The Mick Oberon series by Ari Marmell is a common recommendation to those who enjoyed Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. And there are certainly a lot of similarities. The following description applies, more or less, to both: A wisecracking PI who happens to use magic as well as more traditional methods keeps getting mixed up in magical hijinks out of his league in his home town of Chicago. His magic, unfortunately, conflicts with the newer gadgetry of the modern world, and he often tries to avoid having to use said gadgets. He may be considered [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Aeronaut’s Windlass
April 12, 2018 By Leave a Comment
I've previously reviewed the Dresden Files and the first couple of volumes of Jim Butcher's Codex Alera (both of which I enjoyed a lot). The Aeronaut's Windlass begins a new series, The Cinder Spires. This may be Jim Butcher's most ambitious series. Dresden's adventures take place in a world that looks very much like ours, and the basic setup is easily understood, even if the supernatural underbelly of the world is complicated and often obscured to the reader. Codex Alera takes place on a world that is at least generally Earthlike and with a [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Academ’s Fury
November 28, 2017 By 2 Comments
The second book in the Codex Alera series by Jim Butcher begins with a prologue: the terrifying and alien Wax Forest has turned dead, with no trace of the spider-like Keepers and other creatures that had dwelt within the resin-coated nightmare-scape. The young Marat, Kitai, who Tavi had first competed against and then cooperated with in the Wax Forest to earn the respect and cooperation of the Marat chief Doroga, has also found something else disturbing: tracks leading out of the ruined Forest, and, along those tracks, Tavi's lost backpack. [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Furies of Calderon
November 21, 2017 By 1 Comment
The story goes that Jim Butcher – author of the Dresden Files series – was told that one couldn't write a good story based on "lame" ideas. Butcher responded that he could do so with any two lame ideas of the challenger's choosing. The challenger responded with "Lost Roman Legion", and "Pokemon". The result was the Codex Alera series, with the first volume being Furies of Calderon. Speaking purely from the geeky point of view of "how well did he do with those two lame ideas", I have to say… middling. As a combination of "Lost Roman [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher
August 16, 2016 By Leave a Comment
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 [ Continue reading... ]
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