My first impression of Jim Butcher's Storm Front was massive confusion.  I listened to the MP3 audiobook, which is (like all of the Dresden Files books) narrated by James Marsters, best known from his years spent playing Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.  Except that for the Dresden Files readings, Marsters drops his fake British accent.  California Spike took some getting used to, but soon Marsters came to seem like the perfect choice to narrate the Dresden Files books.

Storm Front is the first Dresden Files book, and it does an excellent job of introducing its characters and settings to the reader.  Actually I think you could pick up the Dresden Files series at any given point - it is both the blessing and the curse of genre series fiction that each volume must cater to the new reader, and introduce everything anew.  

Harry Dresden is a magician.  A real one, who has magical powers and magical friends, and an ancient magical ghost named Bob who helps him with his studies.  Magic is real in the Dresden Files universe, which is set largely in the city of Chicago.  The Dresden Files falls solidly within the "urban fantasy" niche, and it does so happily.

Harry is cynical, a loner, and perpetually broke.  It's a wonder that magic doesn't pay better, but I digress.  Harry also works for the Chicago Police Department as a freelance consultant, usually being dragged into the Chicago PD's weirder cases by Lieutenant Karrin Murphy.  Storm Front opens with twin mysteries: Harry gets a client with a missing persons case, and Murphy calls him in to investigate the particularly peculiar and barbaric death of a local mobster's bodyguard and his girlfriend.

Storm Front shuttles Harry rapidly between these two cases, and I will confess that sometimes I found myself having trouble keeping them apart.  At the same time, Harry goes out on a date with a reporter for a local tabloid, named Susan Rodriguez.  So we have the Susan sub-plot, as well.  

It turns out that Tommy Tomm's mobster boss is involved in trafficking ThreeEye, a drug which gives regular people a quick hit of wizardly vision.  Frankly I thought that ThreeEye was woefully under-used.  It basically only serves as a plot device, and it seemed like the promise it showed was largely wasted.

The confusion of the story lines only grows as the novel progresses, and the action sequences begin.  As much as I enjoy reading the Dresden Files books, the final third of each book is usually dedicated to a non-stop action sequence which is largely skippable.  Call it my personal failure as a reader, but I don't particularly get excited by action sequences.  I understand the rhythm they bring to a book, and I applaud Butcher's inventiveness, but I usually end up heavily skimming the last third of each Dresden Files book.

Fortunately, Butcher is an excellent writer, and he manages to craft his books' structure with care.  Even if some plot elements are cast aside seemingly at random, the books always end in a satisfying fashion, and Storm Front is no exception.