Which is weird because even if he doesn't want to visit it, there is Google Maps with its street view to make your research.

 

Aside from Butcher apparently reserving all the cool magic for the opps and Dresden's quips getting old (as well ae him coming off as a bit of a magical thug/moron) it was a pretty good book.

I'd still prefer Marcone as a PoV character though, so I guess Mirror Mirror would be right up my alley

 

Another small gripe - in the necromancy scene, other than the brief reference to Sue, there was no acknowledgement that Harry has used necromancy before, knows how it works, etc. It would have been nice if he had gained some advantage as a result of his knowledge.

Which raises the topic we were discussing in Discord last night: Harry isn't much of a wizard anymore. Seriously, when was the last time he used thaumaturgy at all? There was a line in BG about the difference between wizards and sorcerers, but Harry is kinda falling on the "sorcerer" side of that divide these days. All we see him do is throw around offensive evocations.

I think that's what excites me about his "back to school" thinking and getting his lab back. It sounds like it's a chance to go back to being a wizard - ironically just as he's kicked out of the White Council. Hopefully not only will he create a new shield bracelet and come up with new spells, but also return to the basic principles of what a wizard does. Bob's reappearance in the story is also promising on this front, as I'm sure there's more Harry has to learn from him.

 

I think titanic bronze was well done, she stood up to half a dozen Demi gods blue dozens of other heavy hitters and was still in good form by the end.

As Odin said, their one and only job was to wear her down to give Harry a chance to bind her.

But yes I fully agree on Harry’s lack of wizard chops.

It was said for the first down books that he was a magic nerd. And given Bob his theoretical knowledge should be miles ahead of others, on par with the senior council in some respects. Yet we have Harry saying Carlos is better than him....

On another note, anyone see the latest WOJ? That Kenmler was the Warden two Wardens before Harry, part of the reason the lost is vacant and why the SC is terrified of him/it.

Kemmler got all his knowledge to make him OP from the beings in Demonreech.
He may have started off a white hat and the entities corrupted him.

 

Finished it last night. I definitely think the description intense is appropriate. In some ways I'd say it was too intense, it was tiring to read because it was basically just one big action scene, bookended by some short non-action moments.

Overall I enjoyed it, it rescued the series in my eyes and I'll definitely be buying the next one. I was particularly impressed with how much character development he managed, despite it being pretty much one big fight. Also, glad to see Murphy killed off in a way that was fitting for her character.

However there were a few points that annoyed me, most of which have been picked out in this thread already I think.

The biggest annoyance for me was the scene with Mac. Dresden says to himself "I think I know what Mac is" and then doesn't say. To me thats not building mystery for the audience, as that would require Dresden to also be in ignorance, its just hiding information and waving the audiences lack of knowledge in their face as a lazy excuse for not actually building mystery.

As others have mentioned, I'm a bit tired of Dresden not being a particularly competent wizard. He seems to accidently stumble into moments of skill, like his strange lightning spell demonstration, but then fail to learn the lessons or capitalise on those skills, as seen by the fact he then never used his damn near self powering lightning again during the battle. Hopefully him having Bob back and his comment about going back to school both pay off, and we see a return to earlier form.

Ramirez was weirdly written, both in Peace Talks and Battle Ground. Very on again off again. It definitely felt like there was an argument that should have been had between them to explain his animosity, but that argument wasn't written in so all we got was Ramirez suddenly treating Dresden like a pariah. It made me wonder whether there's something going on there with some form of mental manipulation or Ramirez not being Ramirez.

Following on from that, on the subject of the White Council, I'm a bit confused about Cristos. I thought he was supposed to be one of the bad guys? Suddenly he and McCoy are pretty buddy buddy, having a grand old time and fighting back to back? It seemed a bit...off.

Added to that, the lack of presence by the White Council during the battle was strange. We know the ways can allow for quick transportation, Harry goes from Chicago to Edinburgh in next to no time in Turn Coat. Why didn't more wardens, members of the senior council, or ordinary wizards show up? I'd have thought a Titaness with a doomsday weapon and the desire to destroy everything in her path would have been a good enough reason for the Merlin to show up in person.

I was a bit disappointed with Molly's "coming out" scene. I couldn't quite figure out how Michael knew she was the Winter Lady. I'd have preferred for his whole "we'll always love you, no matter what" routine to have been a response to Molly actually telling him she's the Lady.

And finally, the whole "the mortals are trying to cover everything up" thing was just a bit strange. Chicago is largely in ruins, entire neighbourhoods slaughtered, and there's hundreds or thousands of eye witnesses to all sorts of magical things. Just a bit of strange really...but that also leads into another rather strange thing. At first I thought the Librarians thing sounded pretty cool, but I'm baffled by the fact that the beings present at that meeting seemed to be almost intimidated by the Librarians? Surely at worst they're just another bunch of mortals with detailed knowledge of the supernatural. Another faction. But it came across like they were seen as something more than that? Maybe I was reading a bit much into it...

