Recent Reads: Side Jobs by Jim Butcher

I'm a Jim Butcher fan. I've been so since my friend Kelly and her husband Bryce steered me toward his urban fantasy series, The Dresden Files. What's not to like about tales of a Chicago private investigator who is an honest-to-goodness-staff-wielding wizard?

Ok, that might seem a little far fetched, but Butcher creates vivid characters and interesting plots. If I don't care about the characters, I can't get into a book. It may help that Butcher seems to be a geek. References to Star Wars and Tolkien, among other fandoms, are sprinkled throughout the books.

Apparently other people also have good opinions about The Dresden Files, as the series is now 12 books long and includes New York Times bestsellers. Side Jobs is a collection of short stories and novellas set in The Dresden Files universe. Most of them appeared in other anthologies, and have been republished in the collection.

One story in particular struck me when I read the anthology. Butcher's introduction explains that the story was partially inspired by events that took place after his family moved to a new neighborhood. He spent a lot of time meeting the new neighbors, and was surprised when he discovered how some of the very small things he had done and said had huge impacts of the lives of some of the people he met.

The story itself is a typical Harry Dresden urban fantasy where Harry is trying to keep a holy sword (essentially Excaliber) out of the hands of the wrong person. Long time readers of the series should be able to see how Butcher is having his characters develop based on events in the series. However, in the usual fast-forward of crises, Harry has a number of seemingly minor interactions with various strangers. It isn't until the end of the story that we find that those small encounters were actually more important in many ways than the driving plot of the story.

I think that is a good thing for people to remember. You don't always know how your actions will affect another person. Small encounters can end up changing lives. I know of at least one time that I have caused such a change in a single chance meeting. I'd rather remember the impact I can have by just being me, and try to steer the results to good outcomes.