The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

My old boss from the bank (shudder, cross self, throw salt over shoulder) went on and on about this series of books. The job sucked but he was a pretty cool guy however he also went on and on about box kites, Alice Cooper (yeah I know weird combo), and how the Godfather movies were a great way to learn management techniques (I don't think he was joking either) so I kinda ignored him at the time.

Then a while back I came across a blurb that said James Marsters was signed to narrate the newest book for the recorded version. It went on to mention that he'd been the narrator for the earlier books in the series as well.

Right now you're saying to your self either, "Who the heck is James Marsters?" or, "So what?" Let me explain. James Marsters played Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy the Vampire Slayer still stands as my all time favorite show and I was head over heals in love with Spike. I used to joke that I'd marry either Dave or James, whichever one proposed first. Clearly Dave won and that's Mr. Marsters loss, cause I'm quite the catch.

So I went in search of the recorded version of these books. I couldn't find it any where but I did find a great site called Audible.com. If you like books on tape (well really MP3) it's a really great service and if you use itunes they automatically update to your library which makes it easy to make your books portable.

So I've been using audible for about a year when low and behold the Dresden Files series appears so of coarse I download the first one. I'd seen the short lived tv series and not been impressed. Do you know why? Because they messed it all up, combining characters, changing back stories and generally doing every thing wrong. If they'd actually tried to be true to the books they'd certainly have made a better tv show and it might still be on. I loved the book, so much I completely forgot it was James Marsters narrating and just got lost in the story.

I do have a minor complaint re Audible at this point. For some reason they have books 1-4 and 8-11 but not 5,6,7. So I had to get the actual books for those but since I love to read that's not really such a hardship.

Currently I'm on book 6 and I'm not getting bored. Which in unusual for a series that does not appear (so far) to have a singular plot running through it (like Harry Potter or the Dark Tower). It hasn't gotten formulaic plot wise as a matter of fact the characters and the universe they inhabit seems to get richer and more multi dimensional with each book. If you like Fantasy, Occult, or Detective stories you'll probably like this series.