Battle Ground: Dresden Files, Book 17

This was one of the most sweeping Dresden novels Jim Butcher has written. If it had been combined with Peace Talks as one novel, I would say it was his best book yet. I strongly recommend that you read, or reread, Peace Talks directly before reading Battle Ground. Like Changes, it builds upon all the previous novels and the Dresden universe will never be the same.I am more convinced than ever that Peace Talks and Battle Ground were originally intended to be one novel and the publisher played games with loyal readers. Usually Butcher spends the first half of a novel building up the suspense and laying the groundwork for great action and a compelling finish. Peace Talks was an exception, with lots of building up and then an abrupt ending. Battle Ground is also an exception, it has almost no build up – it starts directly where Peace Talks ends – and is almost continuous action until a satisfyingly extended conclusion. Taken as a pair, they make for an excellent story. Neither novel does a great job standing alone. My five-star rating is for the combined story.Battle Ground brings in many characters that have not been seen in a while. There are several surprises, but all make sense (and I only saw one of them coming and am kicking myself for not having seen another). The main plot of Peace Talks is resolved and progress is made on several other fronts. This book is highly recommended with the caveat that you first read Peace Talks.There is also a bonus short story that takes place six months after Battle Ground ends.

This was a really disappointing follow up to Peace Talks. I think I'm done with the series. Something went wrong around the time that Butcher started levelling Harry up every book. All the charm is gone. Dialogue is repetitive. The relationships are stupid. A significant number of characters are there just to be there - no real purpose. I was bored and had to struggle to finish.

Mr. Butcher delivered a steaming pile of boring fight descriptions. This and his previous offering are quite off interest. This has killed my interest of his efforts going forward.I read his book, so I'll pay the price. Just don't expect me to do so again.Mr. Butcher - these last two books are a hack not worthy of you.

Powerfully written and epic in scale, the book amply demonstrates the author’s many talents; indeed, the concluding chapters (including the previously released Christmas Story) are some of the best in the entire Dresden canon. But all of that is undone by the author’s continued reliance on a hackneyed plot device that is long past its sell-by date. The author excels at creating strong female characters, but looking over the novels since at least Turncoat one can only conclude that they are as flies to him. At this juncture, the series has devolved to a theater of torment where the reader endures Harry’s monologue of pain as women around him suffer mental or physical abuse. It is moving, and artfully written, and gritty and grim and real (if one care about that in one’s fantasy) — but it has grown repetitive, and numbing, and misogynistic, and cruel. Add in the fact that splitting the story into two books is a blatant cash grab, and a one-star review is appropriate.

(There are some light spoilers in here, but nothing significant if you've read the previous books)To be fair, it is not this book alone that has been disappointing, it's been the evolution of the entire series and - likely related - what feels like Butcher's evolution as an author. There are two main issues which, again, are related:1. The way Christianity has been slowly reworked in the story. When the Knights of the Cross were originally introduced, they were an interesting component of a larger universe, but far from the most important players. Angels are starting to pop up everywhere, and some of the conversations and characters are becoming grating. Michael's family has essentially evolved into the perfect Christian home, away from what used to be a loving but like-most-families occasionally problematic environment. Sanya - the atheist - and Dresden have a brief exchange at one point about having faith based on clear observations. Frankly the way the books have evolved its felt like (I have no idea) Butcher has had some sort of spiritual revival and its bled into the books in a way that is very irksome given how the series started. I did not begin reading a 17+ book compendium so that I could read a series slowly evolve into The Chronicles of Narnia.2. As I mentioned, this second point is likely related to the first, but many of the characters are becoming really stale and one dimensional. This might be a product of having so many characters running around in books that are not particularly long, or it may just be that Butcher is becoming tired of the story, but when an important character dies in a novel you should care. I used to care. Lasciel's shadow's fate had me nearly in tears and that wasn't even a real person. Since that point in the series there has been a slow downward slide in the quality of character development and their depth. Fascinatingly, the characters that probably *should* be uni-dimensional, like Mab, have been getting extra attention and depth while characters like Murphy and Michael have become really stale. You can feel Butcher trying to flesh out Murphy's grappling with her injuries and invest you in her character arc, but it's done in such a ham-handed fashion that it just doesn't work.Plus some of the dialogue and plot development is just incredibly lazy, these days. Near the end of the book when the bad guy just tells Dresden everything...why? They had literally zero reason to do that. They weren't compelled, they weren't even given an incentive. It was just a useful way to give the reader information. And Michael inviting Dresden to Christmas was extremely weird in the middle of the Summer. The purpose of that only becomes obvious once you finish the book. Such lazy writing.Anyway, the battles are epic and the story is clearly heading somewhere earth shattering, which is enjoyable enough to read. Everything is becoming bigger and more grand in scale. But it feels like the process toward an epic confrontation has caused the small things to be left behind, and those are the pieces that really make a story work. I hope that Butcher remembers that before he goes any further with the series, or else I may just resort to reading book summaries moving forward, rather than paying $15 to be disappointed more and more with each installment.

