Hamilton vs Jim Butcher

just finished reading Summer's Knight by Jim Butcher. dragonwhishes and canadianevil recommended the series to me a while back and I picked up the first book. I read it, it was okay, but didn't really impress much upon me. Then I decided to give it a second chance when I discovered that Butcher was going to be at ComicCon. I enjoyed Knight much more than I did Storm Front and may start to pick up the rest of the series.
One of the interesting things I noted, was that on the cover of the book it said that fans of Hamilton would love the book. Thinking about this, I decided that yes, there's a great likelihood that this is true. After all they're both urban fantasies that are detective stories. They're both told in first person with the same sort of humor.
The thing is, beyond that, the two books have nothing alike.
Summer's Knight and Danse Macabre do have a relatively short time span covered in the books. About three days for Dresden and three days, I think, for Anita, maybe two. It's hard to tell with all the sex. In any case despite the same time frame, there's tension in Dresden's book and utterly none in Blakes.
Dresden has increasing problems thrown on him. There's raining frogs, vampires out to get him, and the wizard's council that's come to town. Plus he's been so busy trying to find a cure for vamperism for his girlfriend who's been partially turned that he's neglected everything else in his life. Then he's hired by the Winter Queen, Mab, who has control over him now because his fairy godmother sold her rights to him to the Queen, to find out who killed the Summer Knight. Then the wizard's council wants to feed him to the vampires to sue for peace. Though this is adverted when they tell him that he needs to get Mab to let them through her lands, which she will only allow them to do when her emissary (Dresden) finishes the job for her. Then he realizes that the Summer and Winter courts are going to go to war which will cause another ice age or something else. Then a bunch of changlings ask for his help to find their missing companion. Then he has to get all of this done before Midsummer's night, which is in a day's time. And that's not even mentioning his first girlfriend who he thought was dead and tried to sacrifice him is still alive and the Summer Court's emissary. Now THAT is a good example of pilling shit onto your hero until it looks like you have no idea how he'll work it out and oh boy you better hope he does because other wise Bad Things will happen.
In the mean time, on Blake's side, Anita needs to find someone new to feed off of or else she'll starve. Oh, she might be pregnant too. But in any case, there's never any sense of urgency. They dwaddle, take long baths, talk randomly about things. There's a great deal of showing, actually. Far too much. Not as much as Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books, but a lot of attention is placed in the details of actions and looks which delays and deflates any sense of urgency. After all if Anita feels like she has the time to describe down to the exacting detail of what a person is wearing, she's obviously not worried about anything big.
Just something I've been thinking on. I'll probably try and expand this more later.
Category:Anita Blake
Category:Essay