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4.25 AVERAGE
4.25 AVERAGE
I'm gutted 
The battle was bloody 
the loses great 
and in the end Mab pulls a shocker 
Gods I wish I could spill it all out but that would spoil it for others. There are massive changes that will challange all we know of Harry so far.
The next book will be so different for Harry and crew I can't wait. 
I never would have thought anyone could weave this many books together into a coherent, solid story, but here we are.
James Marsters delivered another great performance. He breath's life into Harry and the entire cast.
This book hurt, and that pain was only amplified by Marsters performance.
I was absolutely exhausted by the end of it giving that it was 16 hours -audiobook- of straight war.
There were things to not like; a lot of filler sprinkled throughout mostly, but looking back I am grateful for it if only for the brief respite from the tension the book built from the first page.
I will say that that much action isn't everyone's cup of tea, especially if it's about 85% of the book. If you pick this up, I would recommend reading this right after Peace Talks. This way you may be able to make both feel like just 1 book - which is what Jim initially intended. I do feel like Peace Talks had one of the weaker endings from the Dresden Files, and that can be attributed to him having to re-write the end of Peace Talks and the start of Battle Ground so that you could actually push these as two books. It's one continuous story, I read it as such.
I can't wait to start the series over, waiting for the next one to come out.
James Marsters delivered another great performance. He breath's life into Harry and the entire cast.
This book hurt, and that pain was only amplified by Marsters performance.
I was absolutely exhausted by the end of it giving that it was 16 hours -audiobook- of straight war.
There were things to not like; a lot of filler sprinkled throughout mostly, but looking back I am grateful for it if only for the brief respite from the tension the book built from the first page.
I will say that that much action isn't everyone's cup of tea, especially if it's about 85% of the book. If you pick this up, I would recommend reading this right after Peace Talks. This way you may be able to make both feel like just 1 book - which is what Jim initially intended. I do feel like Peace Talks had one of the weaker endings from the Dresden Files, and that can be attributed to him having to re-write the end of Peace Talks and the start of Battle Ground so that you could actually push these as two books. It's one continuous story, I read it as such.
I can't wait to start the series over, waiting for the next one to come out.
Suitably epic. Wasn't thrilled about the choices for some characters , but the battle scenes were cool, and it's set up well moving forward. After reading this back to back with Peace Talks, it could have easily been one book with some solid editing, but who am I to complain about more Dresden.
Spoiler
specifically Karen Murphy's demise
adventurous
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Some of the best combat in a Dresden book. Most of the other wizards still are acting irrationally, but that's par for the course for the series.
3.5 / 5 ✪
https://arefugefromlife.wordpress.com/2020/10/16/battle-ground-by-jim-butcher-review/
This breaks the mold of typical Dresden Files entries, by featuring little to no mystery in needs of solving and no investigation using magic or, well, anything whatsoever. Moreover, Butcher used it a bit like Changes—a time to thank the previous cast for their service, dedication before ushering them into the void. Not that everyone dies in Battle Ground, but… well, in battle, you ought to expect SOMEONE to die. Butcher just expands this “someone” to be “anyone”.
I’ll skip over much of the recap seeing as how Peace Talks leads right into Battle Ground, and if you haven’t read the latest one, the blurb for this is going to look strange if not completely ridiculous. Sufficient to say: there’s a war on, and Chicago is the battleground.
Once again Harry squares off against powerful supernatural opponents, only this time they’re bigger and stronger than anything he’s ever fought—even anything he can imagine. All his allies are along for the ride, and Dresden’s even got a few new tricks up his sleeve, but it still may not be enough. And with all his loved ones lives—not to mention the lives of everyone in Chicago—in the balance, the stakes are higher than ever.
And so it begins. For how does one even fight a Titan?
When I first read the blurb for Battle Ground (back before I read Peace Talks), I rolled my eyes. It didn’t seem wise. It didn’t seem likely. It seemed ridiculous. But going into it having read Peace Talks—yeah, okay. But how does one take a detective, urban fantasy series heavy on planning, mystery, and the unknown and adapt it into an entire sequence of back-to-back fight-scenes? The answer is… one writes all fight scenes and goes from there.
If you were expecting another Dresden mystery—full of summoning, magic, patience and dramatic tension—this ain’t it. There were still a couple parts that wowed me, a few that captivated me, and enough of the same-old, same-old to keep me invested in the story—but mostly I was a bit disappointed. I went in feeling that this was going to be an EPIC BATTLE FOR THE FATE OF MANKIND AND BEYOND! And it was… for a time. The problem was that all battles have lulls, and those that write war fiction or high fantasy know to include a bit of change, difference, twists, turns to keep everything interesting. And while I’m sure Butcher tried to do this. It didn’t work (for me). It was an good read, fairly good even, yet it doesn’t live up to the hype. About halfway through I was sick of the fight-fight-fight format, but even though there’s plenty going on, eventually every battle of the war starts to feel indistinguishable from the last. Even the boss fight (in many ways ESPECIALLY the boss fight) itself was more of the same. I was expecting an epic build to a fight like Goku v. Frieza; something that went on FOREVER and included more twists and turns than seemed worthwhile. Instead, it was a carbon copy of the rest, only somewhat longer.
