On My Shelves: The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher

When I first published Digital Knight in 2003, there were some people who commented on its being similar in some ways to another relatively recent (2000) entry into the Urban Fantasy genre: Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series, beginning with Storm Front and continuing up through what is now fifteen books (slightly less than one a year), the most recent being Skin Game.

There is something of a surface similarity between the early Dresden novels and Digital Knight/Paradigms Lost, although I think a great deal of the impression of similarity mostly stems from two stylistic choices that are similar: first, they are both told exclusively from the first-person point of view of the protagonist (Harry Dresden in the one case and Jason Wood in the other), and both Harry and Jason have something of a similar dry humor with respect to the world and situations in which they find themselves. Other than that, I think there's more a set of interesting contrasts between the two, which I'll talk about later.

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden is a wizard – not the party-prestidigitation type, but the real honest-to-god spellslinging kind, with a particular affinity for fire… and for getting himself into trouble. He works as a magical private eye, solving problems that have their roots in the hidden magical world that is a part of our own.

Even when we first meet Harry, his life is not a simple one; he's technically a member of the White Council (simplistically, the "good guy" wizards who try to prevent the misuse of magic) but is under grave suspicion and constant observation because he once – perfectly justifiably, from any reasonable point of view – used magic to kill someone (his former master and teacher). He's got connections to the various magical beings and civilizations around Chicago and the "Nevernever" – the mystical parallel world that the fae and other magical beings tend to inhabit" – but there are few of these connections that don't come with prices or problems of their own.

In Storm Front, Harry has to try to solve a series of murders that are carried out by powerful dark magic – a magic that very, very few people he can think of would be able to carry off, and in fact he is one of the few. This does not escape the notice of Warden Morgan, the watchdog the Council has assigned to Harry, and Morgan is not at all on Harry's side; Harry knows that if Morgan gets a good idea of what's going on, he'll assume Harry is responsible for the murders – and carry out summary execution then and there!

Harry thus has to walk a tightrope through the investigation, trying to find out who would use magic to kill some rather widely-assorted people, consulting with beings ranging from vampires to mob boss "Gentleman" Jimmy Marcone without either getting himself killed or obligated to these people in ways he can't afford, and finally to confront the real murderer – at the center of his power.

In many ways, Storm Front is a microcosm of the entire series. Harry is always having to make deals with beings he'd rather not, frequently under suspicion by various beings of being the cause of whatever the current problem du jour is, and always having to try to combine his native "blunt instrument" approach with caution and cleverness to maneuver his enemies into doing some of the work for him.

This is, honestly, one of my favorite series of all time, and one I only read recently (I read Storm Front shortly after I met Jim and we traded books, but I didn't get to the rest until much later). Harry is forced to grow, slowly but surely, throughout the series, and so are both his adversaries and his allies, to an extent.

Harry's difficulties, of course, stem to a great extent not just from his very troubled past (raised by a powerful dark wizard that Harry had to personally kill, among other things), but from the nature of magic and the mystical world. As he mentions multiple times, this is a world where names have power, so hiding parts of your name, or knowing names of others, are powerful weapons… and vulnerabilities.

The fae of Harry Dresden's world are as perilous as legend, beings that will hold to the letter of their word… and often use the letter of their agreements to render the agreement worse than useless, if you leave them an opening. From Harry's point of view, what makes this a particularly difficult issue is that he has personal connections to the Fae (he has, in fact, a literal Faerie Godmother, but not one nearly so benevolent and easy to deal with as Disney would like to make it look), and often his cases force him to deal with the Nevernever and the fae and other beings that reside there.

The White Council really isn't much better; while Harry agrees they perform valuable services and their intentions are good, their means of approaching their goals – mainly the protection of humanity from dark magic – are often… hardass, to say the least. Harry killed his master because his master was a monster, in more ways than one, and did so in self-defense; despite this, he's under constant scrutiny and suspicion by the Council, with a literal Doom of Damocles hanging over his head. One misuse of magic, one single act that crosses the line of any of their Laws of Magic, and Harry will be executed – and Morgan, the man assigned to watch him, has the skill, power, and authority to carry out that execution. And he does not like Harry Dresden.

