While the book was overall a fun and crazy ride, Butcher does seem to be struggling with good ways to have the mortals and baddies on a mortal-ish tier still feel organically relevant to the story and action scenes when he's also bringing out demigod-tier threats. Sometimes it works and sometimes it really feels a bit forced.

Then there's Harry's power level. I think a lot of the problem there is just that Butcher writes Harry as the scrappy underdog who can barely keep up in every single fight he gets into. Not that I mind him being the underdog taking on enemies way out of his league, but it seems like ever since Cold Days Butcher's decided that everyone he fights is out of Harry's league. Plus the Winter Mantle's pain suppression has given him free reign to batter the hell out of Harry with no real narrative consequences, so now every time Harry gets into a fight he has to get a couple broken bones or a dislocated joint.

On top of that, Instead of progressing his skills it often feels like his character has actually regressed, with things like him going back to using a shield bracelet that constantly leaks out sparks and can only handle physical and magical attacks instead of the far more advanced one he used from White Night to Changes.

 

Well that was Butcher’s style from the very beginning, wasn’t it? Batter Harry, he’s all sarcastic about it, and in the last minute he either pulls solution out of his ass, or barters the solution for even worse consequences in the next book. It was one of the reasons I stopped reading Dresden books.

 

Physical copy never arrived, but I had a couple extra Audible credits, so thank you James Marsters for being amazing.

Thoughts: Holy fuck, this was infinity better than Peace Talks, Which in retrospect, was mostly filler. Honestly, Butcher could have cut and cut and cut, deep, and backloaded the book with more of the action here, and it would have worked out soooo much better.

Most of the books take place over a couple days; this one was largely confined to about 6 hours. I saw someone call it 'intense' - that was the correct word.

Spoiler

More specific thoughts:

GOOD
Murphy is dead, which, yes, we mostly saw coming, but to go out like that... Rudolph is headed for a breakdown, probably after Dresden drags him through some mud to find out who's been pulling his strings. Human shitstain like him, death is too easy. He'll suffer, later.

Hendricks is dead. Which sucks, I liked him the same way I liked Morgan.

Marcone is a Denarian. I'm divided on this - on the one hand, the scariest thing about Marcone was that he was a mortal who knew how to maneuver in the supernatural world. On the other, that was starting to seem less and less sustainable, and he is, and has always been, the single most pragmatic character in the series. He's willing to take one on the chin now in exchange for a knockout blow later, and proved it not just with the coin, but with the Eye and the Castle. The fact that having a coin hasn't really changed him I find... satisfying.

Michael already knowing Molly was the Winter Lady and basically being cool with it was just so... him. I loved it. And his swearing fit was so completely not him, but yet so cathartic for my lapsed-Catholic ass that I started laughing out loud. Everyone needs to let off a little steam from time to time, even the retired fist of God.

Power levels were all over the place for plot convenience reasons. Not surprising, just... whatever. Happens in many fantasy books.

Harry really does need to get his ass back to magic school. My hope for the next little while is he fixes up the castle and it becomes a sort of Magic Community Centre/University. A place where regular folk of Chicago can go to seek counsel from the Wizard of Chicago. Maybe he'll re-publish those old pamphlets he had in his office.

The Lara marriage thing... honestly, it's kind of hilarious to me. It's basically the most inconvenient thing that could happen, especially after the White Council tried to act like the Watchers from Buffy and destroy what they can't control. Harry will be seen to be literally getting in bed with a monster now, thus confirming the WC's position.

I really, really like the direction Mab is going in, which is surprising to me, because I used to think the best thing about Mab was her lack of humanity. Now it's starting to look like a cracked veneer, and that is way more interesting.

I like Carlos. I get where he's coming from, but... he's probably heading for a crisis of faith, too, like Rudolph, only far more positive in the end.

BAD
Still don't know enough about Mac.

Not even close to enough Ivy. Never enough Ivy.

Need Chandler to come back.

Drakul was... okay. For someone Eb considers 'formidable', I was expecting a beatdown. Harry had the best possible back-up, though, so that was forgivable. Mavra, however... scares me much less now. She's less a monster and more a sniveling underling now. Weaksauce.

