Battle Ground: Dresden Files, Book 17

3rd time through and I think I can finally write words to describe the experience of Battle Ground.Breathtaking, glorious, nerve-wracking, and intensely emotional.Hitting the ground running after the revelations in Peace Talks, Battle Ground is possibly the most literal description a book has ever had, unless there's one called 'there are words between these covers'. The story takes place over a single night, as all of the Powers who gathered for Peace Talks must stand together to defend Chicago. So immense is the conflict, that non-magical citizens are caught up in the fight, giving Harry a terrifying insight to the motivations of his darkest 'allies'.For a book that covers a battle for the vast majority of it's pages, that gallops along from one group of our heroes to another, that caterpaults between wins against improbable odds to losses that leave you reeling, there are moments that are pure, beautiful, and full of glory. Just as well. Because this is a battle where the stakes are real, things get DARK, and the cost to the bodies and souls of our loved characters are still being measured...

The dresden files seemed to be going down hill for a while but between peace talks and now battle ground it seems to be making a strong return. I will start with the few problems I had with the book.*** SPOILERS ***My first problem is how much Ethniu power fluctuates from fight to fight. There is some excuse for this in that the main strategy is to wear her down but the changes are to extreme and the only reason for them is to allow certain people to survive who shouldn’t have and allow others to seem to contribute more than they should have. A few examples being that if the archive hitting her with debris could do anything to her at all then mortal weapons from a high-powered rifle up should have been able make her blink and a heavy missile might take her out completely. On the front of surviving we have Butters and Dresden. The holy swords can parry and block attacks as powerful as Ethnius blows but they don’t stop that kind of kinetic force just by being there they have to physically block it or else bullets knives etc would never be a threat of any kind to the knights. Butters took a direct hit from Ethniu to the face no matter how tired she was this should have torn his head completely off. The same is true of Dresden getting hit by a rock she threw full power. The only defense he had was his duster which has been said repeatedly at most spreads out blunt impacts and won’t tear under them. So at most it would have stopped him from being ripped in half by the impact it still should have broken his arm and caved in his chest completely and probably liquified organs as well. Saying that these 2 survived direct hits from her no matter how tired she was is like saying that me stepping on a medium sized ant won’t kill it because I am too tired to throw a proper punch.Now lets talk about the eye. They call it a super weapon and talk about how it is so powerful that repeated use could tear the ver fabric of reality apart but it rarely goes beyond blowing up single ski scrapers and then needs time to recharge. If it where as powerful as they say it should have been able to simply blowup the entire city of Chicago without even being taxed. Even if you limit it to sight line every blast should have destroyed everything in front of it from one end of the city to the other in a swath at least a mile and a half wide. As to destroying a single sky scraper if everyone from McCoy and the Archive up can’t do that I would be shocked and if Mab can’t do it without breaking a sweat then I have vastly overestimated her. From the demonstrated power of they eye it seems to be the equivalent of 1 bomber loaded with bunker busters. If this is what they consider a super weapon then the supernatural world is not just vastly outnumbered by humans but also vastly overpowered by them as well.Finally we have to talk about Odin and Kringle. Throughout the books they imply and sometimes say outright that the gods power is comes in large part from the number of worshippers they have and that is why they are so much weaker than they once were. But Santa Clause has so many more worshipers today than Odin ever dreamed of having. Even if you limited who he received power from to those that actually believe he is real and say he only receives this energy once a year he should at the very least be as powerful as he ever was. Probably still more powerful.A few things I am not sure how feel about yet are:The change it tone around Lara that started in peace talks.I was very upset at first about Murphys death and I didn’t think I would be able to ever accept Dresden loving another woman. But then I realized that she will definitely be coming back at some point. With that said I am still conflicted on the whole thing.Everything around Thomas and Justine was pretty obvious from the beginning except for her escaping. Given that the threat to the child would be just as effective against Dresden as it was against Thomas and might be that effective against Lara then without nemesis being restrained from harming it, it doesn’t make sense that it isn’t using that card or hasn’t already killed the child.The good:Lots of epic battles.The humor sometimes doubled me over with laughter.Dresdens relationship to Mab and him being the Winter Knight seems more and more interesting useful and a good thing on the whole especially as he comes to understand it and her better and better. I hope this continues well into the future. In fact I hope he never stops being the Winter Knight.The dynamic with Molly and Lara has been great so far and has the potential to get so much better.Dresden finally being out of the White Council and the dead weight they have been is so great it is like a weight off my mind. Add in the fact that he is starting to build his own group that will one day rival or surpass the Council and the potential is just wonderful.I really like that with peace talks and this battle ground the story line about the Black Council seems to be finally moving forward again to some degree.I found Mavras behavior interesting in that she seems to have some other angle concerning Dresden other than just serving Drakul.I was both happy and disappointed in the information about the artifacts in the armory. Happy that it assuaged my curiosity. Disappointed in that the whole armory is christian. I was really hoping for it to be items of equivalent power from multiple religions and places.On the whole the series seems to be coming back strong. Heres hoping it continues that way.

