Storm Front

[jeregenest]

I just read a piece of fluff called Storm Front by Jim Butcher, leant to me by asciikitty which is fun, if you don’t mind the utter lack of even the ghost of creativity. Marlowe meets magic has been done ad nausea, and frankly, it has been done a whole lot better. But since this little sub-sub-genre is incredibly popular right now I gave it a shot and I’m not disappointed.

Originality isn't Butcher's strength. He is a promiscuous borrower, hybridizing from pretty much every corner of geek culture. Storm Front's story is a mishmash of noir and cop show clichés, by way of epic fantasy. As a gamer I can’t really fault that in someone else, and Butcher's use of the derivative as a strategy possibly shows a great deal of savvy, he knows what he's doing and takes a great deal of enjoyment from it. This book is a love letter to all the stories, comics, movies and books that Butcher obviously admits being influenced by -- and since I've been influenced by the same stuff I can take pleasure in following the threads. I can understand why this series has a rpg coming out, it is very much a gamer’s book.

Comments

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

oh but it was such FUN fluff!

There's a reason I said it felt like Spenser - all the allusions and stuff, and Marlowe, and the lack or originality. So! Much! Fun!

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Not knocking that fun, I think I pointed it out several times. Its a good light beach read, which makes me wish I was at the ebach when I read it.

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I've been reading beach stuff like crazy this summer, just because I *can*. So! Much! Fluff!

(HBP is certainly fluffy enough. I'm loving it so far. And could you believe, Neville is made of chocolate?)

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I was very disappointed Neville didn't get a bigger part in this book.

[vampyrusgirl.livejournal.com]

I don't mind fluff reads as long as they don't try to disguise themselves as something more. I think that's the main problem I had with Angels & Demons by Dan Brown and why I won't read Da Vinci Code. Bad, fluffy writing trying to be something else (I don't know what).

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

So far, I am too. I *like* Neville.

And if I don't stop now, it's going to be way spoilery for unsuspecting types. So I'll stop now.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Theres fluff and then theres bad fluff. Dan Brown is bad fluff. I demand that my fluff at least have a certain quality to its writing.

[vampyrusgirl.livejournal.com]

That was my problem with him. It was just bad writing. When I tried to express this opinion to someone who liked him, I was accused of being a snob. Which is so far from the truth. I read plenty of fluff, but like you said, the writing has to be good. Dan Brown's dialogue sometimes made me physically cringe, practically.

[firebranch.livejournal.com]

I'm going to have to forget I read that, now. And I just bought the book...

[asciikitty.livejournal.com]

Well, if you just pretend not to know that he's made of...

ok, dead horse, I'm done.

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

I enjoy Butcher's books without swooning over them. I actually like the wide-eyed grab bag you noted, but the sub-Marlovian prose gets to me so I don't reread them. (Unlike, say, Robert Weinberg's occult adventure series beginning with The Devil's Auction, which drips with True Pulp Goodness.)

Also, Missouri-dwelling Butcher's choice to set his novels in Chicago while apparently having only a tenuous grasp of Chicago, much less what makes Chicago, in fact, the best place ever to set such novels, irritates the hell out of me. Of course, Weinberg is a Chicago native, and he doesn't quite get it either, but at least the geography makes freaking sense.

[neelk]

I thought Storm Front was not that great. The plot, characters, and setting were derivative, and the prose was just a little worse than adequate. But each one has been rather better than the last, and this is really weird; I'm used to an arc of clunky-first-novel, pretty-good-second, adequate-third, derivative-and-terrible-fourth-plus. Instead, Butcher is on a steady upward track, and I thought the fourth book, Summer Knight, is a tight little noir thriller that's not entirely humiliated by a comparison to Raymond Chandler.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I'm just not sure I could make it through to the 4th.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Aahh, Robert Weinberg is the guy who wrote The Logical Magician, the horror! Are you saying that his other books are better?

[princeofcairo.livejournal.com]

Yes, although Logical Magician was perfectly fine if you read it properly as an attempt at a modern Unknown Stories novel rather than as a fantasy. Certainly the prose had a certain loping flow that I don't find in Butcher.