Storm Front

Audiobooks are a great way for me to keep up with my love of reading while I'm busy outdoors. A friend told me about Audible.com many years ago, and I've been more than satisfied with my membership (even though I had to put it on hold a while, thanks to tips from Dave Ramsey). When I first subscribed I loaded up on the Wheel of Time series - I already own them in hard copies but the audio versions give a completely different perspective.

In an effort to grow outside the familiar, I used one of my site credits to purchase Jim Butcher's Storm Front - despite the lukewarm reviews of the recording. If you are a SyFy fan you might remember a short lived series called The Dresden Files that aired a few years ago (and currently sits in my NetFlix instant watch queue). This is the first novel in the series that inspired the show.

Storm Front introduces Wizard-Detective Harry Dresden and a host of other characters. It reads much like an old school detective novel or film noir, and you can feel the scenes as James Marsters (aka Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) reads. It took me a while to get into the rhythm of the story - and when its an 8 hour book that's not really a good thing. There was a lot of back history teased at, but it seemed to me that if the focus had been more on the current case and less on Harry's past dealings with the White Council I would have been more interested. Oh, and I came down on the side of "okay" with James Marsters' performance. While the sighs and other noises could have been distracting, I found (as did other reviewers) that it helped me picture Harry and his frustrations throughout the various scenes of the story.

I enjoyed the book overall, but I didn't immediate run back to my Audible wish list and add the next novel. This particular series is backburner'd until further notice.