Generally I liked this book. It does tie up some loose ends and sets up new enemies for future books. But it is a curate's egg of a book, there were some not-so-good parts as well.So the Big Fight that was due at the end of "Peace Talks" kicks off, and it is epic. Everything including the kitchen sink and the entire catalogue of a builders' providers gets thrown in, and it is suitably heroic and heart-wrenching by turns. The (kind of, if you squint and the light is behind them) Good Guys do win in the end, but it's not easy or cheap. And as usual, Harry ends up with more questions than when he started. There's some very good writing here, and I mean the prose style as well as the plot - Butcher has always been able to pull off twisty plots and action scenes, but Harry's dialogue has been a little bit juvenile at times. That's better in this book, Harry still can't resist trying to get off a zinger but the situation is so grave that he is finally showing some self-awareness and growing up a bit. Butcher's writing has improved (though he still can't resist pop culture references but eh, that's okay).Now for the criticism. Warning for spoilers.I AM SO TIRED OF DEAD LOVE INTERESTS BEING USED TO MOTIVATE THE MAIN CHARACTER. Seriously, this is the major flaw in the Dresden Files series: women are Sexy or Dead. Sometimes both. Mab is the only one getting character development and that is as much in service of Harry's plot arc as for her own sake.And once again, a woman Harry loves ends up dead in order to give him further fuel to motivate his battles. Now, I can see why Butcher killed off Murphy (yeah, this is the Big Spoiler here) and looking back, he was probably laying the groundwork for taking her out. In the increasingly high-stakes world Harry is operating in, Murphy has no place. "She's only five foot but dang she's scrappy" doesn't cut it where people can take down buildings with a wave of their hand and reality-benders are two a penny. So far Murphy survived because she could always manage to get her hands on More Gun, but that only goes so far. Her major advantage was being the buffer between Harry and the police and official bodies, and when she was booted out of the department that, in hindsight, should have been a major clue that her days were numbered.But honestly, it's fatiguing by now as a woman reading this series to tick off all the dead women who were Harry's love interests but then shuffled out of the way to advance the plot and give him fresh options. Let's compare Murphy with Marcone, who is a major mortal figure and who, in this book, is revealed to have obtained a much-needed power-up.He needs this to compete on anything approaching level terms with the entities and beings that he is now playing amongst. This is the Big Boys' League and, despite any women players, I do mean Boys. If Gentleman Johnnie had been Lady Joanie, (s)he would be dead by now like Murphy, because Butcher doesn't seem to know what to do with women who are main characters but who don't revolve around Harry (Molly still has her Jupiter-sized crush on/infatuation with him, something that is going to be played up for major jealousy and cat-fights with another female character in future unless I'm badly wrong). So this is mainly why I'm docking a star from my review.And even Marcone seems to be trailing Harry; he's still supposed to be Harry's major mortal nemesis, but I can't help feeling that he's starting to copy-cat out of envy: "oh, you had a fallen angel in your head? I want one, too!"That brings me to my next point, which is that I'm starting to feel the need for a "Previously, on this programme..." because frankly the cast of new and current enemies is starting to get a little crowded. Though one of the new arrivals did account for, in an admittedly cool way, how come the Black Court is still around even if they got taken down hard before.Harry is immensely powerful. Hugely, almost god-like, powerful. But brute strength is no longer enough, and he needs to slow down and start thinking. There's so much going on that he doesn't know and needs to know, and so many people secretly or even openly manipulating him, and he's burned a lot of bridges where he has cut himself off from access to knowledge that he desperately needs.And that brings me to the final part, the set-up that will have everyone furiously debating. Just what exactly does Mab intend to happen with this "let's you and her get married" notion? She definitely has a plan, and Harry needs to start thinking about what he *is* - as a wizard, as a star-born, and as the Winter Knight. He's valuable for some reason and he needs to find out why.So the end brings him around again to his beginnings, in a way that could be self-indulgent but instead is another marker of how very far along the road he has travelled. He gets his old dwelling place back, maybe not the same as it was when he started out young, cocking a snook at the White Council, and so very ignorant of the dangers he was playing with.He knows a lot more now, he's been through a lot more now, and even if he has his basement back (and this is so stereotypically 'territorial wizard' it made me laugh - he may think the White Council are stuffy old dotards but he's behaving just like one of them) it's abundantly clear that 'you can't go home again'.So I am definitely looking forward to the next book because there need to be answers to the questions that have piled up. Harry can't afford to keep bulldozing his way through problems, he needs to start knowing just what the battleplans are.

