I found the first book, Storm Front, and started reading it. Well. What a read! This is action and magic and a whole world and one is sort of cannon-balled into it from the first page. Believe it or not, I started Storm Front and it was not until I was about halfway through that it occurred to me ... oh wait. This is a book about a wizard named Harry Dresden.
All of us here know about the Harry Potter books and that they are about a wizard named Harry Potter. So I went to see which had been written first, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published in 1998. Storm Front was published April 1, 2000. Hmm. And I shook my head at the vagarities of popularity of names and continued on with Storm Front. What a great book!
I've now read all of the series, and like many others, started waiting patiently for the next one to come out. A few minutes ago, though, I was wondering what book to read (or read again) for the Summer Reading Challenge and thought of starting the series again. ** And, again, thought of the similarity of names.
I realized, for me, I don't think of the character 'Harry Dresden' as 'Harry'. He's either 'Dresden' or he's 'Harry Dresden' or in some extreme cases he is 'Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden'. And Harry Potter is 'Harry' or ... 'Harry'.
So the name similarity turns out, in actuality, not to be an issue or a cause of confusion at all. Has anyone else read these books and wondered about the names of the 'lead male characters'? What sort of conclusion did you reach?
**Oddly, there is no review of the author or of the series or of any other books he's written, in Book Club! So whoever does the first review gets to start the topic.
