
I liked those so much I went to two different bookstores to get the rest. It would have been just one and a second trip next month or something, but the only book missing from the first store was *book 4*, and I wanted to read that one next.
It's fluff, it really is. Standard-grade entertainingly-written modern-magic stuff, but there's one thing that really makes Harry Dresden stand out from the rest of the good-modern-fantasy set[1]:
Harry's competent. He knows what he can do, he does it, and he's not afraid of it. He isn't terrified of pulling out his Big Guns in case he loses control the way most modern-fantasy protagonists are. He's not delusional about how his powers work or about what he can or cannot do. He's sometimes overconfident or simply *wrong* about something, but there's none of the whole "we mostly don't form Megazord immediately every time because we like to give our enemies hope" shit that is depressingly common in the depths of the mire that is the subgenre.
Plus, really, Dresden's a jerk. It's a selling point.
[1]: This set does not include Buffy The Vampire Shagger or any of her dozen identical clones.