I’ve been trying to read the Dresden Files for over a year now. I love wizards. Harry Potter is one of my favorite series of all time, despite the many qualms I have with it. I’ve read many other books with wizards. Why? Because magic is effin’ cool.

So, I thought I’d be able to pick up the Dresden Files and have a good time. But I didn’t. I really, really, did not. Let me explain.

Harry Dresden is a Shitty Wizard.⌗

Maybe it gets better as the series goes along, but in the first three books, Harry Dresden (our main character, and the series main wizard), is what the kids would call ‘mid’. Very rarely in the first three does Harry find his own way out of a jam. In the first book, at the end, he does, but after that, he is constantly saved by someone else. In the second book, he loses his magic entirely for about the last 25% of the novel, which is the dumbest thing ever.

Of course, Jim Butcher (the author), tries to do the same thing in the second book. A ghost demon, demon ghost, thing eats most of Harry’s magic, making it much harder for Harry to actually do anything.

Why Butcher insists on making Harry Dresden a magic-less wizard, I have no clue. It would be one thing if Harry was a badass with or without magic. But he’s not. Like I said, he is constantly bailed out of every dangerous situation by someone else. And there’s nothing wrong with it happening sometimes, but every single time? That just makes me lose all respect for Mr. Dresden.

I don’t need Harry to be a badass all the time. I didn’t join this journey to read about an all powerful wizard. But I would like him to be powerful sometimes and not pitiful all the time. The magic we do see him do is very unimpressive. He can find people, he can throw fire, and he can blow wind. Oh, and he has a blasting rod to blast people. Harry has a wizard’s staff, but as far as I can remember, he doesn’t use it very much, and when he does, it’s just to make things windy. Where are the spells? We do get to see some potion making, but that is also passed over without much to make it stand out.

A book about wizards without much in the way of magic is just not a very good book.

The Emotional Range of a Teaspoon⌗

Harry is, supposedly, a man’s man. He wears a duster and is portrayed as a man who doesn’t really need to have many emotions. Of course, Harry does have some emotions, he just runs away from them when he encounters them. Add on that we really don’t learn why he cares to do what he does, and it just makes him seem so one dimensional.

The relationships that Harry has all seem more like the relationships James Bond has. Harry’s with this woman, Susan, and supposedly he “loves” her and she “loves” him, but there’s no there there, if that makes sense. Their relationship is all physical as far as we know, and even then it seems very superficial since Susan is (or at least was) only interested in Harry so she could get a scoop (she works for some tabloid). In the third book, he blows her off when she really needs him, which makes it feel like he doesn’t really care all that much about her.

The problem with writing a man’s man is that it becomes really hard to connect with the character. All I feel for Harry Dresden is frustration over him being a mediocre wizard. If he were to die, I wouldn’t care. I find some of the offshoot characters much more interesting (Murphy, even though she’s constantly thinking the worst of Harry for no reason, and Michael for just two examples).

Murphy⌗

I mentioned Murphy, and I talked about her in one of my reviews a bit, but I think I need to say more. Murphy is the character that I’m supposed to like the most in the first two books. I’m a big fan of Castle, it’s one of my favorite shows ever, so I’m predisposed to liking a badass cop who’s doing her best to do the right thing. And Harry could be a helluva sidekick.

But, she’s just not a good character. There’s the whole constantly thinking Harry’s a bad person thing, but there’s more than that. It’s like Butcher didn’t know what to do with her. Is she just a colleague of Harry, someone who throws him a job from time to time, are they best friends (if so, Murphy is a horrible best friend), or is there romantic tension there? I made it 70% of the way through the third book, and I’m not sure. I’ve done some spoiler-ing, and it seems like Murphy plays less of a role as the series goes on, which just makes me more sure Butcher had no clue what to do with her.

And that’s sad. I think the series would have been better if Murphy had played a bigger and better role in Harry’s life. He really does need a sidekick. Maybe that ends up being Michael, but Micheal (who basically plays the role of one of God’s representatives on Earth) is much more interested in his own duties and family than he ever would be in tagging along on all of Dresden’s adventures.

I Want to Love the Characters⌗

Given all this, I’m done with the Dresden Files. Maybe the series gets better. I know that a lot of people really love this series, but I just can’t keep going. I want to love the characters I’m reading. I want to care about them. I want to be invested in their success and I want to feel their failures. With Harry, all I feel is frustration because he’s just not good. If I got some badassery once in a while, that’d be awesome. I’d at least think there was the possibility that Harry could be a great wizard. But even during the times where he was “really angry”, he was the definition of mid.

Maybe I was expecting too much, and I should have tried harder, but I have so many other books I want to read, and I don’t want to waste my time on a series that is this long with characters I just don’t enjoy reading about.

So, yeah, I’m done. It’s a shame, because I love magic, but there just wasn’t enough magic in the Dresden Files to make me want to keep going. 🥹