Nemesis-Justine was anti-climactic.

I wanted Harry to get Bob back, but expected far more of a hulla-balloo surrounding that, rather than Butters just handing him a bag.

 

Was reading some other people's thoughts elsewhere and they pointed out that the White Council vote to kick out Dresden was "unanimous". Meaning that even the Gatekeeper said "yeah, toss him". Feel like either that's Butcher's editor not catching that or that there's something more at play there.

 

Or he wasn’t there. The gates are under attack remember.

 

In Turn Coat chapter 39, Rashid says he can't "permit you to openly challenge the White Council to battle" as "it is not yet your hour." Perhaps the hour for Dresden to do so is coming? Pretty sure the Gatekeeper has his own agenda separate from the White Council's politics.

 

That was a badass book. I agree with most everybody's criticisms, especially the point that Peace Talks reads like one of his short stories, by comparison (apart from the major plot elements).

Spoiler

Murphy's death, on the whole, was fitting, but the actual reading experience felt a bit rushed. Maybe because everything was moving at Mach 5 (in a good way, mostly) but I would've appreciated a little more padding, at that point.

Ethniu's interactions with the Angels (Fallen, too...and was that God, she spoke to, when Butters turned into a microphone?) is interesting. What is the relationship between the various primordial entities and the angelic order? Strong enough for Ethniu and Namshiel to banter, and for Uriel and Odin to have annual lunches.

Justine as Nemesis, I wasn't expecting. I haven't read all the fan theories, though, so I probably missed something there. The fact that the Outsiders are planning something even bigger makes me excited for BAT.

Young Wardens getting ganked

Overall, an absorbing read, a much better experience than Peace Talks, 100% certified page-turner!

 

Spoiler

It was one of the Archangels, I think. They have precedent for speaking through the Knights (like at Chichen Itza) and I have doubts that the Almighty himself would get involved directly. Seems his jam is to be and arm's distance from everything.

 

I have to say that I enjoyed Peace Talks and Battle Ground pretty thoroughly. They definitely would have worked better as a single book though. With better editing they could have been condensed without losing anything good or important. There were a few times where it was pretty obvious that the story was padded out with filler.

I’m glad that Butcher finally pulled the trigger on a few things that were foreshadowed, but still ensured there were some surprises along the way.

I can’t wait to discover what being starborn truly means and what secrets regarding his potential destiny the various players have been withholding from him.

Spoiler: Starborn Shenanigans

I loved the guilt when Mab, Harry, and Eb are talking while standing atop the castle before the battle begins in earnest. Mab just cackles before saying that even she, the wicked fairy queen, has been playing it more straight with Harry than anyone else in his life and Eb can’t meet Harry’s eyes. Then there are the couple of times that Mab alludes to Harry potentially becoming an immortal. I want to know damn it!

And on a more cracky note, after

Spoiler: Hilarious Pairing

Mab’s shotgun engagement of Harry and Lara in the last chapter

it looks like @Puzzled ‘s one-shot that he posted here on DLP, The Delacours, has become something close to my new head-canon for the end of the series lol. https://forums.darklordpotter.net/threads/the-delacours-dresden-files-hp.30120/

In all seriousness though, that ship isn’t just heading for an iceberg, it’s going full steam ahead through a fog bank off the coast of Newfoundland in late spring. I can’t wait to see Eb’s reaction to this development!

 

I am not surprised that Murphy died. Clock had been ticking since the peace talks. The moment she banged Harry is the moment she sealed her fate.

Truthfully Elaine had got off easy with near death and a decade of slavery in summer but Harry was young then and the curse of his penis had not grown to the near Death Note levels it would later on. Mark my words the moment Lara bangs Harry she will also share the fate of the others.

Winter Lady knows what is the appropriate response to Harrys ways. All women should follow her lead.


All joking aside we are reading Butchers fantasies so don't expect any relationship that lasts longer than a passing fancy.

I am probably one of the few people that did not like this book. Granted it was better than peace talks but mostly because it did have a very long battle that was exciting to read but by the end of it I was left feeling angry. There is simply no characther in these books that I enjoy reading about. Except maybe Michael.

