This book felt like when you open the fridge to eat those leftovers you've been looking forward to, but find out that someone has eaten them already. The flavor of bitter disappointment is one not easily cleansed from the palette.

This has been recommended to me by nearly family member I have that reads books, and now I'm starting to wonder if they're actually literate. While the concept behind it is good (who wouldn't love wizards in modern day Chicago?) the execution was iffy at best and the amount of blatant male chauvinism made me want to gouge my eyes out at best, and made me physically ill at worst.

I'm willing to forgive a majority of the technical issues I had, as this was Butcher's first book but the main glaring issue to me was just how bad of a detective he made Dresden seem. Personally if I was investigating a missing persons case and I found a

Spoiler

empty film canister

the first thing I would do would be attempt to follow up on it rather than just pocket it for my personal use later. For half of the book it felt like we'd completely forgotten about the missing persons case too, which just felt odd. I knew they would tie together, or else why have both a missing person and murders to solve in the same book, but Dresden was so unconcerned for a large portion of the novel.

Really though, what knocked this book down for me was how poorly women were treated within it. Every single woman was either overly sexual or Tragic in a way that made Dresden pity them. I'm sorry but a police officer in charge of her division should not be CRYING when a consultant withholds information. And honestly there was a love potion brought into the mix for no good reason at all. I could go on an on, about the woman whose biggest shame was that Dresden had seen her when she was ugly, or the woman that Dresden blatantly told to "drop the slut act" like that's anything that should ever be said in a conversation.

This series has potential, and I might get around to picking up the second book to see if things improve but I can guarantee it won't be super high up my list.