I agree with much that has already been said here, but something else really bugged me about this book. I am getting so damn tired of reading the exact same rehashed conversations again and again. It's been a problem before in the series, but now it seems like it has just been piled on.

Harry has doubts about whether he can do something. his friends assure him that he can. Harry has doubts about whether he's turning evil. His friends and loved ones tell him that he's a good person, and they'll be there for him one way or another. Michael gives yet another "keep your chin up, believe in yourself and your loved ones" speech.

I felt like I had read a good 20% of the book before.

 

Yes I felt that. The talk about the mantel, Harry’s limits, the swords. We have had it before.

I think Butcher is in a bit of a hard place. He has to make the book accessible to new fans, and casual fans. So he has to rehash that stuff.

But it does weigh down the plot....

 

If you cut out explanations of winter making you want to bone, descriptions of women and how they are all attractive, and the mini intro/backstory you get for every character mentioned - could you combine Peace Talks and Battlegrounds and get a nice tight story?

That said, despite what feels like my relentless negativity towards this book I still put it in the 'enjoy' category if only because I'm glad JB is back to writing.

 

I doubt it. Peace Talks is thematically focused on the theme of discussion. From everything we can tell, Battlegrounds is themed around total war and point blank annihilation. Doubt they'd actually mesh that well, and introduction of that level of significant threat that is the Titan as well as resolution of said Titan in one book would lead to complaints of rushed pacing.

Butcher was definitely in a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't moment.

 

I enjoyed reading it despite some hiccups.

Good parts:
All of Ebenezar scenes.
Mouse protecting Maggie.
Lara

Bad:
JediKnight!HaremProtagonist!Inde!Butters and by extension the swords' story line.
Thomas situation. Jim could have presented it better way.

I didn't mind Harry reintroducing every character he met. Hopefully Butters story will come to an end in next book.

 

Finished it this morning. It was...ok. I've got to echo what others have said, it felt incomplete.

I wish that, after he decided to cut the book in half, he'd then gone back and fleshed out some of Peace Talks. In particularly the actual Accord scenes. He could have done so much to world build there.

Also what I'm getting from this thread and some googling is that the short stories are actually giving important plot information. Which pisses me off. Important plot should be reserved for the main books, because so many folk tend not to read the short stories.

In terms of things I enjoyed, I liked the fight scenes with McCoy, both of them. I liked final deal making discussion with Lara. I'm glad that Dresden and Murphy have finally got over the awkward will they won't they thing.

Things that I wasn't so keen on:

• The idea that Dresden took his daughter out of the Carpenter household irks me. He doesn't have a home and he bounces from one disaster to the next. The sensible thing to do would be to have left his kid with the Carpenters and just made a point of actively being part of her life.
• The "I can't tell you what you need to know" drip feeding of information bullshit thats going on with the starborn stuff. Its coming across as "I can't tell you because if I did, you'd not be the underdog for the next many books and that isn't how I like to write" rather than as having any practical purpose.
• The books haven't built the fomor up be an enemy I care about, let alone this titaness. Enemies out of nowhere, with no background, and no context. Its lazy writing. Honestly, it feels like there needed to be a book set around where Ghost Story is that actually told the story of the fomor coming out of the depths and laying some titan related groundwork. Would have been a much better use of however many thousand words than Ghost Story was.

 

It's weird.

Completely agree with everyone that it really feels like it's obviously half a book. I was shocked when I realised there were only like thirty pages left.

I don't object to the idea of King Corb and Ethniu showing up the way they did without buildup. The whole point of the fomor is that they're resurgent and relatively new on the scene after Changes. I object to the complete mangling of Celtic mythology. Interpretations are one thing but that is weak.

Also mentioning the Tuatha as something separate from the Sidhe is all kinds of fucked.

Hated the Notre Dame quote, that was so stupid and out of place. A really unnecessary blunder. Same with the Harry Potter reference. Thankfully the pop culture was turned down a little.