 

Going to return once I've read the final bit of the book, but to all of those who said Marcone would never pick up a coin... I fucking told you so.

 

The Librarians bit bothered me too especially when the other human faction that are in the know are not treated with this much caution. The Venatori should be a bigger threat knowledge-wise than the Librarians who don't have first-hand knowledge of the supernatural. At the very least their resources and capabilities shouldn't be a threat/unknown to people like Vadderung and Lara who are supposed to have a massive intelligence network. Lara supposedly has a lot of the US government in her pocket, enough to commandeer significant military resources in Changes.

The White Council did show up at the final battle, there was mention of several wardens showing up in the reinforcement with McCoy and Cristos. I'll assume they decided the threat was well in hand and they didn't need to commit a significant amount of resources to the battle at that point.

What I'm most excited about this book is that we might get a lot more good Dresden fanfiction now.

 

You must have missed it, Dresden confirms he's an angel in the next chapter, when he thinks of the protections left to Paranetters:

 

I agree. We should get Dresden's guess or it shouldn't be mentioned at all.

To be fair, none of the wizards, including the Archive, presented much variety when it comes to their spells.

The problem with Ramirez is that his reactions to Winter Knight Harry are completely logical if you're aware of his interactions with Winter Lady Molly. But in my opinion it should be somehow included in the book because otherwise that change of behaviour doesn't work for readers not familiar with other text.

Cristos almost getting killed was even weirder if all of this was planned by the Nemesis and the Black Council. Why put their person on the White Council in danger? Maybe it was needed to convince someone he's not a traitor, but I would prefer if the main characters were actually wrong about him. It's a lot funnier if he turns out to be a pretty good guy who could help them from the beginning if they were a little less biased.

Didn't Bob mention something about the barrier between Nevernever and mortal realm getting weaker and that Ferrovax was keeping it together? It could be explained that it made impossible to use the Ways to get to Chicago.

I would be intimated too if I got Flynn Carsen after me. That guy has 22 academic degrees.

If someone will write Harry and Lara wedding, they should call it My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding.

The question is how did he stop being the Warden and who was after him. Harry being almost dead didn't stop him from being the Warden. This suggests that Kemmler was one until the 60-ties no matter how many times he was gone before. If there were two more Wardens after that what happened to them and why the Demonreach wasn't guarded by the White Council from afar?

If Kemmler was the last Warden then it could be guessed he did something to make the island unreachable and it took Denarians to finally get to it.

Anything more about other topics from the last WOJ? I'm guessing it's some interview after the BG?

That was about Mac? It was a little odd sentence to me and I read it as a shelf that had Grail and later the coin of Lasciel that he left behind.

 

Ferrovax shut down the all the Ways around Chicago, so at least there's an explanation as to why they didn't get any reinforcements from outside the city.

 

Alrighty. Finished the damn thing. Holy shit. It was definitely a return to form, this. It's good to see that Butcher still has it, though that begs the question of what the fuck was going on with Peace Talks. The action was fun and at times, really good. The moments following the death was just fantastic.

There were enough twists and turns to add to it. Still not enough Molly, but hey, at least she was there in the end. No idea what the fuck that marriage thing was. Totally makes sense from Mab's point of view and way of thinking, but it just came out of nowhere. It will give us more Lara, though, and that's never a bad thing. I very much enjoyed Dresden's talks with Mab and their developing relationship.

Another thing that bugged me in Peace Talks and that I very much thought was improved upon in Battle Ground was the lack of sexualisation/fan service. There were a few things, obviously, but those were brief and the sort of thing that was mostly unavoidable in the established universe of Dresden Files. Nothing really weirdly lingering as in some books. Then there was the Marcone/Dresden slash stuff that I'm sure has the fanfic authors typing (among other things) furiously. I wasn't the only one who caught that, right?

Let's hope this gets some fics written.

 

I thought it obvious because the Outsider already called Mac "Watcher" a few tomes ago so him being a "retired" angel only needed to be confirmed, but what other ex-angel could it be anyway? Even the fallens are still angels, technically, not ex-anything.

And I'm pretty sure the last we heard of Lasciel's coin was her latest host dying in Hades' vault. I don't exclude Ascher coming back later, but certainly not as protection for anyone on Dresden's side.

 

Yeah, the most I can think of with why the Librarians are a bigger threat than the Venatori is that the Librarians are clearly pretty new (same age as the Library of Congress at their oldest), even if they draw from a longer historical tradition they're going to be functioning with a modern perspective and with a modern view of timescales. Which could make them more of a threat to the natural order of things than the Venatori? Also the morality issue - you could easily see that people high up in the US government might thing that making pacts with dangerous creatures or seeking out corrupting and dangerous knowledge was the right thing to do, if it benefited the US at the expense of the rest of the world.

