Genre splicing - a genre of its own; choose two or more and contrive to build an artwork. See, it's kind of like conjuring, or...magic? Jim Butcher's gumshoe is a wizard who's chosen to be a private detective to help the world. I loved the geeky, sophomoric Harry Dresden - named after several fictional wizards - character. He's a grown older Harry Potter/Hardy Boys avatar for perpetual adolescent readers who miss their visits to the young adult literature section of the library.
This novel is illustrative of what happens to a concept that lives symbiotically with others that from the gun are deeper and more fully resolved. They seem chalky, murky, with moments of quite good/funny material swirled with "lite" matter. (a cosmic particle released by pop culture entertainment that passes through the atmosphere at the speed of light and then crashes and burns).
Like many crime genres, there's plenty of gooey gore, These scenes have a voyeur quality, like a kid whose sneaked into the porn section of the video store.
If I liked "magic" better to begin with I might have liked this book more. It's actually quite entertaining, and it has a wry droll gosh-darn-it campy send-up tone that's amusing, especially at the beginning of the book.
You could give it a try and it's worth doing it. But here's the problem: there will never be another Harry Potter. So it's like nibbling the broken chips in the bottom of the bag - fragments of yummy but without the satisfying salty crunch that the first few large chips on top deliver.
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