Storm Front

The Dresden Files, Book 1

By: Jim Butcher

Narrated by: James Marsters

Length: 8 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. I'm a wizard. I work out of an office in midtown Chicago. As far as I know, I'm the only openly practicing professional wizard in the country. You can find me in the yellow pages, under Wizards. Believe it or not, I'm the only one there.

With rent past due and a decent meal becoming an issue of some importance, Harry needs work, and soon. A call from a distraught wife, and another from Lt. Murphy of the Chicago PD Special Investigation Unit makes Harry believe things are looking up, but they are about to get worse, much worse. Someone is harnessing immense supernatural forces to commit a series of grisly murders. Someone has violated the first law of magic: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Tracking that someone takes Harry into the dangerous underbelly of Chicago, from mobsters to vampires, while he himself is under suspicion of the crimes.

©2000 Jim Butcher (P)2002 Buzzy Multimedia

Enjoyable

Very enjoyable listen. A fun idea and entertaining story. I disagree with everyone who said the narrator seemed like he was eating, slurping, or otherwise. Maybe they changed something, but I thought he was great for this protagonist.

Great 1st Stab, Bad Audio Mix.

The story line made up for the usual pitfalls of a first novel and low budget audio book productions.
The author seems to have misplaced his thesaurus half way through the book.
The narrator gave an A+ performance which excused the loose phrasing and heavy breathing. I prefer a good performance over technical polish.
The only major complaints I have are :
- Murphy is a single faceted character who's so stubbornly irrational and her interactions with Dresden took me out of suspension of belief.
- The mixing and mastering of the book is awful so the volume jumps up and down all the time. The publisher didn't bother to set chapter cues. So if you want to skip around in the book you'll have to channel a 12 year old playing Nintendo with the fast forward and rewind buttons.

Massive fan of Dresden

This is the weakest Dresden book, but still amazing!!

Stick with it till book 3 and you will be hooked!!

This is were, for most of us, it all started

First books of long series are often rough and only hint at things to come. All that is true with this book, number one of a planed series streching beyond the mid twenties in number. However, going back to it after having read book 17 I find that I still recognized these characters as the ones who I was just reading. They are younger and operating in a world where many thing had not yet come to pass...but shape of their lives, who they are and why...was consistent even this early. In this way, I feel Butcher is a master of his craft. I suspect him of semi-malicious time travel, even if limited to the realm of his creative muse. Read this book and take the first step of a long journey of emotional, metaphysical and imaginative transition that somehow is always strangely comfortable. Like the beverage you prefer when settling in for an excellent story.

Good

This was a good book, but it did start out slow and kind of boring, but it did get better as it went on. Harry is a very interesting wizard. Apparently he does also some consulting for the police but yet the police person that he does consulting for doesn’t seem to really like it much either. He also has some very interesting objects at his house. I like his cat but his talking skull that he has in his lab is different. He tries to date but of course, while he’s on his date, he has some problems with a demon trying to kill him and his girlfriend. Then he isn’t quite mixed up with some mobsters, but they definitely don’t want him to figure out who killed some people. He does have a woman come to him who wants to find her missing husband, and that case turns out to be very interesting and deadly. I’m not sure if I’m going to read the next book in the series or not.

Great book to lose some time in to.

I was taking a long drive and decided to put this book on. The cadence of the book was solid and kept me going. Ended up finishing the book the same day. Top notch reading and to still get all the inflections even when listening at 1.15 speed is great!

Love it but..

I loved this book, I do however feel like there were parts that tended to feel like it was dragging a bit. Otherwise it’s a great book.

Pick ups

This is a great book and Marsters does a fantastic job. You can tell a few things though. Some wonky pronunciation, and some definite mouth noises that could probably be attributed to technology being different back then. I would love to see this redone by Marsters (seriously perfect casting) and see what can be improved

This book was just as good the 2nd time around

I bought and read the first few Dresden File books ages ago, but had forgotten about them over time. I had a bunch of credits, so I figured I'd re-buy them as audiobooks (makes me feel less guilty about re-buying books I had purchased previously) and I was so thrilled with the story! It was well read and Jim Butcher is an incredible writer. I can't wait until I get more credits to get the next books in the series!

Narrator okay, but multiple mispronunciations!

Good story. My real complaint is with the narrator mispronouncing multiple words (examples being chitin, foci, and other pretty basic things). He also swallos a lot, which I cannot deal with.