Fue para un regalo, a quien se lo dí me comentó que está muy padre y vale mucho la pena.

Butchers Dresden series is nothing but a good old action and magic packed romp around modern day Chicago. Nice light reading, but dont think about it too hard.

I love everything about Dresden. Just done the whole series in one go!!! But battle ground is absolutely the best of the bunch. Jim just gets better and better. Can't wait for more!!!!

I have every one of this series in paper back. Personal preference and I'll be honest if I lost them I would buy them all again. Best of the best 👌. Read them more than once. Jim Butcher great author. 👍 🥰

Harry Dresden takes on a full-scale invasion of Chicago by beings from his side of the magical world in this one. His allies are Mab, Molly, Marcone, the pack of Werewolves he's friends and allies with, the White Council and almost everyone he's ever allied himself with as the last Titan brings an army ashore to turn the whole city into a crater. The intent is to show the mortal world their nightmares are real, but even the Blackstaff, states that when the US military gets involved nobody will last long. So the attackers and the defenders have to move fast and pull out all the stops...and they do.Make no mistake, this is the most brutal Dresden Files book yet. An awful lot of people and monsters have died over the years, but not on this scale. Nobody is safe, at all, and secrets are spilled left and right as both sides stop at nothing. Harry, Winter Knight and Warden of the White Council, Chicago's first line of defence against things which go bump in the night for all Baron John Marcone's claims? Shows his opinion of what's happening by planting himself front and centre and inviting all comers to try and go THROUGH him, up to and including the Titan herself.They make a very serious attempt.Old friends, old enemies and new all show up to show willing, one way or another. Bob puts in an appearance-and informs Harry the kind of power the Titan is throwing around could cause reality itself to collapse. Yes, really. As if Harry wasn't having a bad enough day.Mab almost cheerfully ploughs through every enemy in her path atop her unicorn, stating she hasn't indulged like this in years. Both remaining Knights of the Sword, Butters and Sanya, show up so Harry suggests Sanya, who has military training, take charge of the volunteer human defence Harry has ended up leading. The CCPD turn out in force to help, but are severely out of their league. Harry Soulgazes Rudolph's Partner almost by accident when Rudolph, once of Special Investigations, tries to Arrest Harry-and Rudolph proves what Harry always suspected when his Partner learns the hard way just what kind of man Harry really is. He can take it, Rudolph can't. Which leads to tragedy...That's just a fragment of what happens in this story. If you love Harry Dresden? You MUST read this book to find out what happens, who lives and dies. It's every bit as good as ever-and is leading into something massive regarding Harry, I think. As his "Starborn" origins becomes more important, even though even he has no idea what that means.Two last things: first, the White Council makes a major decision which will send shockwaves throughout the books, focusing on Dresden personally. It's clear it happens because of a growing fear of Harry's power and influence, but I suspect the people who decided on it don't know what they are doing. Harry's never been the type to sit back and take anything he disagreed with-this will be no different. Second, Dresden is talking to Michael, his old friend and Molly's father. When Michael finds out what the White Council has done? His reaction had me in stitches...