And can I say that how much I hate how Butcher threats her female characters? I also come to dislike Harry himself for mostly same reason.

Honestly why am I even reading these? World building is not enough for this shit.

 

Spoiler

Do we know at what point Marcone picked up Thorned Namshiel's coin? I actually liked that development but I was surprised by it, and Harry's mostly lack of reaction made me think I missed it somewhere. Thought he'd freak out way more than he did.

It would have had to have been after the Marcone short story, he didn't mention it in his internal monologue.

 

Don't worry too much for Lara and Harry's "curse", right now he has the Love protection so she isn't in any immediate danger of banging him. Which is probably part of why she wasn't thrilled by Mab's announcement.

 

After reading Peace Talks, I said I wanted to see how Battle Ground was going to go before I fully committed to judging the former book. Now that I have, I feel safe in saying that Peace Talks suffered for having been separated from the rest of the original novel's story.

For that matter, it's conceivable that Battle Ground also suffered, at least a little bit. If I'm not mistaken, Butcher said he had to add some stuff to both books to flesh them out into something like fully realized novels. For all we know, the originally written version might have been written more compactly and tightly, leading to an even more relentlessly forward-driven feel than the modified version had.

Dresden Files books tend to wear the marks of sloppy or incomplete editing, and this one was no exception. As in many of the previous books, you get instances of Butcher describing a scene or a person or a magical concept, and then describing it again with slightly different wording just a few pages later. By now I try to just roll my eyes and move on.

On the other hand, I feel that Jim's ability to turn a phrase has improved over the years. There were a number of bits of prose that made me nod in appreciation of their elegance. Not always, of course, but maybe more often than before.

edit: Forgot to actually mention that overall I enjoyed the book quite a bit.

 

Started reading around around 15:30, finished at 22:30. That's what I call a page turner!

Very happy with the book. A real return to form - the best since Small Favour, I think. It wrapped up a lot of dangling threads and also planted some intriguing seeds for the next stage of the series - Harry being more proactive, Harry creating a power base, Harry "going back to school", the arrangement with Lara, etc.

A lot of reviews are praising the book for its action. And obviously action is a big part of it. But for me what made Battle Ground a return to form was the character work, which has been so lacking in the last few. Harry has been taken in an interesting new direction. Mab has been given so much more depth, completely turning around the criticism that Butcher writes all his "powerful sexy women" the same. And so many other characters were given moments which fleshed them out - Murphy, Marcone, Molly, Butters (who, for once, I didn't hate), Sanya, Gard, the list goes on.

At the core of the character work was the theme of leadership, and Harry beginning to embrace that role. Mab and Marcone were both given good development as foils for this arc and I think those 3 characters are the 3 stars of the show in Battle Ground.

I felt like Murphy's death was a good one. The ignominy of it - being shot by a weasel of a man after having taken down a giant - felt right. I've never been much of a fan of her character but her death invested me in her character as I never had before.

Character-wise, the only bit that didn't feel right to be was Ramirez. I'm okay with how it ended up - with them no longer friends, and Harry out of the White Counsel - but I feel like there's an argument which should have happened between them that never does. They seem to be constantly dancing around having an argument but Harry never says what he should say.

I suspect part of this is Butcher saving that argument for later, but there's no logical reason why Harry should not be saying anything in his defence to Ramirez, setting at least some of his cards on the table (albeit not the Black Council issue). It's frustrating that Harry never once says anything along the lines of "You say I'm a monster, but the White Council has done some shady shit and now you're just their lackey. You're no different to me, Ramirez, you're just wearing a different colour cloak."

Aside from character work, there were some nice lore elements, too. Drakul, obviously. Ethniu's apparently personal familiarity with angels, referring to them as peers, is curious and creates new questions about the exact nature and origin of the universe/Earth. As do her references to other worlds, and Nemesis' comments at the end. Starborn references continue to intrigue as do the oblique references to Harry one day being immortal.

Ironically, I actually felt that the action was the roughest part of the story. In particular, I didn't feel like I had a strong grasp/visualisation of the geography of where everything was happening or the dimensions/layout of the spaces it was happening within. A map would have gone a long way.

