Danielle's Reading Adventures

One might think, why read a graphic novel version of a prose novel? I was one of those who asked that question. I am eating my words now. I can see why. While I tend to visualize the books I read as movies playing in my head in full color, it's still a pleasure to see how the author's imagery is brought to life as they work with the graphic novel artists and writers.

Harry doesn't quite look like my version in my head, but it's awesome to see how Butcher himself visualizes the character. Harry's "don't care what you think and don't tell me what to do" attitude comes through loud and clear in the graphic version. He's not quite as lanky/thin as I imagined, but his proportions aren't exaggerated into a beefcake version that doesn't hold true to the original. I did like the attention to detail given to Harry's outfit and tricks of the trade. I hadn’t quite gotten a distinction between Harry’s blasting rod and staff until seeing it in the graphic novel.

The image of Bianca with her human visage shed is terrifying. About as bad as I imagined. I can understand her pathology about wanting to be beautiful, seeing how she really looks vamped out. Susan looks just like I imagined and so does Murphy. Mister isn’t quite what I expected, but Bob stands up to scrutiny. The visual of the frog demon was something else alright, along with the giant scorpion assassin construct.

Overall, the artwork and lettering conveys the storyline very well. The artist did a great job of conveying the sinister and evil nature of the villain, as well as the essential personalities of other characters. Nothing was left out that I could tell, and the storyline seems quite sinister in living color. It’s been a while since I read this, so it was a nice refresher, since I didn’t have time to do a reread before the group read discussion we’re having on the book.

This isn’t my favorite Dresden novel out of the four I’ve read so far, but it’s a very good start to a series, and I liked this graphic novel enough to pick up the next in the series, Fool Moon, which is probably one of my favorites from the series, although Grave Peril and Summer Knight are also excellent, IMO.

I’d recommend checking this out if you are a fan of the Dresden prose novels. The artwork is well done and bright and the story follows the book very well.