Skin Game: Onwards and Onwards and…

It’s past high time for another followup entry. A while back, I explained the merits of a favourite long-running series of mine: Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, the supernatural noir adventures of Harry Dresden, wizard and private investigator of Chicago.

And this summer, Butcher released yet another volume in Dresden’s exploits: Skin Game.

Harry had moved beyond private eye sleuthing, and taken up much, much higher levels of supernatural responsibility in recent books. He’s working on getting to grips with same, when his old nemesis, Mab, Queen of Winter, calls in a favour and tells him to collaborate on a heist – with Nicodemus, one of the series’ most deadly villains, leader of a cabal of fallen angels – on the vaults of a god. Harry has to risk both his friends and himself in

But Mab’s motives are typically mixed and Harry has allies of his own to protect, including his old friend Michael, Knight of the Cross, sworn to vanquish Nicodemus and his ilk.

The Dresden Files have been going a long time, and there’s an argument to be made that it’s jumped the shark. You see, the war with the vampires was the defining theme that ran through most of the series, although it often wasn’t the actual heart of any given book.

Now that war is over, so why are we still here? My abiding sense, taking the time to look back on the series at large, is that the sheer number of subplots seemed to get really out of hand.

The series has regularly hinted at something bigger than the obvious. There was a group, referred to as the Black Council, who had a Moriarty-like hand in much of the plot, and Nicodemus and his Order of the Blackened Denarius was involved, possibly without Nicodemus’ knowledge. And the Black Council may have been in league with the sinister Outsiders; Cthulian beings from beyond reality, which Harry may have a destiny to vanquish…

It may be that I’ve just forgotten more about the Dresden Files than I remember, but it seems as if there’s a lot that’s been cast aside.

Skin Game brings Nicodemus and the Denarians to centre stage in a way that suggests they’re now going to be the main villain, now that the vampires are not a big issue anymore. Harry’s temporary accord with one of the Denarians from Death Masks to White Night has also spawned a new subplot, and the ongoing need to recruit new Knights is still a key point.

But the thing is, this has been the case for quite a while now, in amongst all the other issues, and every time Nicodemus has shown up, he’s always been beaten but not defeated – that is, his plot is thwarted but he himself always gets away so he can come back for another round later, often having scored a partial victory. It’s an old device, but with the main trunk of the series tied off, to keep pulling this is trying my patience. The Black Council may or may not have been replaced with a mole in the Church’s supernatural department. In general, I get the general feeling that the whole series is being reset for a fresh start. Which is asking a lot considering we’re on book fifteen here.

Having said all that, the story of Skin Game itself is quite a lot of fun. I’ve always had a weakness for heists, and a supernatural one is all the better. Within the book, Butcher’s aptitude for mystery writing is demonstrated deftly enough, and his geeky and wry sense of humour, while not quite as pronounced as usual, was still a good giggle.

While the series is starting to feel awfull spun-out, I will say that the foreshadowing and new threads promise to be pretty cool, it’s just a pity they’re coming after so many excellent adventures already logged in.

The Dresden Files are pretty light, and Skin Game is pretty fun and classic Dresden material. It’s as good as any of the books. Only in the larger context of the series up til now does it start to pale. I’m holding out hope that the series will surprise me, but I could forgive your having stopped after Ghost Story, if not earlier…

 

The Rhesus Chart: A Changing Trend

While this summer’s weather has thus far been rather disappointing, I will say that it delivered something I’ve been waiting eagerly for: the opportunity to follow up on some predictions I’ve made in the past.

Two weeks ago Charles Stross added a new volume to his Laundry Files novels, the Rhesus Chart, featuring Bob Howard, a geeky computer programmer and computational demonologist working for the Laundry, otherwise known as the Counter-Possession Unit of Special Operations Executive. Its mission: to defend the United Kingdom against the supernatural vermin from beyond spacetime that threaten to eat our brains.

To recap briefly, the Laundry novels are based in a Lovecraftian universe, which stresses how insignificant humankind is in the vast emptiness of the universe and the immensity of time. And then, it fills time and space up with a hierarchy of beings so anathema to humankind, that they’re dangerous even when they aren’t trying to be.

Initially, the Laundry books were a kind of spooky comedy – Bob’s dry sense of humour and pop-culture references form his coping mechanism and his work politicking stressed him out more than the supernatural alien horrors. Bob’s – and his wife’s – rising status in the organization has brought them into contact, not only with terrifyingly powerful intelligences from beyond, but also the humans who fall down and worship them, usually in nauseatingly cruel rites. And the ultimate cosmic alignment – ‘when the stars are right’ in Lovecraft’s language and CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN in Laundry codetalk – is beginning.