Yeah, see thats a weird way of phrasing it. "What was left of an ex-angel". Presumably it does refer to Mac, but it still doesn't tell us a damn thing about what he is, when Dresden clearly knows. Because there's nothing about what happened in their interaction that told him "ex angel", it told him that Mac was "a thing" and then he's vaguely referring to Mac as an ex angel. Its deliberate vagueness as an excuse for not bothering to actually drop hints over the preceding 16 novels about what Mac is.

Definitely a disappointment about the lack of varied magic use. About the most creative thing we saw was Ramirez with his breaking people down to constituent molecules, which is a cool and innovative combat technique. But the Archive playing spinny spinny rubble was a bit dull really, given what her power level is supposed to be.

Yeah, I get that the whole "beaten up by Molly" thing happened, but it seems weird for him to turn so completely against Harry when Harry wasn't even there. I could see it introducing a level of concern to their friendship, which with the help of a well written blow up argument during a tense moment could have been spun into his treating Harry like a monster. But without that argument it just feels like it all came out of nowhere a bit.

Agreed that Cristos really felt out of place in this. If he'd written Martha Liberty instead of Cristos, and not changed a single damn thing about what he wrong Cristos doing, I wouldn't even have blinked. But there were at least a couple of mentions of McCoy and Cristos being quite buddy buddy, which just doesn't fit with how things were written previously.

Yeah, I'd forgotten about Ferrovax shutting down the ways, that explains that one away.

 

You guys are attributing more to Nemesis than it warrants, I reckon. It wasn't a guiding hand for every action taken throughout the book; it was just a catalyst that got the ball rolling and then waited out the battle in safety. Anything else was just part of the chaos of war and if Nemesis lost a well placed agent in the process then that's something it would just have to deal with.

Also, there's a perfectly good reason for Carlos to call Harry one of the monsters. He killed 80 odd humans with magic over the course of a day. The old Harry flirted with that line a few times, but the only other Wizard we see going all out like that is McCoy and he has the Blackstaff to protect him. Harry didn't so much as blink at it at the time. Remember that since the War with the Red Court ended the Wardens' primary duty hasn't been to deal with the Fomor so much as it has been to deal with the number of black magic users popping up all over the place.

Even during the war there were a lot of resources devoted to preventing Lawbreakers from running rampant, like the Korean kid and Molly. Now Harry is one of them in the most blatant way possible. That's more than enough to be condemned by the White Council, Carlos included.

 

Yes, but there was no reason to risk Cristos by placing him in Chicago where he can easily be killed by a crazy Titan. Maybe if the Peace Talks were as impressive as I expected and he was needed there to monitor all the inside talk, but as it was, there was nothing to gain and all to lose if he was killed.

Unless Cristos was specifically send there by Merlin because he wanted someone trustworthy. I wouldn't be surprised if he cursed himself every time he avoided Titan's blast for being too good at getting others to believe in his loyalty.

 

There's also the fact he's the Winter Knight, and Dresden is pretty much the only wizard that still thinks he has any free will with the Mantle -and he needed Uriel's words to think even that. Well, Senior Council might realize it too but half of them have wanted to execute him for years anyway. The general view must be closer to Dresden's own before his death: the only way to not become a tool is death. Molly going full Lady (seen in BG in addition to the Carlos side story) after less time with the Mantle must reinforce that.
It's frustrating since we're in his head and we see directly his efforts to not be Mab's unthinking tool, but from an outsider point of view, there's no reason to think he isn't.

That's in addition to his links to the White Court. The way I read it, it's not so much that Carlos distrusts Harry, it's more that he doesn't think Harry is in control anymore and the way Harry doesn't even "ask for help" makes it only more damning.

 

Re: Mac, I was also confused. When I read that "ex-Angel" line I thought it was implying that an angel was inhabiting the plaque.

So much for him being Mac Cinnfhaelaidh.

 

I can buy Ramirez and the Council being suspicious of Harry, for all sorts of reasons, and they've got plenty of good - or at least understandable from their perspective - reasons for kicking him out.

But...

Harry is known to regularly work and socialise with the two current and one former Knight of the Cross, and has beej entrusted with the guardianship of the third sword (that's still happening, right?). That is absolutely known by the Council. I'm less certain whether they know about his amicable relationship with Uriel, or his possession of Soulfire, but whether they do or not, the concern over his consorting with monsters must surely be countered a little by the fact that three of the most generally accepted agents of capital-G Good in existence are totally fine with him? Harry was literally chatting with Michael when Ramirez showed up to deliver the warning.

 

While I doubt it will happen, with the interactions between two Angels and the Titan, I'm starting to get convinced that they're all of the one kind, only later divided by things like Graces and Mantles. If that's the case then Mac could be ex-Angel that later took a different Mantle before completely retiring.

It all depends on the White Council's view of God which wasn't really explored. Is he and the angles the literal force of the Good or just another faction that happens to be on their side at the moment, but could be mistaken or tricked?