Check out my video review for more details and examples.

In the middle of reading this book, I took to social media to complain about what an unpleasant time I was having. Someone responded that if you can just ignore that the main character is the worst, you can really enjoy it for the plot. Um... I beg to differ.

Here are all the ways this didn't work for me.

1. The plot: I love procedurals and mysteries and a good investigation of any sort. This is probably my least favorite kind, however. I love when our investigators get out there and hunt down clues, question subjects, research and connect the dots in ways that also feels satisfying for the reader. STORM FRONT relied too heavily on things just kind of falling into place for Harry. At one point, he picks up a conveniently placed newspaper that has a headline with a new connection into his investigation we hadn't heard about yet. It was something like "hmmm, wow, look at this headline. I wonder if it's connected."I got pretty sick of things landing in his lap that way, because if they weren't, he was making a phone that went wonky and that seemed to be the majority of the plot.

The remaining portion of the plot was Harry getting into bad situations and telling us for paragraphs and paragraphs all the ways this was a hopeless situation and he was most definitely going to die. And then he would realize or remember something in the nick of time and some how get out of it. This became so repetitive that I stopped believing Harry every time he said "wow, there was no way out of this." Sure. Whatever you say, bro.

Ultimately, I found I didn't care about the mystery. It felt very clear to me which direction we were heading and there weren't any satisfying moments of things coming together or misdirection moments. Harry was begrudgingly involved, it seemed, and that spread to me as a reader. I wanted to be involved even less than Harry did.

I can't tell you one thing about this plot that would make it good enough to WANT to ignore blatant sexism for.

2. The World building: I expect with the first book in a long running urban fantasy series that I'll only get a taste of the world and magic. One of the things that I love about long running series is indeed how the world expands and magic builds on itself. So, I don't expect that book 1 will give me all the details. It should, however, paint a clear enough picture that I'm able to understand the basic. It also shouldn't contradict itself. All of the world-building and magic felt half-assed and hand wavy.

Harry would tell us things about his magic and then just contradict that stuff with his actions. Again, we are told how many times he's on the edge of death, completely unable to do any more magic... and then he would just do more magic. In this world, magic is tied to energy, but we have absolutely no sense of what that means or what the limits are because he just keeps doing magic and surviving.

Also this was set in Chicago, but it couldn't been literally any city, real or made up, because there wasn't a great sense of place. Each setting felt generic and without personality, from his dingy bottom-feeder basement to the generic magic pub.

3. I didn't enjoy any of the supporting characters. The women are shallow and objectified, from the reporter to the client to the vampire we meet. They are all the least interesting versions of what they could be, which is no surprise when they are seen through the lens of a chauvinist. Murphy becomes insufferable towards the end of the book, jumping to conclusions and just behaving in a way that made her impossible to root for. Bob is disgusting. Who was I supposed to like in this book?

4. Certainly not Harry MF Dresden. What a god damn tool. It was painful to be in his head. It was all either woe is me sighing and complaining or I'M THE BEST MOST TRAINED AND POWERFUL! with absolutely no in between. Not a single redeeming quality to be found. He has no connections or relationship to soften him. There was no emotional entry point to sympathize with him. He wasn't particularly good or heroic and often ended up doing right so begrudgingly that it barely count.

And on top of all of that, have I mentioned he's a chauvinist pig? This book is dripping in sexism and misogyny and it isn't just contained to Harry's flaw because it leaks into his point of view. Everything is colored by his sexism and we can't go a single chapter with some observation or description that reminds us that he doesn't entirely get that women are people.

The thing with even calling it a "flaw" is that we as the readers might be able to read it that way, but Harry doesn't view it that way and he doesn't need to. The most he gets is called a chauvinist but then the conversation (which entailed him guessing the killer was a woman because women are more hateful and it was a brutal murder) just continues as if that wasn't the stupidest god damn thing a paid consultant for a police department could possibly say.

Harry describes every woman in the grossest ways, whether that woman was recently brutally murdered (he describes the outline of the dead woman's breast as being lovely, even though her chest was blown open with magic), or she's a "friend" (he continually compares Murphy to a cheerleader or a teenager and often casually refers to how she might look under her clothes), or she's a colleague (the one dark skinned woman is described as having "lazy appeal" in her eyes and is magically roofied by a love potion), or a magical creature (the one vampire he meet is obsessed with beauty and we see her transfer to her disgusting monster self, it involves detailed descriptions of her breasts going flabby, because what's more monstrous than flabby beasts, you know?).

It was incessant and I don't understand how you can ignore it or enjoy it.

Sex was also used in odd ways in the story, from the first murder we encounter being between a man and a sex worker, killed mid-sex-act, or orgy magic, or of course, the magic potion that is made with tequila to "lower her inhibitions" that is accidentally taken by a woman who then spends a scene trying to have sex with Harry while a demon is after them.

Truly sickeningly terrible.

5. Finally, I listened to this on audiobook. It's narrated by James Marsters, which was pretty exciting to see and then also went the way of everything about this book and became terrible. Marsters SIGHED most of the performance. He just kept sighing and sort of mumbling the lines. It also brought into into a cadence that was driving me bonkers. I mean... it was fitting for Harry, because he also drove me bonkers, but it wasn't pleasant.

IF I even thought of continuing this series it would be to see why exactly some people swore to me it got better because color me skeptical.