To an extent, these circumstances change as the series progresses (for one thing, Harry ends up a Warden of the White Council, and no longer under direct potential sentence of death); to another, they don't change as much as one might think. The power scale of the series slowly but fairly inexorably ramps upward, and the problems that Harry has to deal with become more and more complex and dangerous, but in some ways, a lot of it doesn't change – Harry makes some desperate deals, does inspired Xanatos Speed Chess against his opponents, and mostly slips the consequences of dealing with the devil… but not quite, and so has another pain in the ass added to those he already has.

What makes the books fun to read is undoubtedly Harry Dresden's voice. The combination of cynic and idealist that ends up often (I am sure deliberately) sounding like a magical Sam Spade is almost irresistible. Harry is almost never lost for a quip or a wisecrack even in dire situations (and this, admittedly, sometimes gets him in more trouble). At the same time, he's a hero. He often denies it, and his flaws loom large in his mind, but Harry Dresden is a Determinator of the highest caliber, and one who is, at heart, one of the best people in the series.

This is saying a lot, as along with the manipulative bastards and out-and-out monsters, there are some true shining knights in the Dresden Files. None are more obvious than the literal Knights of the Sword, bearers of swords reputed to contain the nails of the Crucifixion and, so long as they are true and just wielders of the Swords, provided with incredible supernatural power to withstand evil magics and monsters. Less supernatural, but no less noble, is Karrin Murphy, a policewoman who is one of Harry's closest friends and one of the few he can count on regardless of what happens. What Harry never quite grasps is that he has the loyalty of people like Officer Murphy and Michael Carpenter ONLY because he is, himself, a man whose nobility and trustworthiness is obvious to those who look.

Having read the entire (thus far) series, I can look back on the initial comments with respect to Digital Knight and its later incarnation Paradigms Lost with more perspective, and it's a rather interesting comparison. As I said earlier, there are definite similarities. Both Harry and Jason are first-person narrators; both have an almost noir type of internal dialogue, with internal heckling and occasional wiseassery even in perilous situations. Both of them are men of honor – if they take on a job, they will finish that job one way or another – and also are very, very good at finding loopholes or tricks to allow them to evade the consequences their adversaries intend to visit upon them. Both play the Determinator card fairly often, and the ending of their adventures often involves recuperating in a hospital bed or the equivalent. Both of them even have a very close female friend of diminutive stature who is often their sounding board, and whom they deny any romantic feelings for... and whose denial rings rather hollow.

At the same time… they're awfully different. While their "voices" are superficially similar, Harry's much more Bogart-as-Spade than anything else (though not nearly the dick that Sam Spade tended to be), while Jason's based far more on Archie Goodwin from Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series. Harry's more cynical and Jason's much lighter, most of the time, in tone. This is reflected in their lives, too. While both Harry and Jason face some pretty horrific adversaries, Jason's life has, overall, gotten measurably better over the course, thus far, of his career, while at least up until the last couple of books Harry was getting at least as much suckitude to go along with his increased power.

The latter – power—is probably the biggest difference. Harry Dresden is a wizard, a real spellslinging mage of the top-drawer power level, while Jason Wood is a perfectly ordinary, if smart and lucky, human being. Jason can't face down most of his opponents one-on-one. He's generally outgunned on every objective level. It's true that Harry's often outpowered too, but he has his own personal powers that put him, at least, in the same general weight-class as his opponents (though sometimes he really is out of his league).

Allies also differ. Harry of course has had a lot more books to play in, but even allowing for this, Harry has a lot more connections and allies… and a much bigger set of obligations. The connections and allies Jason gets tend to be friends, people he can trust and whose powers don't come with some kind of cosmic price tag; Harry often has to trade favor for favor even with beings that in theory like him.

On the other hand, Harry hasn't (yet) been staked out as the personal property and future lunch of the universe's Big Bad, while Jason has. Admittedly, this does come in handy a few times, as this means that damned few beings want to challenge Virigar over, well, pretty much anything. And Harry's certainly got multiple people with claims on his soul in one form or another.

Physically they're also pretty different; Jason's not short, at slightly over six feet, but Harry's a giant, standing about six foot nine, and he's in good shape; he could probably pick Jason up and throw him like a caber.

But in many ways, they are alike. Both are the go-to people for those on the border of the mundane and the weird. Both are the opponents of monsters that would destroy their people, and both of them have a vested interest in finding a way to let humans and the supernatural coexist, when possible.

I like to think that if the two were to meet, they'd rather like each other. And I'm certainly glad that I've gotten to meet Harry Dresden.

If you haven't yet, I think it's time you did!