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…

 

Saga: An Awesome Epic

Back when I reviewed Babylon 5, I argued that with sufficiently different trappings, even the most standard storylines can be fresh and exciting.

And comics, with the benefit of visuals and a willingness to be ‘edgy,’ can help make the story look as well as read different.

A friend recently recommended via Facebook the ongoing series Saga by Brian K. Vaughn and drawn by Fiona Staples, currently up to volume 3. Despite the strangely bland title, I was sanguine that it was worthy of my attention when I saw the cover:

Epic battle couple side by side? Nothing special. Epic battle couple of mixed ethnicity side by side, the lady breastfeeding their baby? Unique. So I grabbed it at the first opportunity.

In a galaxy far, far away (I assume), the people of the planet Landfall have been at war for so long with their moon, Wreath, that it’s become a habit. But since the destruction of one would destroy both (being as they orbit each other), they take the Cold War approach of pitting proxies against each other.

It’s a war of forces: the Wreath folk (distinguished by their peoples’ various horns and antlers) use magic in tactical applications, while the Landfallians (distinguished by having wings) use more conventional, if advanced, technology. Indeed, one of their proxies, the Robot Kingdom, are advanced technology.

Marko, of Wreath was, like so many, a fresh-faced young soldier who, sickened by his first sight of combat, surrendered to Landfall on the spot.

Alana, of Landfall, was a regular grunt, stuck on prisoner duty when she hesitated to bomb civilians.

Marko, as previously mentioned, was a prisoner. As they came to share their mutual doubts about the rightness of the cause, they fell in love, and at the point we commence the tale, they’re on the run, while also welcoming their new baby daughter, Hazel.

Neither of the warring leaderships are pleased by this development. Ostensibly for the purposes of general morale, both want Alana and Marko dead, while the Wreath leaders, at least, want Hazel captured alive for reasons as yet unclear.

Marko and Alana remain on the run, picking up, at various points, a teenaged ghost babysitter, a rocketship grown from a tree, and Marko’s hardboiled but gentle-hearted mother. All the while, Prince Robot IV (as in ‘four,’ not ‘the Fourth,’ I think) of the Robot Kingdom, despite his own new family and his wartime trauma, is sent by his Landfall puppeteers to hunt the couple down, while Wreath has contracted a freelancer known as The Will, a sombre killer with a soft spot for innocents, who ends up with his own band, comprising his living lie detector the Lying Cat, a rescued slave girl and Marko’s Amazonian ex-fiancee.

The setting is both awesome and slightly ridiculous. It clearly owes much to Star Wars, but it reminds me of ElfQuest in that, apart from taking place in space, it has the hallmarks of a classic fantasy: the Landfallians and Wreathfolk both look like the types you’d run into around Oberon’s court. A lot of the other ‘aliens’ look like anthropomorphic animals of various sorts. They curse and use military jargon a lot more than average. Oh, and did I mention that they grow rocket ships out of trees?

Then you have the Robot Kingdom, made up, seemingly, of silvery aristocrats with televisions instead of heads and, for robots, very enthusiastic sex lives. Then there are the freelancers – sort of like what you’d get if the bounty hunters in Star Wars were unionized – who all have aliases starting with ‘The’ like ‘The Will,’ ‘The Stalk,’ ‘The Brand,’ ‘The March’ and similar.

A universe structured thusly is wonderfully fertile ground for interesting characters, and not only did Vaughn and Staples do that, they did it with more flourish and daring than most fiction even today has the gall to do.

People of colour abound, including but not limited to Alana – given her appearance and tough-gal demeanour, if this was a movie I think she’d be played by Zoe Saldana. Neither Wreatheans nor Landfallians lack for diversity in appearance. There’s a B-Plot involving two investigative journalists who are also a gay couple. No Steven Moffat-esque jokes at their expense, their relationship is just there, and apart from suffering cultural persecution on their homeworld, it isn’t a dominant part of their story so far. Being gay isn’t the point of their character, as is so often the case.

The villains – or perhaps I should say antagonists – are very nuanced characters: The Will may be a cold-blooded mercenary, but he’s got a strict code and a soft heart worthy of Commander Vimes. Prince Robot IV is a snob and a racist, but the war has messed with him pretty badly, and his desire to see his wife and start a family makes him, for want of a better term, more human.

And something the authours seem to love is mucking about with gender roles. Our heroes are quite the juxtaposition: Marko is a buff warrior man, but his natural disposition is gentle, fussy, and nurturing. He might rip into anyone who threatens his family, but you’d have to push him far before killing comes into his range of options. That said, he’s uncompromising, flawed and possibly a bit whiny.

Alana, by contrast, is aggressive, curses like a sailor, would drink like one if she weren’t pregnant and then breastfeeding, and has a quite spectacular appetite for sex, food and corny literature, and then can turn into a gooey-eyed puddle when her baby smiles at her. She’s also abrasive and insecure. But unlike a lot of tough action girls in fiction, she has a soft side that she can show without forever discarding the toughness.
Fair warning however, that the daring of the story does come with a certain discomfort factor: sex and nudity and foul language are not spared, and are often quite graphic. When the time comes to break out the gore, it’s done with vivid aplomb, and some of the gore and monsters are so extreme it’s actually legitimately nauseating.

Unlike my sometime nemesis Game of Thrones, however, the gore and general spectacle isn’t in every single frame. It comes in exactly as often as it needs to and that’s part of why it’s so very effective. It’s deployed for maximum punch and not just splashed across everything. Juxtaposition of imagery is done quite well. A good example is Isabel, the star couple’s ghostly babysitter. A wisecracking, rather gangsta teenager who loves babies, you’re reminded her being a ghost is no joke by the entrails hanging out past her t-shirt, the product of having been killed by a landmine.

Other than that the only thing that I find jarring about the story is a criticism I’ve felt about a lot of comics: the medium does not lend itself to indepth or paced storytelling. We get dropped into the tale in medias res, as they say, and the plot proceeds in a way that’s so brisk it can seem like it’s skimming by too fast. Characters come and go really fast, and keeping on top of their names can get tricky. Having said that, the addition of the visual element lets you remember character profiles if not names, and as the numerous elements pile up, over time they add up to a sense of the wider universe you’re in.

Saga, therefore, is unique. It’s built on classic tropes and then painted over spectacularly. It’s truly bold – sometimes a little overpowering – but fresh and different, in ways that hit so many socially important notes.

For the beauty of its art, for the depth of its characters, for the colour of its universe, for its socially responsible storytelling choices, Saga is well worth checking out!

“This is an original fantasy book with no superheroes, two non-white leads and an opening chapter featuring graphic robot sex. I thought we might be cancelled by our third issue.”
– Brian K. Vaughn

 

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