Review: Storm Front

Title: Storm Front

Series: The Dresden Files #1

Author: Jim Butcher

Genre: Detective Noir/Urban Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Sexual talk/discussion/innuendos (a lot), sexual content, sexism, gore (severe), death, blood, murder, body horror, domestic abuse (mentions), violence, drug use (mentions)

Back Cover:

Dresden is the best at what he does. Well, technically, he’s the only at what he does. So when the Chicago P.D. has a case that transcends mortal creativity or capability, they come to him for answers. For the “everyday” world is actually full of strange and magical things—and most don’t play well with humans. That’s where Harry comes in. Takes a wizard to catch a—well, whatever. There’s just one problem. Business, to put it mildly, stinks.

So when the police bring him in to consult on a grisly double murder committed with black magic, Harry’s seeing dollar signs. But where there’s black magic, there’s a black mage behind it. And now that mage knows Harry’s name. And that’s when things start to get interesting.

Magic – it can get a guy killed.

Review:

Detective noir is not my genre. My awareness of the tropes and the general ideas and structure comes from media making fun of the genre rather than anything from the genre itself, and the only thing I’ve previously read that’s even close is This Body’s Not Big Enough For Both Of Us, which I don’t think really counts. I picked this up because my husband thought I’d like it, and I finished it because it was just interesting enough to be better than the hassle of trying to download a new book on crappy work wifi.

Dresden himself is an unapologetic sexist, though he calls it “a commitment to old-fashioned values.” The book itself doesn’t treat women any better, either. The female characters in this book are murdered for being sexy, using sex for evil, using sex appeal to manipulate people, abused for not being sexy enough, or not sexy but could be with a little effort. Every description of a woman focuses on her curves, how feminine her lips are, the shape of her breasts, and either how sexy she is or how sexy she could be if she tried. An encounter with a vampire left the impression that the most horrifying thing was that her nice human boobs were rotted and saggy in her vampire form. Even Detective Karrin Murphy, a Chicago police officer who Dresden works with a lot and who he claims to have some kind of friendship with, is mainly described by commenting on her feminine shape and how she could be sexy if she wasn’t so focused on being a cop.

Which leads us perfectly into how absolutely obsessed this book was with sex. The murder victims are murdered over sex. The antagonist is obsessed with sex. Dresden’s magical assistant is obsessed with sex. The plot hinges on who is having sex with who and where. If you had no contact with humans besides this book, you would be forgiven for assuming that the only thing humans ever think about is sex. My biggest problem with books targeted for adults is that it seems like the authors are afraid that if they don’t put in enough sex, the book will get categorized as Worthless Children’s Literature. Storm Front cranked that up to eleven – I don’t think there’s a single page that doesn’t have either “I’m a hard-bitten exhausted detective man,” gristly gory death, or sex. Often more than one.

All that said, the book was not entirely awful. I was curious enough about the connection between Dresden’s two cases (the double-murder and a missing husband case – I’m genre-savvy enough to know they had to be connected somehow) that I did want to find out how the mystery ended. And the urban fantasy elements kept me from being entirely bored with the detective bits. But detective noir is still not my genre, and I’m not sex-obsessed enough to be interested in reading more. I didn’t completely hate this book, but I’m not reading any more of this series.

The Dresden Files series:

1. Storm Front
2. Fool Moon
3. Grave Peril
4. Summer Knight
5. Death Masks
6. Blood Rites
7. Dead Beat
8. Proven Guilty
9. White Night
10. Small Favor
11. Turn Coat
12. Changes
13. Ghost Story
14. Cold Days
15. Skin Game
16. Peace Talks
17. Battle Ground
18. Twelve Months
19. Mirror Mirror

Review: This Body’s Not Big Enough For Both Of Us

Title: This Body’s Not Big Enough For Both Of Us

Author: Edgar Cantero

Genre: Mostly Detective Noir, a tiny bit Thriller, a little Dark Comedy

Trigger Warnings: Transphobic terminology (mention), blood, death, guns, self-injury, pedophilia (mentions), intravenous drug use, car crashes

Back Cover:

In a dingy office in Fisherman’s Wharf, the glass panel in the door bears the names of A. Kimrean and Z. Kimrean. Private Eyes. Behind the door there is only one desk, one chair, one scrawny androgynous P.I. in a tank top and skimpy waistcoat. A.Z., as they are collectively known, are twin brother and sister. He’s pure misanthropic logic, she’s wild hedonistic creativity. A.Z. have been locked in mortal battle since they were in utero … which is tricky because they, very literally, share one single body. That’s right. One body, two pilots. The mystery and absurdity of how Kimrean functions, and how they subvert every plotline, twist, explosion, and gunshot–and confuse every cop, neckless thug, cartel boss, ninja, and femme fatale–in the book is pure Cantero magic.

Someone is murdering the sons of the ruthless drug cartel boss known as the Lyon in the biggest baddest town in California–San Carnal. The notorious A.Z. Kimrean must go to the sin-soaked, palm-tree-lined streets of San Carnal, infiltrate the Lyon’s inner circle, and find out who is targeting his heirs, and while they are at it, rescue an undercover cop in too deep, deal with a plucky young stowaway, and stop a major gang war from engulfing California. They’ll face every plot device and break every rule Elmore Leonard wrote before they can crack the case, if they don’t kill each other (themselves) first.

This Body’s Not Big Enough for Both of Us is a mind-blowing, gender-bending, genre-smashing romp through the entire pantheon of action and noir. It is also a bold, tautly crafted novel about family, being weird, and claiming your place in your own crazy story, that can only come from the mind of Edgar Cantero.

Review:

Despite how dark and downright horrifying this book can be at times, This Body’s Not Big Enough for Both of Us was, overall, astonishingly fun.

Adrian and Zooey are conjoined twins. Except instead of having two torsos, or two heads coming out of one torso, or an abnormal number of limbs, or something like that, they share a body with two arms, two legs, and one head – perfectly normal to look at. They’re two separate people sharing one body and one brain – Adrian has the left half, Zooey has the right. Adrian is pure calculation and logic, and Zooey is pure emotion and hedonism. And they hate each other.

But together, they make a really good private eye. So when the police department calls them in to help an undercover cop prevent a gang war, they get in a little bit over their heads, especially since Adrian is actually trying to get things done and Zooey gets them in trouble by acting on impulses and feelings and never thinking things through. Zooey worked really well as as foil for Adrian, but I really liked him the best. Neither of them were exactly good people, but I related much more to Adrian’s logic than Zooey’s free-spiritedness.

This book does get really dark. There’s car crashes, guns, gory murders and injuries, questions of what exactly a minor child should do when she knows her father’s a mobster and how to cope when the polar opposite sibling you hate shares your body, the trauma of growing up abandoned and medicalized because people think you’re insane and having people see you as a medical curiosity or a dangerous maniac but never as a human being, Adrian’s trauma of being asexual while Zooey is a nymphomaniac, and the question of whether the siblings trying to hurt each other counts as siblings fighting or self-harm. But despite all that, the writing style and Zooey’s inability to be anything approaching serious, it manages to be mostly lighthearted and sometimes even laugh-out-loud funny.

This book breaks the fourth wall a lot. In some ways it doesn’t seem intentional, since Zooey is a little nuts anyway and seems to fully believe that she’s the protagonist in a book. So like, sort-of fourth wall breaks. It fully leans into the wacky weirdness of two siblings who hate each other in one body, and was highly entertaining. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.