Storm Front (The Dresden Files, Book 1)

Storm Front Audio Book
Written By Jim Butcher
Narrated By James Marsters (Spike from Buffy The Vampire Slayer & Angel)

My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. I'm a wizard. I work out of an office in midtown Chicago. As far as I know, I'm the only openly practicing professional wizard in the country. You can find me in the yellow pages, under Wizards. Believe it or not, I'm the only one there.

<center>My ad looks like this:
HARRY DRESDEN--WIZARD
Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations.
Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates.
No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties
or Other Entertainment</center>

With rent past due and a decent meal becoming an issue of some importance, Harry needs work, and soon. A call from a distraught wife, and another from Lt Murphy of the Chicago PD Special Investigation Unit makes Harry believe things are looking up, but they are about to get worse, much worse. Someone is harnessing immense supernatural forces to commit a series of grisly murders. Someone has violated the first law of magic: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Tracking that someone takes Harry into the dangerous underbelly of Chicago, from mobsters to vampires, while he himself is under suspicion of the crimes. One thing is certain, if he can't stop whoever is on this killing spree, Harry will be the next victim.

As in the audio adaptation of Butcher's first Dresden Files novel, Storm Front, Marsters (who played Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) slips easily into the role of down-on-his-luck wizard Harry Dresden. Marsters's self-deprecating tone fits the character perfectly; he reads with a dry, ironic humor that doesn't mask Harry's genuine concern for the lives of innocents. Marsters also displays a remarkable skill for lending even the strangest characters and creatures voices-including gentleman gangster Johnny Marconi, his henchmen, a sexy female werewolf and Bob, the British-accented talking skull. In this outing, Harry is again out of cash, and police detective Karrin Murphy, who's still angry at him over the events of the first book, isn't inclined to throw work his way. But soon a series of mysterious, violent murders sends her to Harry for help. Are the killings the work of a local motorcycle gang? Or a werewolf-and if so, which werewolf? Mac Finn, the werewolf environmentalist? The group of idealistic college kids who voluntarily become werewolves by night? Or the trigger-happy group of FBI agents turned werewolf vigilantes? Though the price of this audio package may put off some listeners, Marsters's lively telling makes it worth every penny.
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The offbeat Dresden Files is an expanding series of detective novels about Harry Dresden, a wizard with a consulting practice in modern-day Chicago. Harry's profession offers him little money, lots of mockery, the suspicion of his magical colleagues, plenty of danger, and not much income. It offers readers some unconventional detective work, whimsy, humor, and suspense. Here Dresden discovers that mobsters have enlisted occult forces for nefarious purposes. The casting of James Marsters of TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to narrate indicates who the intended audience is. Marsters does a nice, low-key job with the first-person narrative, flagging slightly at the home stretch (as does the text), but perking up for the finish. He handles the male and female, and the human and para-human, characters with equal aplomb, even managing some moving pathos out of unpromising moments. Y.R. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine