Spoiler notice: The first part avoids the central mystery. A clearly marked section below discusses the culprit and the ending of Storm Front.
It took me weeks to finish Storm Front. That feels like an odd thing to say about a book featuring a wizard who gets hit with a baseball bat, visits a vampire and cannot even have a date without a demon turning up. There was plenty here that made me laugh, and the final stretch was genuinely fun. But getting there was a slog.
Harry Dresden himself was never the problem. He is broke, cynical, short on sleep and apparently incapable of leaving a dangerous situation alone. Early on, he sees a horrific murder scene and vomits. That seemed a reasonable response, frankly. He still keeps investigating, even with people warning him off and a client who will not tell him everything.
I liked that mix of sarcasm and honesty. Harry can make a smart remark under pressure, but he is not floating above the mess like some effortlessly cool detective. He has bills, bad nights and awkward conversations with the police. He just also happens to be a wizard.
Pizza is a perfectly reasonable magical expense#
The people around Harry often kept me more entertained than the investigation. Bob, the knowledgeable spirit living in a skull, has a filthy mind and seems delighted by any opportunity to embarrass Harry. Toot-Toot, a tiny fairy motivated by pizza, made me think of Fullmetal Alchemist when Harry drew a summoning circle. Then the fairy arrived and immediately made the whole business much sillier.
Murphy and Harry were another reason I kept listening. Their conversations have the irritation of two people who know each other well enough to be annoyed properly. She does not simply accept Harry’s explanations because he is the protagonist, and he does himself no favours when he tries to keep things from her. I found myself wondering whether they liked each other as more than friends, though that was my reading of their behaviour, not something the book settled for me.
Then there is Susan. Her date with Harry goes so spectacularly wrong that a demon breathing fire at her is only part of the problem. She still has a reporter’s instinct to ask questions in the middle of the chaos. It is frightening and ridiculous at once, which is when this book worked best for me.
I also had a belated audiobook surprise: James Marsters narrates it. I knew him as Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I had not recognised him at all. Harry’s American voice sounded nothing like the British accent I associated with Spike.
Give me the handkerchief, not another gloomy sky#
My favourite magic in Storm Front was practical and a little strange. Harry makes potions from unlikely ingredients. He carries sunlight in a handkerchief to use against a vampire. He has to think about what he knows, what he has to hand and how much trouble he is in. That is much more interesting to me than simply throwing a bigger magical blast at something.
The trouble was how long it sometimes took to reach those moments. Chicago’s supernatural world is grounded in ordinary frustrations: money, police procedure, distrust, exhaustion. I appreciate the idea. But after enough gloomy descriptions and reminders of how worn out Harry was, I started feeling worn out too.
By 6 November, with Harry exhausted in Linda’s apartment and about two hours of audio still ahead of me, I wrote: “I’ll be honest its been such a slogfest to get to where i am, i am unsure how im going to go through the next 2 hours”.
That was not me being impatient for a fight every five minutes. I enjoyed the quieter character exchanges. It was the prolonged dreariness that made pressing play feel like an effort. Liking Harry did not automatically make me enjoy every hour I spent following him around Chicago.
Spoilers from here: the mystery finally moves#
I had suspected fairly early that another person with magical knowledge was involved. I did not know who, or whether someone was deliberately setting Harry up, but I wanted the clues to lead somewhere. When Monica’s evasions began to make sense, her connection to Jennifer Stanton emerged and Viktor Sells came into focus, I was pleased to see those threads meet. My reaction was essentially: It’s Viktor!
I also liked that Monica’s behaviour was not just another mysterious-client trick. Harry had good reason to be angry that she hired him and then tried to stop him investigating, but there was fear and a wish to protect her family underneath it.
The action picked up considerably after that. The fight in the lift, with a huge scorpion above Harry and Murphy, was one of my favourite scenes. Harry used wind to drive the lift upwards and crush the thing, only to have to shield them both when the lift fell. That is the Dresden I wanted more of: trapped, improvising and making one dangerous idea work just long enough to create another problem.
The confrontation with Viktor carried that through. Harry’s knowledge and training mattered against raw power. I enjoyed the sheer practicality of him using a broom against scorpions, and the way learning a demon’s name gave him an advantage. His full-name declaration — Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden — made the fight feel properly climactic. There was also a fleeting impression of his mother’s hands on his; I found myself wondering what that meant about her, rather than feeling I had been given an answer.
Morgan saving Harry after spending so much of the book treating him as a threat made a difference too. And after all the danger, the ending became unexpectedly cosy: Bob was back, Murphy was still grumpy, and Toot-Toot got his pizza.
I finished with a grin. I am glad I heard the ending. I just cannot pretend it made the slow middle disappear.
So am I going on to book two? I do not know. I would gladly spend more time with Harry, Bob and Murphy, and I want more of that quick-thinking, oddball magic. Whether I want another long stretch of gloomy Chicago between the good bits is a question I have not answered yet.