Finally managed to read this about two days ago and get my thoughts in order, though I'm sure I'll forget something.

First of all... definitely not on my list of favorites. I quite enjoyed Skin Game and I'd hoped we'd be back to badass but I was honestly a bit bored for most of this book.

Goodman Grey is awesome as always, even in the little screentime he had. He's up with with Marcone on my list of favorite characters. Which... leads me into Butcher's timeline, because Marcone is one of my favorite characters, but he's getting older and I really hope Butcher has something planned for him to leave as a legacy at the end of the series. Because if he just... dies... and that's it? Or even if he doesn't die but just ends the series as "that one mortal dude who got his foot in the door" without hinting at where that's going? Yeah, disappointment ahoy. Fingers crossed.

The Cornerhounds were one of the most disappointing fights in the entire damned series. McCoy and Dresden versus Outsiders? That should have been a hardcore "fuck yes!" but instead it was silly and boring and felt underpowered. Butcher tried to build them up as super dangerous by having McCoy's hand tremble and whatnot, but they felt barely more dangerous than actual dogs. I mean, McCoy and Dresden have time to jog down to a nearby parking garage and make a plan before the damn things catch up to them? Apart from the infrasound, which didn't 'feel' like it caused a serious issue even if it did, and the weird tentacle things on their heads, they felt like pretty basic enemies. Even the slow parts of Skin Game were filled with more suspense than this fight. And don't get me started on how much time Harry seemed to have to fuck about with gas tanks and whatnot after the giant T-rex sang Happy fucking Birthday.

Another big disappointment was the massive amounts of rehash. For fucks sake. If people want to start at book 16 of a fucking series then they can use some damn context clues to pick shit up, so add more of those and less of the 'here is the information you should know from previous books' statements. We don't need a re-introduction to everyone and we don't need Harry to stop and exposit at us in his head every time a past plot point rears it's head.

In my opinion it was far, far more noticeable in this book than it has been in any of the previous ones.

The pop culture references were a bit annoying but I roll my eyes at those now.

Molly was the least irritating in this book compared to all previous books. I like how Murphy was handled. Lara was shit in my opinion - felt like a 'normal woman Dresden must help' instead of a dangerous monster at the head of a fucking vampire court. Mab was better than usual, and I liked her in this one for the most part.

Dresden's intense pre-occupation with his libido was cranked up to 11 but at least Butcher tries to explain that with the Winter Mantle which is relevant, I guess.

The Fomor don't feel like they came out of nowhere to me, but then I've been reading the short stories. They've kidnapped one of Harry's pregnant werewolf friends (who Murphy rescued), fucked around with Justine and Marcone, etc. The Titan came out of nowhere but I'm actually okay with that - I have the impression that she's been AWOL for a few thousand years and so the 'younger' generation of supernatural beings let her slip their minds, and apparently Ferrovax and Odin hadn't been thinking about her much either.

McCoy's vamp blinders are on way too tight for someone in his position. I'm honestly annoyed that he can't be more mature about the whole thing. I was equally annoyed by Harry's thoughts on the matter, where he admits to himself that if it was a ghoul he'd probably act exactly like McCoy is acting in the same damned situation. Fucking grow up, people. Both should know better, but I guess that's the point - they aren't perfect.

Thomas is almost certainly NOT trying to say "take care of Justine for me" but I'm not sure what he's actually trying to say instead. That Justine is the baddie? That it's Justin DuMorne? Something else?

So Mab is/was probably Niviene, yeah? I guess it's also possible for her to have been the Lady of the Lake or Morgan le Fay, but Niviene was my initial assumption so I'm sticking with that. That's cool.

The "Peace Talks" themselves were a disappointment as others have said... though to be fair they never actually started. We had one party for introductions or something then the Fomor showed up at the opening ceremoney, so I guess that's fair. What isn't okay though is how few representatives were, well, represented. There should be dozens more signatories at this thing in my opinion - and if the issue is that Butcher didn't want to sort out what everyone would be doing in Chicago to defend it, then fine. Use supernatural scrying or fucking teleconferencing to have the other delegations at least present, and when shit goes down so does the communication. Boom - now you get everyone represented but still only have the players you want physically in Chicago.

Lots of filler too. Butters was a little less irritating this time than he was in Skin Game, but we didn't really need the scene at Michael's house. There were other scenes we didn't need too. Don't get me wrong though, I actually like little side scenes like this with minor characters to see what they're up to, but only when they don't feel like filler. And so many of these did.

Why the fuck didn't Lara go talk to Thomas? I get that she can't defend him without setting off problems with Etri, but as his 'head of state' equivalent it seems like she'd be allowed to speak to him. And for that matter why the ever-loving FUCK did Lara not ask Harry how he was going to take care of Thomas on the island? I get that Butcher is trying to tell us that Thomas couldn't be healed just by feeding (which was not explained nearly well enough, b/c I spent quite a bit of time wondering why Lara's solution to this wasn't just to toss him a bunch of mortals to eat whether Harry liked it or not), but... Lara is the head of the White Court, and possibly only her father has more knowledge of esoteric issues like the one Thomas has. Why would she believe Harry could 'fix it' without asking him how?