Loved seeing the Knights together and I don't mind Butters being some Jedi Knight of the cross, his sword was nerfed a little and that makes it palatable.

Tell me this though. What purpose does threesome Butters serve? Like, what addition to the story is that? It's just a weird bit of wank material for Butters character and I'm not okay with it at all.

This was definitely the horniest book yet. I'm willing to hand wave it away because of the Winter Mantle that he reminded us about every five seconds but it was still pretty glaring at times.

I would have gladly taken a thousand words describing someone else at the Peace Talks over a thousand words explaining how much he wants to fuck X character but won't because he's such a good guy.

The whole Freydis thing on top of the Butters thing makes me think Butcher is actively advertising for someone to join him and his new wife at their next comic-con.

"I'm really cool with three ways. Ask me about it sometime."

The Thomas plot feels weak as shit and it was annoying but I'm guessing that's because there's a payoff there for us in the next book or two at least.

The time spent on his relationship with Murphy felt like it was laborious for him to write. The whole thing seemed like he was writing Murphy's character with the intention of repeatedly showing us that they're in love now but also she's fragile and shit.

I think this is partly because if he does kill Murphy off then he doesn't want people to feel it's a gut thing related to his self insert and his ex wife and convince everyone that it's all purely story and her death would be a natural next step.

I'm wondering though. He doesn't seem nearly broken enough in the Christmas story for her to have died in Battle Grounds. Actually a lot of my thinking about this book was coloured by that Christmas story and I hated the fact that I knew people like Odin and Mab weren't in real danger.

The FBI can fuck away off. Again, book could have cut that whole thing out and been fine.

I enjoyed it overall despite many nagging thoughts in my head throughout the read and in the end I think we'll have to judge these as one book because there's so much left hanging. The story really just isn't done and it shows so I'm not going to date this until Battle Grounds.

Oh and Demonreach is consistently amazing.

 

That's a point Seratin. I loved the demonreach stuff, the more we learn about the island the more I like it's inclusion in the story. The only thing that doesn't make sense to me is why there isn't a permanent warden. I'd have thought the white council would have made it a position on the senior council sometime around the time the first warden died.

Also, just coming to mine, who do you think the conqueror that Mab was mentioned in the context of was? I immediately assumed William the Conqueror because he's often referred to as the conqueror as a short hand. But time frame wise that doesn't seem to work out to make any sense.

 

So. This was a good read to me. But it was obviously very incomplete. There is little to no payoff on every subject raised throughout the book. My suggestion is to only read this book once Battlegrounds comes out. Here is my review of it.

Thomas always tried to tell Harry J something when he could barely talk (I didn't really care for the whole plot point that no one ever asked Why Thomas would do something like this or that he couldn't even talk well enough to explain it). A lot of people are already speculating that Justine might have caused Thomas to try the assassination. But this just doesn't make any sense. In one of the short stories, Justine is kidnapped by the Fomor and there is something about mind control in it. Yet it makes no sense that Thomas' actions would be the result of the Fomor meddling. It is very obvious that they had no worries at all about the state of the Accorded Nations. So inner strife between those nations did not matter. The Fomor were kicking off a war no matter what. So who benefits from Thomas' actions? Because as far as I can tell, no one does. That whole plotline is just left dangling with no reason for it at all. Then you have Harry and Mccoy acting like the Dwarves are about to bust up to get Thomas back when a Titan is about to invade which seemed a lot silly.

It really showed that Butcher wrote this over 6 years. There were so many explanations whenever someone was introduced. I think Butcher explained the ghouls and kids and why Harry hates them at least two times. It was just really not necessary. The Mantle trying to dominate his thoughts was always a background thing, but at least he gets points for denying it all the time? I don't need to know Butters' life story or Michael's every time he appears in the book. Its book 16. It can be assumed no one is starting with Book 16.

