Dresden Files Reread - Storm Front Chapter 1

Photo by Eckhard Hoehmann on Unsplash

Technically speaking, not a lot happens in the first chapter of Storm Front, but it nonetheless gets more done than I was initially inclined to give it credit for. 

The story opens with an almost implausibly hostile encounter with the mailman, during which it is established that Dresden is neither a psychic nor a stage magician. While this kind of preemptive denial would be thoroughly unnecessary in 2020, or even like, 2005, Storm Front was written in the late 1990s and published in 2000, when urban fantasy for adults was not a Thing to anything like the extent it is now. In the first Harry Potter book, which was published in 1997, that Harry wonders whether he will be expected to pull a rabbit out of the Sorting Hat, and even The Magicians (2009) addresses the fact that until very recently, "magic" meant card tricks and illusions to most people, especially in the absence of the trappings of epic fantasy. In the context in which Storm Front was written, it was actually valuable to establish this, even if I could quibble with the rather inelegant way it was accomplished. 

After he gets his mail, Harry launches into an internal monologue about the nature of modern society, the failures of science and technology, and the fact that he's broke. The inclusion of "crack babies" among the ills of the modern world is decidedly cringey in 2020, but that's a failing that any moderately socially aware fan of the series will have learned to tolerate. Jim Butches averages about one of these deeply uncomfortable fuckups per book, and he works a ways ahead on that quota in the first few. 

Most of the rest of the chapter is taken up by the two phone calls that set into motion the major events of the book. Monica Sells wants Dresden to find her husband, and Karrin Murphy needs him to come look at a pair of dead bodies in a hotel room. Dresden is almost self-sabotageingly cranky with Murphy, but given the extent to which she thinks she can order him around, this may be his way of trying to set some boundaries with her. They aren't really friends yet at this point in the series. 

Around and between the phone calls, Dresden also reflects on a recent case in which he determined that nothing supernatural was going on and basically just went home, collecting only an hour's pay. This is actually sort of an important illustration of Dresden's principles, made all the more salient by the fact that he acts like sort of a sketchy dick throughout most of this book. Where magic is concerned, and kind of only where magic is concerned, Dresden is scrupulously honest, and as ethical and honorable as circumstances will allow. While we do see other indicators of that elsewhere in this book, without this specific example it would be reasonable to suppose that Dresden's uprightness in this area was largely or entirely a result of the Doom of Damocles and his understandable desire to avoid coming even close to breaking any of the Laws of Magic. However, there is absolutely nothing in the Laws that would have prevented him from lying to a mortal, lighting some candles, using a little ventas servitas to blow things around, and claiming to have done an exorcism. That the laws do nothing to disallow that kind of thing is mentioned several times later in the series. Only the fact that it would have been morally wrong to do so prevented him, and that is a significant piece of characterization. 

This chapter also establishes Dresden's difficult with and distrust of technology, up to and including whatever an "automatic pencil" is supposed to be.
Stay tuned for my writeup of Chapter 2, a review of Hannah Moscowitz's Sick Kids In Love, and a little something about Peace Talks once it comes out. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read ALL the things.