*sigh* I mean... I didn't hate the book, but it was half filler and the pacing (even for the 'exciting parts' like the cornerhounds) felt like crap to me. Like Butcher wanted me to believe things were urgent but nothing ever felt urgent.

I almost feel like this book could have been 20% of the length it was... and if that's the case, and Battle Ground could be 80% of it's length, I agree with whoever said maybe we could have gotten a tight book out of this instead. But hey, in the end... I don't mind getting more story overall. Just wish I had the second half of the book to read right now.

 

Just read through some of the other comments in the thread, and I wanted to post again to talk about Butters.

Butters really frustrates me as a character because...

1. Butcher writes him like all the worst 'nerd' stereotypes combined.
2. He sticks his nose in where it doesn't belong in Skin Game and causes trouble for people.
3. He doesn't recognize when he's completely out-matched in Skin Game (as opposed to characters who realize how out-matched they are and step in anyway)
4. He was fine as character without the Knight power-up, which made him feel more cliche.
5. Feels strongly of a self-insert.

But in Universe? Hell, off the top of my head Butters is pretty much eligible bachelor extraordinaire for a lot of women. I have ZERO issues with Butters get hot, double werewolf action because...

1. Butters is not un-attractive and has never been described as such. He's not a model either, but before he 'got in shape' after Skin Game he was probably straight up average (a 5/10), and I always feel that a lot of people would be surprised how often 'not ugly' works about as well as 'hot' for a relationship. And he's in shape now since becoming a Knight.
2. He's good at his job which probably pays pretty damn well, and competence is attractive.
3. If you are 'in the know' to the supernatural community, he's actually one of the bigger names in Chicago given his associations with the "Chicago Alliance" or whatever in Ghost Story and his personal connections to Dresden, Murphy, and the Werewolves.
4. He's a fucking Knight of the Cross now, which you know has to be a turn on for at least some people.
5. He has magical trinkets, which... yeah, they're dumb, but fucking hell if I had a magic skateboard I'd use it too.

Apart from being a wiry annoyance as a character he's pretty well set for a solid sex life in Universe... which makes the self-insert thing all the more annoying. But in Universe? Good for Butters, happy for you man.

This all leads me into one of his scenes in this book, where we find out about his love life.

It was filler.

It was 100% filler, and that really annoys me, because the only reason Butcher would have put that scene in is to give us the threesome information.

Why do I think that? Because Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden is not going to go to Butters for a cut on his hand that (1) wasn't affecting his ability to use the hand, (2) wasn't hurting much, and (3) didn't even end up needing stitches or anything more than a bandage and a good cleaning.

Seriously. Butters cleaned out his hand in 20 minutes (debrided and put medicine on). Now, maybe during calmer times Dresden would have gone to see him and gotten it fixed, turned it into a social thing, I dunno.

But this was crunch time. This was (1) Outsiders are attacking me and Gramps in the middle of Chicago, (2) this was my brother has been accused of an assassination attempt and will be killed and I have no time to help him if I don't hurry, (3) this was I have to be ready to act as a guard and a liason for the White Council and the Winter Court, (4) this was a dozen other things.

This was not a time in which Harry is going to fuck off for an hour or two to see about a cut on his hand.

He cut his hand so we could find out about the threesome, and that annoys me because it's shitty filler.

Want to make it relevant? Fine. Get Cornerhound slobber into the wound instead of oil. Maybe that would normally kill someone but hey, Dresden is Starborn right? Maybe it nullified the worst of it but it still did something weird, maybe turned all the blood in a single vein to sludge for his entire arm, who knows? But he needs Butters to look at it, and then we can get actual plot (Starborn/Outsiders information for later) along with the self-insert wankfest.

And it wasn't just about introducing Butters to the story, because that was also done with the Knights of the Cross scene... which was also not needed. If you want to foreshadow that Butters might turn up as a Knight later all you need to do is have someone on the Paranet tell Murphy that Sanya is in town and Boom. Fans now know to expect the Knights to turn up later.

/endrant

 

I'm starting to wonder if Butcher has gotten famous enough now that he doesn't listen to his beta readers anymore... or maybe that they're so enamored with him that they're just telling him that everything he does is wonderful.

Because all that shit I pointed out in my first post? That would easily have come out in a beta read just as bluntly as I put it here. Most of it wouldn't even be that hard to fix in my opinion, however he decided to do it.

Either his beta readers are telling him he's amazing and all his words are amazing or he doesn't want to listen to them anymore and isn't.

 

I fully expected things to fail and erupt in war with no peace talks. I just expected the promised talks would go poorly in all the worst ways... not that they wouldn’t happen at all.