I am getting kind of tired of Butcher waffling back and forth about the Winter Knight Mantle. Between it actually giving him strength or just loosening his limiters. Running 6 miles through sand with a 220 pound vest on screams super strength to me. It reads like Butcher just doesn't want to give Harry a real strength powerup, so whenever he does something amazingly strong Butcher starts trotting out the line about limits of humanity. The limits excuse just doesn't work for me after we see some of the things he does.

I liked Lara in this novel. The chemistry between her and Harry just works for me. Murphy was... alright in this novel to me. She wasn't too bad, but I still hated the line about how Harry had her so he wouldn't end up like Ebenezer... Like, What? Ebenezer is over 300 years old with a dead wife and daughter. Plus he is the assassin of one of the major powers in the world. Harry Dresden is in his 40s and Murphy will be dead long before he ever reaches 100. I don't know if Murphy's statement is just arrogant or very stupid. I am rooting for her to die in Battlegrounds. In Christmas Eve it has been 6 or more months since Battlegrounds took place. 6 months and yet Harry is still haunted by the deaths. He still cries his eyes out. Since it seems like Thomas will live, that raises the questions of who will die. Harry would be hurt by Ebenezer's death, but it says in Peace Talks that they barely know each other. He would be hurt because of his family dying, but they haven't really talked to each other for 20+ years. Harry's pain makes the most sense if Murphy is dead. Just my 2 cents on that.

Butters was also alright in this novel. Butcher made sure to Balance the lightsaber out. I will echo how Butters was in such good shape to be strange. It seemed like Butcher kept getting mixed up in how long ago SG was. At some points it seems like months, but other times it mentions it being only 1 month ago. Butters couldn't be that good with a sword or so buff in only 1 month. It was also a weird mistake when Harry mentions he has only been to the castle in spirit form, but he went there at the end of SG. I don't know how that got past the betas.

I saw someone mention that the Fomor king brought up all that info to weaken Mab's hold on her mantle which makes sense. Made her more human so her power weakened. I still think being kicked through 2 walls was stupid. Mab is Winter. She is a huge player in Dresden Files. No one else should be that much more powerful than her. That also brings up the Peace Conference. I was expecting a global conference because we know that the Accords include worldwide groups. But it was weird to see only North American groups show up... Heck, I don't think we even saw anyone from Canada or Mexico. So it was only the American groups show up. That was a little disappointing to me. I was expecting a lot more from these Talks. Even the White Council sent their American members for the most part! Just doesn't make much sense. Disappointing conference to me. Ivy was completely ignored which a strange choice.

I was not a fan of the short stories being so important in this book. Their info was everywhere. Molly and the Dwarves, Molly and Carlos, Molly, Butters and his training, Marcone, the bigfoot, etc. Very excessive for a main series book. I was also not a fan of the FBI/police storyline in this book. It feels completely pointless, and I am not sure how Battlegrounds will change that since the electricity is out citywide. That book will last a night or so I assume which means there is no way to resolve any police storyline. So that makes the whole thing pretty pointless.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. I read it in a few hours, and it was a fun read. Butcher still has talent after a 6 or so year break in Dresden. There were a lot of small problems however. Butcher's 6 year writing span really shows through in places. I also think they probably should have just made 1 book as Butcher originally intended because this book is incomplete, and it needs the next one to payoff all that it has promised. Good thing Battlegrounds is out in a few months.

 

Butcher has a problem with telling when more is not better. He did it with pop culture references and does with making Butters "badass" instead of normal guy who acts heroically on an occasion.

As for shorts being important to the books, it depends. The readers are aware of what happened to Ramirez, but it's a bonus for them, not an important information to the series itself which is from Harry's perspective.

At the same time Fomors are established a little better in shorts from what I heard and that should happen in the main series.

I'm not sure about keeping from readers something that Harry is actually doing. Like he mentioned that he's interacting with some prisoners and we have almost no information about who they are.

