[Book Review] Battle Ground


Battle Ground (Dresden Files #17) / Jim Butcher

Out Today - 9/29!

Previously Reviewed
Peace Talks marked the beginning of the end for life as we know it in Chicago.  When a Titan announces she is bringing a doom to the city (and humanity), without any care for secrecy, things are going to get messy.  What's left is what do you do about it?  Do you fight, do you run, do you hide?

Battle Ground is Dresden's Endgame, Ethniu cast as Thanos with the Eye of Balor in place of the Infinity Gauntlet.  Representatives across the Accorded races and factions are present, standing against the Fomor, and there is an 11th hour rally around reinforcements.  Credit where credit is due, Butcher manages to keep the pace going strong in a novel that is 80% combat.  This is not an easy battle, nor one that any of the defenders could safely count on winning, there's too much at stake, too much power in use, and too many lives on the line.

If you've read my review of Peace Talks, I was open that it was a let down.  Battle Grounds is an improvement, with the payoffs that the previous book deliberately withheld.  Like the movie adaptation of the final Hunger Games book, we have the story of a single book morphed into two installments.  Plot elements I disliked in Peace Talks, I remain dissatisfied with.  Additionally, some of what I struggle with is a sign of the world we live in now vs the world the book was conceived in, and quite frankly it's kind of difficult to share in the comfort of re-entering a Chicago in ruins and seeing cops out at every street corner.

My biggest upset I honestly cannot talk about without giving anything away.  Let us just leave it at, at one point in the story, a Thing Happens that I don't think any reader will be happy with.

As for the ending, there are perhaps a whole handful of endings.  Some of them wonderful and of hope, letting us know the light has not gone out.  Others are abrupt and hint at bigger changes yet to come.

Advance Reader Copy courtesy of Penguin RandomHouse in exchange for an honest review; changes may exist between galley and the final edition.

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