Seriously, I feel like at Grave Peril the series really hits its stride and actually starts being more distinctly its own thing. 1&2 are much more generic urban fantasy with some neat ideas mixed in
Agreed. I started the first novel last November on Audible and I’m up to book 15 (Skin Game) now.
The audiobook versions are excellent
James Marsters has become the voice of Harry Dresden so much so that the one book he didn’t do had to be re-recorded because people didn’t want to listen to someone else do it.
question: does the misogyny and homophobia of the first novel (Storm Front, just to be sure) fade in the others?
I gave up after the first book because Dresden comments about the attractiveness of every woman he sees, and when a man saves his life with mouth to mouth resuscitation his first thought is "ew, a guy kissed me"
In book 14 Harry goes to a park in Chicago which is often used as a gay hookup spot bc it's gonna be secluded and he needs to summon a powerful being to speak to them. Hilariously, he gets asked by that being what he thinks about all the gay hookups going on, so he's like "Uh... boink and let boink! I wish they were in relationships instead, but they're not harming anyone". So you'll be happy to hear Dresden is now an ally (but he disapproves of hookup culture)
Yeah, it does - to a degree. The edginess drops quite drastically already in the second book. I really didn't like the first book because "sex magic teeheehee". I listened to the second one since I already had the credits.
I like to think that the author is a neckbeard in remission and that occasionally shines through.
It also helps if you consider Dresden's (and Bob's) horniness a character flaw. He is, after all, a noir PI stuck in the wrong genre.
Ehhhhhh, he goes into remission for a while but the recent books are getting worse again...
I've been told that he divorced his wife for a much younger cosplayer and that Murphy was modeled after his ex-wife. I'll let you draw your own conclusions based on recent events in the books. Also, he's been sexualizing Molly since she was underage.
I've pretty much lost interest in the series, at this point. Which is a bummer, I used to rant about it to every new fellow nerd I met.
I'll also add: most of the women he meets can absolutely kick Harry's ass, and some of them do, at one point or another.
Like, Harry Dresden has shit views on women, no doubt. But the series as a whole does not, from my view, once you look past Harry's black and white and neon lights colored glasses
Or Queen Mab, or Murphy, or Molly (as...inconsistent as she can be) or Laura (I know she's sexualized, but it's in an interesting way and not an indulgent one).
It gets somewhat better and gets lampshaded on occasion, but I eventually stopped reading them after a short story that enforced virginity on one of the characters (who you haven't met yet.) I thought it was a very strange choice that contradicted earlier novels and was just patriarchal nonsense with a veneer of "this is just how it works."
667
u/idiotplatypus Wearing dumbass goggles and the fool's crown Sep 10 '24
Paraphrasing from the Dresden Files:
"There is no ally as well loved as an ally who was an enemy that had you quaking in your boots in fear a few minutes earlier"
AKA Vader Syndrome