 

I like the plot with the mortal authorities being after Dreden and Murphy. They do break the law a lot and that's interesting. However it felt out of place because we only got half a book so it didn't go anywhere. I liked the heist/prison break. Teaming up with Lara is fun, and I think Butcher could've made a meal out of that story thread instead of having it be such a small simple thing. Them sneaking past a room full of supernatural heavyweights and only being spotted by two was ridiculous. That could've been the whole book, Peace talks are going on and during it Harry is violating the truce of it to rescue his brother. Then at the end everything goes to shit when a Titan arrives.

 

The Accords have never really made a lot of sense to me. Anything important enough to warrant factions with power levels like Summer, Winter, the White Council, the Red Court etc signing it wouldn't let a mortal with no power sign on. The idea is laughable. Letting Marcone sign the Accords diminishes what the Accords mean, and I can't see Mab being up for turning the Accords into a laughing stock. Or if Marcone had been allowed to sign on, the only reasonable consequence of that to me is another Freeholding Lord deciding to stomp on him due to the insult of being considered his equal.

On a different note, I wonder if the reason that Butters has developed his skill so quickly is that the Knights have a similar mantle to the Faerie Knights. If every time he practices with the sword, he's being actively moulded by an angel.

And yes, that sounds absolutely like what he's going for.

 

Dresden files has always been full of internal monologues, but Peace Talks seemed worse than usual.

For a book so compact it was certainly full of fillers. Even halfway through I couldn't understand why Butcher had written the first half.

I must be the only one who hates Maggie. Butcher just piles up cliched dialogue whenever she shows up.
Really wish she hadn't existed beyond being a plot device in Changes.

 

You might be the only who hates her but it's never far from a schmaltzfest whenever she shows up. Her dialogue is a little too cutesey and twee, even if she's just a kid. Butcher can't seem to write women (at least from a POV perspective) and children very well.

 

Building her up the way he is suggests to me that Harry is going to have to make a choice at some point, maybe in the next book, or later in the series. Maggie or (insert greater good here). Or that she'll be killed outright at some point to spark a major change in Harry's character.

 

Hasn't Butcher talked about doing a YA series with Maggie as the protagonist? That would rule out her dying sometime soon.

 

More than likely he'll need to give her up to some ally that'll be better suited for teaching her how to use magic. It's obvious the conjivitis or whatever it's called is supposed to signal that Maggie has powers (it's a childhood disease, Dresden doesn't know what it is, so he never had it, etc).

But this sort of plot thread (and its complete lack of resolution) is a good illustration of why this book was so weak. Butcher keeps on referring to this as sort of the part 1 to a 2-part season finale episode. But I don't think this sort of "set-up only, resolution later" structure works in literature. The book should be able to stand on its own. Sure, its fine to have a couple new plot threads introduced that won't be resolved until later books, but they should not make up the majority of the plot threads. Smaller threads, like the conjivitis, Thomas' reasons, the mortal investigations, should have probably been mostly resolved by the end of this book. Instead, the only thing that was resolved is that Thomas is 'safe' for now, tune in next time!

 

I'm not sure its obvious to make that connection. Maybe thats the case, but could be something else as well.

Besides, we don't need a signal that Maggie has powers. There's no way Butcher writes Dresden's daughter without powers.

 

@Lumnox you fucking genius. I didn't put that together.

Maggie dying doesn't make sense thematically. As the series goes on, seems to me that a major theme is the idealogical split in methodology between Harry and the White Council Old Guard (personified in both the Merlin and McCoy).

Edit: spelling

 

Doing anything bad to Maggie would be cheap at this moment. She's barely a character on her own. The same problem is with Harry's other daughter. I would expect a little more of her after all problems she caused and she was barely in this book and probably won't be much in the next.

If there is one thing that make it clear this isn't a whole book, it's lack of Bob. I was sure Harry will ask him about his illness when he was visiting Butters.