And then there's the long-running criticism of too much exposition within action scenes, especially when they open, and especially redundant explanations - we definitely got multiple glib "Newton's law" dumps not far from each other.

But remarkably, that's pretty much the only long-running criticism that is present in Battle Ground. Pop culture references were present, but they always have been. There were none here that were egregious, cringe-worthy, or so meta that they broke the 4th way, I felt. The female characters were all handled fairly well. No characters held the idiot ball for plot purposes. Power scales were handled well.

I'm not a huge fan of the prominent role given the effectiveness of mortals/guns but that's always been a part of Dresden so a bit late to complain now.

Overall, I am very happy with Battle Ground, both as a story and as setting the series in an interesting future direction.

 

Finished it. It was definitely better than PT and a big part of it was in my opinion that once it was decided that the book needs to be split, the first part wasn't used to its fullest potential. It's rather easy to point out the parts that could be removed to make these two book a little bigger one without losing anything good, especially in PT, which gives a lot of parts that could be replaced with something better. Personally, I would add more world building to give the world a more global feel.

Spoiler

Because of his tuxedo, Drakul is basically Dracula from old movies to me. Not sure if that was intentional or not.

While Murphy's end was well done, I dislike that her role is to be a third woman that Dresden's loves and is taken from him. If she needed to be gone, it would be better if they never become a pair.

I'm sure she will be back for BAT. It's not the Apocalypse if the unbroken rules aren't broken.

I'm unsure about Denarian Marcone. On one hand I liked him as a mortal who managed to fight above his weight class, even if it was getting too much on the level Harry started to work on. On the other, it fits his pragmatic worldview, even if it's a dangerous decision.

 

Being from Chicago, I've always found the geography to be the most suspect part of the series. I kind of turn off the part of my brain that cares about that in order to enjoy it, and my friends who like the series and who aren't from Chicago scoff at my concerns. But it's clear he's never lived in Chicago and doesn't run anything by anyone with even passing familiarity with the city.

Like, I live in the neighborhood Murphy was supposed to and it's not at all like how he describes. But it's even worse this book: he lists specific areas the three defensive groups are supposed to be holding, and they're all in the upper North Side covering maybe a quarter of the lakefront -- and all are well north of the final battle, where Marcone suddenly comes out after defending the South Side.

Once they get to the final battles starting at the Bean, the geography (other than Marcone coming from the wrong direction) makes sense -- that area is essentially one large park over several blocks divided by roads between Chicago's downtown and Lake Michigan and it's basically impossible to get wrong. But before then it's super sketchy and you get the feeling he's been going off of short Wikipedia entries.

 

Titanic Bronze - is it just me or did this just get completely dropped as a plot point? They never found a way to pierce the armour or remove it but were still able to wear her down/hurt Ethniu.

So much for "she's invincible so long as she thinks she's invincible".

Also, on a related note, now that Harry has Ethniu imprisoned I wonder if he can take the armour off her. Could be a moment for the later books - shit is about to go down and Harry turns up wearing a full set of Titanic Bronze armour.

 

They did, Denarian knights or KoTC could pierce the armour, it was Marcone got her blood for the binding.

I think he would probably just summon her to fight for him. There was talk about how she is now bound to his will.

 

IT is noted that soulfire can pierce it at the start and when marcone uses his blade Harry notes that hellfire would work too.

 

The thing is an alloy of mordite and powered by the will of the one wearing it, so I'm not sure it would be as effective for a measly little mortal. Hell, it's called Titanic bronze, maybe only Titans or equivalent can even wear it. And yeah, she can only be hurt by the Swords, the Lance and Marcone, the others are only there to ravage her troops and make her tire herself out killing them.

Ethniu might be bound to his will but I'm pretty sure ordering her to fight for him would be suicidal. Best case scenario, she uses too much power and ends up fracturing reality or killing a few (thousands) bystanders to obey his orders. Worst case, his will wavers enough that she frees herself from the binding, kills him and resumes her original plan without a pesky Warden to bother her.