I would say the last two books are every idea Jim ever left on the cutting room floor sandwiched together and presented to us. Battle Ground is essentially a bloated fight scene. I have a sneaky feeling that when the two books were written as one Battle Ground would have been a lot shorter because you can almost see the seam where more exposition was tacked on to flesh out areas that did not require it.The way it has been butchered and rewritten and presented to us feels like a cash grab of the worst sort; two inferior books sold generating double the price for a diluted end result.I could go into gritty details about why the content of this books is also not up to par, but I suspect that the author is aware because Harry Dresden tells the antagonist why her whole attack was poorly executed and as the reader rather than being 'Oh that's clever' you are more like 'Then what was the point of this mess anyway?'

Following on from the very disappointing Peace Talks which was just a prologue for this book, we suddenly arrive at Avengers Endgame. A too large cast fighting an apocalypse. And like in Endgame, in Battleground, this large cast has only just been juggled well enough to make it workable.There is just too much going on, certain storylines stopped and others started for a whole new start in the Marvel - sorry - Dresden universe.I was hooked to the early books by the character of Dresden and co and the cleverness that Butcher showed in making magic believable in the everyday world. It was personal to Dresden somehow. Now we are entering epic urban fantasy mode, and to me, it is just not as much fun.It may be that in the long wait until Peace Talks appeared that other authors filled the gap that just wasn't there before making it much harder to excel in this area and I will still carry on following Dresden's escapades but I don't see how Butcher can reign in before it gets completely out of control.

This is Book 17 in the Dresden File the long running series following Chicago’s only professional wizard needless to say this isn’t the place to start.So it ends Battleground brings to a close the story that was started in Peace Talks not really a duology, a story told across two books, but rather one book split in two. As such my overall score is for the two books together they don’t really work onthere own. If Peace talks was all set up then battle ground delivers , action packed with a lot of pay offs and enough foreshadowing to keep Ardent series fans happy.Dresden is put through the wringer, the Fomor have invaded lead by the last Titan bearing a magical weapon that lays waste to all before her. The Accorded Nations have been caught with there pants down, metaphorically speaking, with only a fraction of there forces on hand to repeal the invasion and those that are present are distinctly underpowered compared to forces from the dawn of time.Characteristion is good, the battles are well written characters that have only been mentioned off screen make a appearance lots of stories come to a close or at least a crossroads and Jim deepens the mythology of the Dresden files while setting up the future all things he excels at. Butters, Mab, the Alphas, The Council and many others others new and old make an appearance and for those who found Peace Talks wanting will find this, I think, a much more satisfying experience.What stops it from being five stars for me is Jim over using certain tropes too much and certain bad habits that made certain character arcs a bit too predictable well loved characters used solely to act as motivation for Dresden is too been there and done that at this stage of the files and can be seen coming a mile off and while it was thankfully turned down in battlegrounds the sexism that was rampant in peace talks still rears its head every now and then.However all that aside this was a strong entry in the Dresden files and great way to close out this chapter of the files roll on book 18.

Brilliant book, the excitement and action just keep coming as we watch Chicago'sNo. 1 wizard go to War for friends, family and the citizens of Chicago.I reread the whole series of the Dresden files before this book and you can see how the different characters from each book change for good or bad as Harry battles old enemy's or creates alliance's with others. I'm not going to say anymore about this book other than read it for yourself and I bet it will make you laugh and cry as we see Harry's life and friends change forever. It's amazing how Jim Butcher keeps us all on our toes with the different characters in the Dresden files as we enter that world for however long it takes to read these brilliant magnificent books. We all need a way out of our own lives for a while especially with this horrible pandemic all around our world goes on. Thanks for giving is a magnificent series of book to read Jim and I hope you your family and friends are all safe. Thanks again !!

After the con of splitting Peace Talks into two books so the publisher could charge double, my hopes were already a bit cynical going into reading this.Peace Talks itself didn't actually feel to have much of a story, really just being the build up to Battle Ground - then instead of having 3-4 chapters of high octane action at the end of a book we had a whole book of 'level 11'.If I compare this to a movie, it's like a 1 hour 20 minutes build up to a big action scene, then 20 minutes of all out action. Except in this case the all out action runs for chapter after chapter after chapter. I lost cound of the amount of time an impossible foe just popped up, was dismissed, replaced by an impossible foe and so on.All told, not a bad story, just overlong and cynically marketed. Hopefully the next books will come within a decade and we can get a more even cadence to the writing.....