Fortunately, the book doesn’t end here. The conclusion actually goes on for a while and includes some wind-down that helps assuage the disappointment, and giving the reader more time to think about what has happened over the course of these two books. This brings back a bit of the mystery, a bit of the tension that felt absent from the rest of the text. It felt like a breath of fresh air; a good note to end on. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fix the mistakes made along the way. And it doesn’t make up for them, either. It just makes everything a bit easier to swallow.
TL;DR
Battle Ground is a swipe of the slate for the Dresden Files. Out with the old, in with the new, if you will. Like Changes, it marks a turning point in the series—one marked by an epic fight scene that just won’t end. And like that epic fight scene, it carries on even after you’ve kinda gotten sick of it and are starting to wonder what else is on. The sameness culminates in a final battle, one that felt so much like the rest of the book before it that it almost felt like a middle-finger to those fans who’ve stuck around to this point. While the conclusion lasts for maybe fifty pages more and in part helps assuage this feeling, one thing is certain moving forward. The Dresden Files will never be the same.
https://arefugefromlife.wordpress.com/2020/10/16/battle-ground-by-jim-butcher-review/
This breaks the mold of typical Dresden Files entries, by featuring little to no mystery in needs of solving and no investigation using magic or, well, anything whatsoever. Moreover, Butcher used it a bit like Changes—a time to thank the previous cast for their service, dedication before ushering them into the void. Not that everyone dies in Battle Ground, but… well, in battle, you ought to expect SOMEONE to die. Butcher just expands this “someone” to be “anyone”.
I’ll skip over much of the recap seeing as how Peace Talks leads right into Battle Ground, and if you haven’t read the latest one, the blurb for this is going to look strange if not completely ridiculous. Sufficient to say: there’s a war on, and Chicago is the battleground.
Once again Harry squares off against powerful supernatural opponents, only this time they’re bigger and stronger than anything he’s ever fought—even anything he can imagine. All his allies are along for the ride, and Dresden’s even got a few new tricks up his sleeve, but it still may not be enough. And with all his loved ones lives—not to mention the lives of everyone in Chicago—in the balance, the stakes are higher than ever.
And so it begins. For how does one even fight a Titan?
When I first read the blurb for Battle Ground (back before I read Peace Talks), I rolled my eyes. It didn’t seem wise. It didn’t seem likely. It seemed ridiculous. But going into it having read Peace Talks—yeah, okay. But how does one take a detective, urban fantasy series heavy on planning, mystery, and the unknown and adapt it into an entire sequence of back-to-back fight-scenes? The answer is… one writes all fight scenes and goes from there.
If you were expecting another Dresden mystery—full of summoning, magic, patience and dramatic tension—this ain’t it. There were still a couple parts that wowed me, a few that captivated me, and enough of the same-old, same-old to keep me invested in the story—but mostly I was a bit disappointed. I went in feeling that this was going to be an EPIC BATTLE FOR THE FATE OF MANKIND AND BEYOND! And it was… for a time. The problem was that all battles have lulls, and those that write war fiction or high fantasy know to include a bit of change, difference, twists, turns to keep everything interesting. And while I’m sure Butcher tried to do this. It didn’t work (for me). It was an good read, fairly good even, yet it doesn’t live up to the hype. About halfway through I was sick of the fight-fight-fight format, but even though there’s plenty going on, eventually every battle of the war starts to feel indistinguishable from the last. Even the boss fight (in many ways ESPECIALLY the boss fight) itself was more of the same. I was expecting an epic build to a fight like Goku v. Frieza; something that went on FOREVER and included more twists and turns than seemed worthwhile. Instead, it was a carbon copy of the rest, only somewhat longer.
Fortunately, the book doesn’t end here. The conclusion actually goes on for a while and includes some wind-down that helps assuage the disappointment, and giving the reader more time to think about what has happened over the course of these two books. This brings back a bit of the mystery, a bit of the tension that felt absent from the rest of the text. It felt like a breath of fresh air; a good note to end on. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fix the mistakes made along the way. And it doesn’t make up for them, either. It just makes everything a bit easier to swallow.
TL;DR
Battle Ground is a swipe of the slate for the Dresden Files. Out with the old, in with the new, if you will. Like Changes, it marks a turning point in the series—one marked by an epic fight scene that just won’t end. And like that epic fight scene, it carries on even after you’ve kinda gotten sick of it and are starting to wonder what else is on. The sameness culminates in a final battle, one that felt so much like the rest of the book before it that it almost felt like a middle-finger to those fans who’ve stuck around to this point. While the conclusion lasts for maybe fifty pages more and in part helps assuage this feeling, one thing is certain moving forward. The Dresden Files will never be the same.
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
A solid Dresden. I disliked the repeated descriptions of Butters during the battle.
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
fast-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes