Storm Front: Book 1 of the Dresden Files

After dinner last night Iz wanted to hit Border's. In the process she turned me on to Jim Butcher's modern wizard / PI Harry Dresden. OK, I'm not a big fan of horror but I really love books where the author works hard to get magic, military tactics / culture and tech right. David Weber (Honor Harrington series), Richard Cornwall (Sharpe's Rifles, etc, British Napoleonic light infantry ), Patrick O'Brien (Master and Commander), and Tom Clancy (The Hunt for Red October is the best modern submarine book ever; only the late Edward L. Beach's Run Silent, Run Deep, set in the Pacific during WW2 is even in the same ballpark) get culture/tactics and tech right -- with a level of detail that some find irksome.

As as lifelong student of military science and technology, I appreciate the details these guys put in their works. I have not been studying magic quite as long -- my first exposure to an author who did it right with respect to magic was only thirty years ago; I've devoted time to more intense study the last fifteen or so. Mercedes Lackey (most especially her Diane Tregarde modern witch books) and Katherine Kurtz (not only the medieval Deryni-verse, but also her modern / WW2 Adept series) are on a very short list that just got longer by one name: Jim Butcher.

I took this book home and figured to give it the "100 pages test" -- if it could hold my interest for 100 pages, then good. Robert Jordan failed that test. Even Terry Pratchett (I know, Iz, I know! TPs a GAWD, but I.just.can't.get.my.brain.around.Discworld. Sorry! I've tried!) did not make the cut. My standards for holding my attention for the first one hundred pages are tough; the masters of the first-sentence grab-of-attention are guys named Heinlein (Starshp Troopers: "I always get the shakes before a drop.") and Howard (something about a guy named Conan being chased across a river, cannot quote it) trained me early.

I stopped on page 168 because I was ready to go to sleep . . . and not because the book was boring. Anything but! Plenty of action, tight plotting, very nicely drawn characters, enough wizard-lore to satisfy this Background Freak, and, yes, Jim Butcher Gets It when it comes to magic and explains it.

Thanks, Iz, for turning me on to a whole 'nother Harry.