In the Rhesus Chart, Bob has begun to move up into management, and to experiment in the use of the powers his rise has brought with it. And from that point of view, things are amiss: his experiments in occult early warning systems end up exposing a frightening rash of deaths by intantaneous dementia, and the cause – a form of vampirism – is running up against some strange walls of denial inside his organization. Just to make it worse, Bob’s unstable ex-girlfriend, now employed by one of London’s major investment banks, is back on the inside, and she’s brought her blood-hungry team along with her…

The previous book, the Apocalypse Codex, struck me at the time as being a bit of a middle-chapter laying in a lot of stuff that needed doing before it could be applied to book-yet-to-come. And indeed, that seems to be the case: Bob’s marital tensions, his new ally Pete and new higher-up Lockhart were all introduced in the last book and most of the payoff is to be found in the Rhesus Chart.

And it seemed at first that the Rhesus Chart wasn’t going to get a whole lot further. For one thing, the number of times Stross has used the ‘internal threat’ storyline (four if you count the novellas) is getting a little wearisome. For another thing, while the intricacies of the previous books are part of the reason I have re-read them many times, I feel like this one has been bulked out with lots of ‘let’s recap’ conversations, to the point I can’t get lost because I’m being whacked around the head with the all the important points on a regular basis, as well as the personal drama that Bob contends with as his ex returns to the Laundry fold (see what I did there?) which doesn’t really seem to pay off, at least not yet. I’m also starting to detect what seems like the odd inconsistency: it sometimes seems like the nature of the Laundry org chart mutates every book, as do some of the rules and terminology of the organization, and Bob’s former manager, Andy (with whom he’s now on equal terms) seems to have lost several IQ points since last I saw him.

From a storytelling standpoint, the sense of creepiness-out-of-sight which is, I think, a key factor of Cosmic Horror, has been losing its efficacy a little since the last book since, although the remained in shadow from our perspetive, the villains and characters outside of Bob’s immediate circle have been getting chapters from their perspective a lot more. It’s been an odd change and one which is, to me, removing the creepiness that gave the books a lot of their punch.

That said, I’m enjoying Bob’s character development: as the stakes to Bob, personally, have gone up, he’s gotten a lot more focused. The humour has been dialling down slowly since the Fuller Memorandum, and it’s done so at a pace entirely appropriate to the rising stakes. The twist ending of this book, and the personal cost to Bob and his wife Mo, have done a great job of getting me excited for the next round. Bob’s changing perspective has been interesting as he advances up the ladder has been fascinating, and increases the foreboding for when CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN kicks off properly. The power play happening behind the scenes in the Laundry increases the sense of insignificance, and the cost has ramped up the tension for things to get really hairy – or tentacle-y – down the line.

While it’s not laugh-out-loud funny any more, the confluence of business and civil service procedure and supernatural weirdness continues to amuse – I particularly like the vampire team brainstorming sessions. All things considered, apart from some pop-culture references, including to Bob’s American counterpart, Harry Dresden, surprisingly little hay is made of all the vampire-related content, but it’s a geeky good time regardless.

So I’m seriously excited for how things are going. The maintenance of that excitement will be that the next book makes something of the various threads set up or spun through this book. Another small battle laying groundwork for the big showdown is, I think, going to be one too many and it will start feeling a bit workaday. But Stross has done well so far, so let us wait and see.

Just don’t sit with your back to any dimensional portals.

 

The Dresden Files: Noir Mystery, Noir Magic, Noir Comedy

Sometimes I look forward to a new blog post less than other times, especially when things are shades of grey (though fewer than fifty – not going there) or if it’s a disappointing negative review. Other times, though, it gives me that most golden of opportunities: the chance to legitimately gush about something I like.

I keep banging on about how I tend to aver from long, epic novel series (there’s a reason I’ve never reviewed Game of Thrones) and yet there are two exceptions. As established, the Honor Harrington Series is one of them. The other is Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, the 14th and most recent of which, Cold Days, I lately finished.

 

My favourite, but one of many!

The Dresden Files are named for their main character: Harry Dresden, a wizard who runs a private detective service in Chicago. Called upon to take cases involving occult mysteries of all sorts ranging from curses to black magic to possession, and clients ranging from shellshocked spouses to troubled teens to the Queen of Winter herself. Harry’s tenacious and cavalier style rubs him up the wrong way against the White Council, the aloof, often cold and officious rulership of wizards, and against such forces as vampires, spirits of the seasons and the mysterious Black Council, a hidden organization whose hand is behind much of the chaos aggrieving Chicago and our hero and his friends.

I made a passing remark that the Mortal Instruments that it’s one of few examples in vogue these days of urban fantasy – that is, stories of the fantastical and supernatural that also use the modern city rather than the forests, meadows and castles on hilltops the word ‘fantasy’ traditionally implies. Jim Butcher clearly knows and loves Chicago and its streets and set pieces form a wonderful variety of backdrops for the books.

Chicago is just the kind of town for this sort of thing, glamour and gungy bits in just the right proportions: up until book seven or so, the novels are styled after noir crime novels, where the long-suffering detective has a funny customer come in and ask them to look into something. Although the ‘funny customer’ is sometimes, for example, a vampire as in Dead Beat. He starts following the trail in a determined, focused, somewhat thickheaded persistent way, hits up his contacts on the force and the underworld, and finds himself up to his neck into something way bigger than he bargained for. In Dead Beat for instance, a massive necromantic summoning plotted by the cult of an infamous sorcerer.

