Sure, Dresden. Whatever you say.
The Dresden Files is an ongoing urban fantasy series written by Jim Butcher, about a wizard and private investigator named Harry Dresden living in modern Chicago. You know all those stories you’ve heard, read or seen in movies? The ones about fairies, werewolves, vampires, demons, ghosts…yeah, turns out they’re all real, and Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden is here to make sure that none of those supernatural creatures get away with any crimes they commit. The fancy wizard council that monitors all magic users also has it out for him.
The Dresden Files has been going on for a while now, currently with 15 books in the main series and a number of side stories as well as a few graphic novel adaptations. Also a tabletop RPG. And a shortlived TV series. All of the books in the main series are narrated by Harry Dresden, in his signature snarky way, and since he’s a dork as well as a wizard, he makes a not insignificant number of pop culture references as you can see here. The writing and worldbuilding in the first two or three books are a bit rough, as you might imagine, but the series is very engaging, with the aforementioned snarky protagonist (prone to occasional bouts of mass destruction – usually unintentional) as well as a host of equally colourful supporting characters and villains. I mean, Harry’s primary support and source of information is a perverted spirit of intellect trapped in a skull. His name is Bob. Dresden gave him that name. Events in later books make the series darker, and considering Jim Butcher is planning to finish off the series with an ‘apocalyptic trilogy’, I’m guessing it’s only going to get darker. Even still, Harry Dresden remains more or less the same snarky dork of a wizard. A little more scarred, a little more grim perhaps, but the humour and snark of the series never fully goes away.
I don’t mind saying that I was on a serious Dresden binge for a while – I carefully reserved each subsequent book from the library in a way that let me read a Dresden book every week. Every moment I had spare time I would be reading. The beauty of urban fantasy is it coats the fantastic and unfamiliar in something familiar – reading something like A Song of Ice and Fire or even Harry Potter requires the reader to learn and understand a completely different world and/or culture. Urban fantasy, like The Dresden Files, has the setting on Earth, in an Earth city, Chicago in this case, and references that even the casual reader can pick up on – Dresden compares himself to Gandalf on occasion, and I’m pretty sure he’s a gigantic Star Wars nerd. It also helps that Jim Butcher’s writing style is pretty straightforward; you aren’t going to be looking up long or obscure words or trying to decipher what this made-up fantasy word means.
What the above paragraph is saying: The Dresden Files? It’s pretty damn good, it’s pretty easy to read and you’ll most likely get hooked pretty quickly. If not, try reading the first 4 or 5 books – the worldbuilding and writing should stabilise by book 3, I think.
Here’s a last quote from the wizard himself: ‘The world is getting weirder. Darker every single day. Things are spinning around faster and faster, and threatening to go completely awry. Falcons and falconers. The center cannot hold.
But in my corner of the country, I’m trying to nail things down. […] I don’t want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I’d rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges, and where elves don’t come swooping out to snatch children from their cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p’s and q’s.
My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no one else can help you, give me a call. I’m in the book.’
Conversations with the Wind 