Wizard For Hire

About five years ago I found a new series to read. It blended two of my favorite genres, fantasy and detective novels. That series was The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. It centers around a wizard living in Chicago effectively working as a private detective and assisting the Chicago PD with their stranger cases. I devoured the books, burning through the series at what for me was an unprecedented pace. Averaging three to four books a month until I had caught up. Since then whenever a new book in the series is released, I will drop whatever I am currently reading and consume the latest adventure of Harry Dresden. It’s gotten to the point where it’s like checking in with old friends for me, seeing what Harry and the gang are up to now.

In Harry Dresden’s Chicago you have a lot more to worry about than traffic or being mugged. There are all manner of supernatural creatures. Vampires, ghosts, werewolves, even the Fae. Life in that world is dangerous but the average person is not aware of these dangers. The supernatural world follows rules, in general at least. That is one of the things I enjoyed about the series right away. In a world where wizards and vampires exist, why wouldn’t they be running the show? Simple, because normal humans vastly outnumber them and with those odds exposing the supernatural world is like announcing you just built a nuke. It draws the wrong kind of attention. So, Dresden often finds himself walking a tight rope, trying to protect regular humans while also keeping them ignorant of the supernatural threats that surround them.

The world is rendered vividly by Butcher. He lays out how the magic works in a way that makes it feel like there are in fact solid rules to it, while still leaving enough wiggle room for it to still feel mysterious. Harry is a powerful wizard but unlike wizards in other fantasy books he is still very much a person. He makes mistakes. He gets overconfident on occasion and has it blow up in his face, sometimes quite literally. His magic is not infallible either. One of his main tools is a shield bracelet. He uses it on many occasions to protect himself, it absorbs harmful magic or stops physical attacks like a force field. However, there is a point in the series where he tries to use it keep from being incinerated. It stops him from being killed but since it wasn’t designed to stop heat, his hand still gets cooked. Another limiting factor is that those who use magic as frequently as wizards do tend to have trouble with technology, Harry can’t even a phone without it going haywire. In this world even magic has its limits.

The cast of characters is one of the other main draws and an important part of the world building in the series. Karrin Murphy from Chicago PDs Special Investigations division, the cop that Dresden works with, is a great character. She is strong and smart. She has a strong sense of duty and doesn’t take shit from anyone. Harry’s assistant Bob, an air spirit bound to a skull. It acts as his lab assistant and reference library all in one, the interplay between them is often hilarious. Waldo Butters is the city medical examiner. He begins feeling more like comic relief than anything and eventually becomes a force to be reckoned with. Then there is Michael, an actual Knight of God. He is basically a paladin from Dungeons and Dragons made flesh. He fights for the good of humanity because that is the right thing to do and has absolute faith in his god to protect him and make sure he is always where he is needed most.

The list of antagonists in the series is incredible. Queen Mab, the Fairy queen of Air and Darkness plays a consistent role in his life. That role is often a mix of savior and thorn in his side. Marcone is a human mob boss that knows about Dresden and the rest of the supernatural world and often proves to be more menacing than whatever monster Harry finds himself facing off against. The Red Court Vampire Bianca is a terrifying adversary for Dresden, sleek and seductive on the outside, but inside she is literally a horrifying monster driven by the need to drain humans of their blood. Possibly my favorite antagonists in the series are the Knights of the Blackened Denarius. A group of fallen angel possessed villains that are the opposite of the Knights of the Cross. They are among the scariest things in the entire series and their leader Nicodemus is in my opinion the scariest one. He only ever cares about his current mission, which is never good for humanity, and will complete it no matter what it takes. If that means talking someone into joining them, that works for him, but he is equally happy to just kill that same person.

Then there are the locations in Dresden’s Chicago. First is McAnally’s Pub, described as “not a pub, but and actual Old World-style tavern”, it is a pub frequented by Chicago’s magical practitioners. Located in the basement of a building and laid out in a way to help diffuse magical energies it is made for people like Harry. The way it is described in the books leaves me with a comforting, warm feeling whenever Harry visits it. Over the course of the series, we grow as fond of the taciturn proprietor Mac as most any other character, even though he rarely speaks more than a word or two. Harry’s apartment is also in a basement, but that of an old boarding house. It opens onto a large room that he uses as a living room, usually furnished with a well-worn couch and bookshelves with area rugs scattered across the floor, next to that is the kitchenette and bedroom. There is also a hatch leading to a sub-basement that Harry uses as a lab. The apartment is cold and dingy but feels like home to both Harry and the reader. These are just a few examples of locations the characters frequent in the books.

Jim Butcher does an amazing job of building out Dresden’s Chicago. He makes it easy for you to set aside your disbelief. He makes you want to walk the streets of Chicago alongside a wizard for hire. The characters all feel like real people, which makes it that much more exciting and scary when they find themselves in danger. I have read quite a lot of fantasy in my time and this world, a world adjacent to our own, where magic and monsters exist alongside the internet and fast-food chains, was the one I fell into the deepest. Jim Butcher made it easy. The cost of entry is low and once there I didn’t want to leave. Honestly, I still don’t, I can’t wait for the next installment so that I can dive back into Dresden’s Chicago.