Since Proven Guilty or so, the stories have changed tone, with Harry moving into a different role as guardian, father figure to his apprentice, and the progression of his pals and contacts to becoming truly dear to him; the plotting goes from a detective and his band of brothers (and sisters) to more of a ‘created family’ dynamic, a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is in aid of a raising of the stakes and the transition from semi-episodic style to a bigger scope, much the same as Honor Harrington or, to be more on point, the Laundry Files.

It has been said that every so often, one discovers a story that fundamentally clicks with you. The writing style, the characters, or something about it just makes it work. The Dresden Files and the Laundry Files, for me, are those stories. Thinking about it, I’m not sure there’s a single fictional character I’ve personally related to as much as I have Harry Dresden. He’s impatient, knowledgable but not a particularly profound thinker, who goes at problems head-on, has a strong sense of right and wrong and a complete lack of tact or guile when it comes to the latter. He’s a rescue the innocents, blast the bad guy to pieces kind of a guy. He’s also shortsighted, a wise guy, given to self-reproach and shouldering absolutely astonishing amounts of guilt. And he has, by his own admission, some rather chauvinistic if good-hearted ideas about how to treat women. In short, this is what a real guy like him would be like, if he also happened to be a wizard.

The stories themselves introduce you to the world of magic a little bit at a time. It’s very much in the tradition of the “all legends are true” style, where Queen Mab, Titania, Kris Kringle, the Archangels, vampires, werewolves, dragons and many others exist and are as complex and formidable as the stories that have grown up around them. Butcher clearly knows his folklore and doesn’t play the ‘modern’ versions of these ideas the way, say, the Mortal Instruments or Buffy tended to do.

Speaking of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the thing that cinches the deal for me is that the Dresden Files are hilarious. I mentioned that Harry is a wisecracker extraordinare. His internal monologues are consistently hilarious and his banter with his porn-loving spirit assistant, Bob the Skull, is always good value.

“‘Then why is it that you stare at naked girls every chance you get,” I said, “but not naked men?’
‘It’s an aesthetic choice,’ Bob said loftily. ‘As a gender, women exist on a plane far beyond men when it comes to the artistic appreciation of external beauty.’
‘And they have boobs,’ I said.
‘And they have boobs!’”
-from Turn Coat

As in the Laundry novels, the juxtaposition of all this magic and sorcery with banal everyday life or one’s expectations (such as Harry getting into a punch-up with Father Christmas or bribing pixies with pizza) is a great source of comedy.

And, putting a cherry on it all, Butcher has the nerdiest sense of humour ever! The texts are peppered with references to all sorts of fandoms. Dresden verifies his identity to his apprentice in Ghost Story by telling her she’s to go to the Dagobah System and learn from Yoda. Once there was a reference to the Princess Bride and to Firefly in the same paragraph! Bliss! Factor in Star Trek, the Lord of the Rings, the Evil Overlord List…it’s gloriously funny.

The Dresden Files aren’t the heaviest read in the world, usually. As with most mystery stories I have to read them more than once sometimes to get my head around them. I also have trouble remembering what happens in which books. As fun as they are, they all sort of bleed together for me. Maybe it’s because, while it’s one of the few I can really get into, the Dresden Files are written in first person.

As is usually the case, the change in style as the scope of the stories has widened might lose some readers. I was also getting the feeling, around the time of Changes, that the sheer amount of angst, pain and difficulty Harry’s life has subjected him to was getting to a point of overload, but for my money Butcher knows just when to let something really good happen to let the pressure off a bit. The pacing had a bit of a jumpy period between Proven Guilty and Changes, I felt, as the stakes of each book would soar pretty high before going back to something about level with the status quo. Changes in particular might have seemed like an ending, and yet we continue. Given all the crazy, fate-defying things he’s done, one wonders how Dresden’s story could possibly be brought to a satisfactory and fulfilling conclusion at this point. This is why I distrust these long runners: they weave themselves ever more intricate and you start to wonder how it could possibly live up in the end to the buildup it’s been having. Plus, for all the trauma and emotional turmoil Harry experiences, the terrible things that happen only seem to really affect him when the plot needs them to. Otherwise, given the horrible battles he’s been in, you wonder how he could still be functional after all this time.

All of these are mostly open questions, for the moment anyway. They’re not as intellectually profound as the Laundry Files, but they are funny, geeky, exciting, melodramatic, gritty, and enthralling. Jim Butcher and Charles Stross, very much brothers in their trade, are probably my two favourite writers active today, after Sir Terry Pratchett, of whom both are demonstrably big fans. I heartily recommend any of the first six books to get your feet wet and see if you want to dive in, ‘cause it’s endless fun.

“’No,’ I thought ‘It’s Harry Dresden the, uh, lizard! Harry Dresden the wizard is one door down.’”
–Storm Front