Harry
Dresden has outed himself as a wizard in the Yellow Pages. He’s the only one
self-advertising, mind you. But he needs clients to pay rent and so offers to
investigate incidents involving the paranormal or finding missing objects.
Naturally, the Chicago Police Department has him on retainer for when something
bizarre comes up, but they don’t pay well and some of the cops think he’s a
fraud. It turns out he is an actual wizard, living in a dilapidated basement
apartment. At least those are his current humble beginnings in the first book
in the Dresden Files series, Storm Front, written by Jim Butcher.
The
story follows the lines of a detective noir novel, but with supernatural bits
included. There’s a police officer ‘partner’, a journalist, and a supportive
grunting neighborhood bartender. For TV-watchers Dresden might be a combination
of Grimm and The Mentalist. There is magic involved, but much depends on
being observant and keeping one’s wits in tricky situations. In that sense,
there’s nothing too special about Storm
Front. Harry Dresden is not like Harry Potter, in case you were wondering.
There is something akin to a Statute of Secrecy among the wizarding folk in
Dresden’s world, but he’s willing to breach it for cash. But he has principles.
He won’t appear at parties, provide endless purses or make love potions. He
really is a detective at heart, and seems to want to do his bit to help others.
Dresden thinks there’s a need, even though most people don’t believe he’s a
‘real wizard’. Here’s his justification.
The end of the twentieth
century and the dawn of the new millennium had seen something of a renaissance
in the public awareness of the paranormal. Psychics, haunts, vampires – you name
it. People still didn’t take them seriously, but all the things Science had
promised us hasn’t come to pass. Disease was still a problem. Starvation was
still a problem. Violence and crime and war were still problems. In spite of
the advance of technology, things just hadn’t changed the way everyone had
hoped and thought they would. Science, the largest religion of the twentieth
century, had become somewhat tarnished… People were looking for something – I
think they just didn’t know what. And even though they were once again starting
to open their eyes to the world of magic and the arcane that had been with them
all the while, they still thought I must be some kind of joke.
Storm Front is written entirely in the first person –
Dresden’s perspective of course. This has two advantages. One, the action moves
quickly and doesn’t split into several parallel threads. Two, the reader gets a
glimpse of how a wizard thinks internally. This latter point is what I find
interesting. Dresden drops interesting tidbits along the way about how magic
works. I see the potential for a systematic (perhaps even ‘scientific’)
building of magical theory in the author’s approach; it’s at least enough for
me to put the next book in the series on my reading list.
Unlike
in Harry Potter, where the interference of magic and Muggle electricity is only
mentioned in passing, this link is experienced explicit by Dresden. Here
are a couple of passages.
The phone rang again almost
the instant I put it down, making me jump. I peered at it. I don’t trust
electronics. Anything manufactured after the forties is suspect – and doesn’t
seem to have much liking for me. You name it: cars, radios, telephones, TVs,
VCRs – none of them seem to behave well for me. I don’t even like to use automatic
pencils. … The music continued for a few seconds more, and then it began to
skip over a section about two seconds long, repeating it over and over again. I
grimaced. Like I said, I have this effect on machinery. It has something to do
with being a wizard, with working with magical forces. The more delicate and
modern the machine is, the more likely it is that something will go wrong if I
get close enough to it. I can kill a copier at fifty paces.
Driving
a car can sometimes be a challenge. Dresden also avoids elevators, for good
reason. I have previously speculated that the link is via electromagnetic radiation. He calls the science of magic ‘quasiphysics’ – which seems
appropriate. When investigating what seems like a magical crime, Dresden concludes.
There just weren’t all that
many people who could get enough power into that kind of spell to make it work
– unless there was some flaw in the quasiphysics that governed magic that
[redacted for spoiler]; and I wouldn’t know that until I had pursued the
forbidden research.
Dresden
has a lab in the sub-basement of his apartment. From his description, it sounds
like a chemistry lab. He discusses the essence of making potions – providing a
rudimentary theory of sorts – but the explanation seems weak or underdeveloped
to me. He also has a lab assistant in the form of a spirit that he has trapped
in a skull named Bob. It turns out Bob is like Alexa. But instead of being
connected to the Internet, he’s connected to a treasure trove of magical
information down the ages. Bob is helpful with remembering potion recipes and
adapting them to the brewer. There seems to be some uniqueness between the
efficacy of the objects used and who brews the potion and for what purpose,
i.e., potion recipes are dynamic and must be adapted. It isn’t clear yet
exactly how or why. There is however a mention of lab coats and wizarding
robes!
I took my off my duster and
got out my heavy flannel robe before I went down into the lab. That’s why
wizards wear robes, I swear to you. It’s just too damned cold in the lab to go
without one. … [Bob] made his residence inside the skull that had been prepared
for him several hundred years ago, and it was his job to remember thing. For
obvious reasons, I can’t use a computer to store information and keep track of
the slowly changing laws of quasiphysics. That’s why I had Bob. He had worked
with dozens of wizards over the years, and it had given him a vast repertoire
of knowledge – that, and a really cocky attitude.
Dresden
considers the energy required before he attempts to cast a spell. Energy
efficiency is crucial. I think a sensible theory of magic requires you to expand a proportional amount of energy for the changes you are making to the material world, so I applaud this effort. This is why one needs powerful objects to store magical energy. Dresden makes a
direct connection when he discusses ‘violet’ light that he senses in a place
full of magic energy that he can potentially access. In the electromagnetic
spectrum, violet is at the edge of visible light and carries the most energy
compared to other colors of the rainbow. (Is there a magical color?) There
is also an interesting discussion of the tension between dark magic and light
magic – I think this is something that could be explored in subsequent books,
and there might be an underpinning magical theory to this.
I
close with his description of ectoplasm. Yes, there is an occasion where Dresden gets covered in the goo. But there’s now a direct connection when matter is
summoned.
Both of us were coated in
dust that was stuck to the stinking, colorless goo, the ectoplasm that magic
called from somewhere else whenever generic mass was called for in a spell. The
goo wouldn’t last long – within a few more minutes, it would simply dissipate,
vanish into thin air, return to wherever it came from in the first place. For
the moment, it was just a rather disgusting, slimy annoyance.
It’s
enough to keep me interested in reading the next book.
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