Dresden Files: Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

Harry Dresden's case files continue in Fool Moon, the second book of the Dresden Files series written by Jim Butcher. The idea is that Harry is a modern day wizard who is drawn into conflict because of his consulting job working for the police on matters that are 'supernatural' in nature.

Jim Butcher's prose flows easily and the use of first person narration makes the reading quick and easy. Those looking for depth and multiple layers of story might be a little disappointed, but in terms of popcorn fiction, I found it fast and easy to digest.

One of the things that Jim really knows how to do, is put the odds against Harry. +John Wick wrote a series of articles that was compiled into a book called Play Dirty. In it, one of the things John puts forward is that beating the hero to the point of death and allowing them to pull out all the stops to achieve victory, is what makes a good role playing game, or story worth becoming involved in. John' primary example in that is the good old movie Die Hard where our hero suffers beating upon beating but manages to claim victory at the end.

Fool Moon also continues to build the world of Dresden. The author lays out several seeds for future books with a casual mention here and a casual mention there. We get more information on the world in general and a lot of ideas on how werewolves work. There are several varieties of the creature presented here and the authors puts all the versions through the paces. In that aspect, it reminded me very much of a role playing game in which the end effect may be reached through several different means.

The fact that there are different versions, also helps explain why so many of the myths may appear to be wrong from one perspective. Those viking berserkers who have an animal spirit in them may be one type of animal soul, but the person whose invulnerable to everything but silver? That's an entirely different type of beast. Makes you want to think more about the different aspects of monster creation.

Mind you, as a Chicago native, I'm still not 'feeling' it so to speak. It may be that these are character focused novels with a relatively small cast, but I also don't get the modern feel of the city. With all of the speed cameras, camera lights, and other bits of surveilance and technology around, it's hard to believe how frequently Harry throws about 'big' magic without it becoming huge news. This problem continues in future volumes I see and its strains things a bit.

I'm also not 'getting' where Harry lives where he has a two story apartment but most of the people he deals with aren't people that would live in the type of area that Harry could afford. He's kind of semi-imposed against some generic city with no Mayor or named politicians. Still, can't blame Jim for that too much as having too many real world details can bog down the writing and Chicago, like many modern cities, is always in a state of transformation with one neighborhood becoming slum like and others rising to renovation and removal of 'undesirables'.

Like other works by Jim in the series, the book is available in a variety of formats and is a quick read for those wanting 'modern' magic.



For those who've played the Fate Game, are there any bits that you're stealing from the books or just going with information from the books themselves? I'm tempted a bit, but it's a two book series and even with the dreaded Amazon discount it's still over $40 bones. What's worse as I'm prepping some material for a Champions aka Hero 6th edition Sci-Fi campaign, I know that I'm not going to be using it for a long time.



Too many ideas, not enough time.

Dresden File: Storm Front by Jim Butcher

One of my friends is a big fan of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. He also enjoys the role playing game powered by the Fate Engine. Not that long ago, Amazon was doing one of their $1.99 sales for books in the series. Right now, +comiXology is doing a sale on the Dresden Files comics. A fairly popular character with several books in the series? And written in an easy to read and quickly moving first person narrative?

Sign me up.

Jim has an easy command of the flow here. He introduces a lot of things but does so in a fairly... generic method. While Dresden is located in Chicago in the 'modern' world, and this could just be due to how quickly technology and everything else moves, it seems like he's actually in the 80's in some near generic scene. The second book brings more of Chicago to life but really, the series doesn't scream Chicago to me as much as it screams detective noir with a twist, and that's where the book shines.

Harry's background and abilities and indeed, his whole world as feed to the readers on a near as you need to know it basis. This allows the author to continue to provide information about Harry's strange world and throw hooks into the setting for future volumes. This continues well into the second book at least. It's additional information and provides a richer, more fuller world, such as when we meet Harry's 'magic computer', an old spirit that's inhabited by a lustful entity, but one that's been around for so long that it has a huge amount of magical information which Harry uses to say, brew potions or to do research.

Mind you, it's a good use and a good tool and that's because Harry can't use a computer. In what I imagine is a nod to some 'balance' equation or something of that nature, technology tends to fail around wizards and magic in general. This prevents Harry from owning and enjoying most of the things that we take for granted in the modern life. It's almost painful to see someone in the 'modern' world without a smart phone or tablet for reference and ease of use!

The other 'problem' I can see I'm going to have with the series, although it's not too bad in this book, is much like White Wolf's World of Darkness, people are 'ignorant' of the supernatural. It reminds me of the Warhammer World where the rat people, the Skaven, are said not to exist. "So Harry, you just engaged in a supernatural duel where a house was destroyed and magical scorpions and all sorts of other weirdness was abounding but hey, no one was around AGAIN eh? You lucky bastard."

You can, in my opinion of course, only push that mundanes know nothing bit so far before everything becomes too coincidental. "Man, another narrow escape where people didn't learn about all the weird things going on! Awesome!"

And Harry's world is weird. There's a mix of things ranging from Italian Mafia (which to me is VERY un-Chicago, this isn't the 1920's), to Vampire Countesses that run prostitution rings.

Nonetheless, it was a quick read and enjoyable enough that I'm already reading Fool Moon, the second book in the series. I tend to enjoy first person narration and when the author has the smoothness that Jim Butcher brings to the telling, it makes it a lot easier to read.

For those who have the Fate game, how did you find it? Would you be better off using the old World of Darkness and it's various Mage settings to try and capture this sort of setting or would you just go with the Fate version?

For those who've read the Dresden Files and didn't like them, was there a particular bit that stuck out or made you drop it? There is a portion where Harry is under attack by a demon and his newspaper female acquaintance drinks a 'love' potion and it seemed a little creepy to me, almost like a date rape drug and the skull spirit Harry uses also seems to 'bring out' inhibitions of people but Jim kind of waves that all away with, "Well, they'd have done it anyway with a few drinks in them."

On the other hand, I love this blog post: http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/changes-the-apex-of-jim-butchers-racism-and-misogyny/ . It's from the blog Requires Only That You Hate and there are often some very interesting posts over there. If I have some feelings of "ick" this author smashes the crap out of the things she doesn't like about the series and the book Changes in particular.

Storm Front is available on Amazon for under $8.00 bones right now, but is also available for sale in comic format and in a few other formats, including a hardcover graphic novel on Amazon.