Based on what was revealed in the short story Christmas Eve massive casualties are coming, but we know that Harry, Maggie, Mouse, Michael, Mab, Molly, and Vadderung all survive.
Bummer about Gwynn ap Nudd. He was one of my favorite characters from the short stories.
Agree, Marvin, but it DOES explain why the Cubs eventually won the World Series.
I’m just going to treat this like “Battle Grounds, part I”. If this was all we were getting I’d be pissed, but since “part II” is coming in a few months, I’m just mildly disappointed, while hyped for the rest of the story.
As for the book itself, some thoughts (in no particular order)
-I don’t trust Justine. She already showed in Even Hand that she can play the damsel in distress to manipulate people. And Thomas said “Justine”, he didn’t say Justine WHAT-- the assumption that he meant “protect Justine” makes sense for Harry, certainly, but it could have been “watch out for Justine” or “this is Justine’s fault”. Or “Justine is the clue that will explain things.” I dunno, even Justine is completely innocent, I expect Thomas’s message to be different than what Harry thinks.
-Is it just me, or did Ethniu imply that Mab was originally Nimue? (Or possibly Morgan).
-Bonea was adorable (“Pancakes are inanimate!”) and we need more scenes with her and Maggie.
-Poor Maggie, she keeps being shuffled between homes. It’s to protect her, yeah, but that’s still gotta
mess her up.
-Molly. Molls. Sweetie. You really need to have that talk with your parents. (Though I still predict Michael will temporarily lose it with Harry).
This was my take as well. It’s been a bit so I completed a reread of the series and this was the weakest entry and actually felt like one of the new star wars movies. It was going out of its way to make sure it hit the right notes.
I this was it and we had to wait a year for the next one I’d be tempted to give up. The obvious error of him claiming to have never been in the bffs building just looks lazy especially when he couldn’t bother to write a conclusion. I had heard he had two 3/4 books so they were splitting them I didn’t realize they were going to deliver 3/4 of a book.
OK, it’s almost been a week. Are we free to start dropping spoilers now?
Broomstick, the OP, said that if no-one objected, in a day this thread would be open to spoilers. It’s been a day and there’s been not objections. Seems like it’s spoiler time. Honestly, if someone opens up a thread for it now, I don’t know what else they would expect.
The blurry spoiler tags are still kinda gee-whiz cool to me, and I kind of liked the excuse to use them. 
Okay, that was weird. The smiley with the blurry spoiler tag over it had me trying to figure out how I’d gotten a big brown dirt-smudge on my monitor before I thought to just click on it. 
Let’s make it official:
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
And, to continue the post that got interrupted:
No, it has to do with defeating the Outsiders the Titan is working with. It’s pretty clear that Harry doesn’t have anything near the firepower to take on a Titan, even before you get to the Eye of Balor stuff. Defeating the Titan is what Odin and Ferrovax are for, I think they’re the ones that will have to get her down and restrained long enough for Harry to do the banishing/imprisonment in Demonreach.
I’m pretty sure I know what the “athame” is for, not sure what the wooden plaque is for.
I’m not sure Thomas as we knew him is coming back - his Hunger seems to have been out of control, I got the impression from Lara that’s usually fatal and I doubt it’s good for the human part of a Whampire.
I believe it. Actually, the one opportunity I had to talk to Mr. Butcher in person he more or less said the same thing. I really think going through a really rough patch in his personal life was a factor here. I’m hoping the author has clear sailing in real life through the end of this saga.
I’m not a big fan of the corner hounds either (other than that I love the name), but I thought they were a good example of an eldritch abomination. I also like that the hounds seem to struggle with our reality, it made them seem more alien. I hope there’s a big payoff with them down the line, though, because I’m not sure they add much to the story as they’ve been presented.
That IS the normal first half of a Dresden book, basically people running around going Oh Shit Oh Shit Oh Shit - the thing is, this whole “book” seem to be the first half of a (very long) Dresden book. A lot depends on Part II. That’s going to make or break this novel.
There was a remarkable bit of Harry actually talking to people.
Probably. Again, a lot depends on Part II but it did seem out of the blue.
Most of the polyamorous guys I’ve met in real life were bookish nerds so that didn’t strike me as completely odd. Also, Butters has been training so I expect that even if he’s still short and still wears glasses he’s better looking than he was in the past. Remember that Billy from the Alphas was originally a short, somewhat flabby nerd but again was leader of a pack of werewolves and wound up pretty buff with a hot wife. Maybe female werewolves think “nerds” are hot. Especially if they run around doing heroic stuff. The other thing is, Butters is in on The Masquerade, he already knows his two women are werewolves, they don’t have to hide that from him, he doesn’t have to explain either his Batman act or being Knight of the Cross to them. This makes for a much less complicated relationship despite the complications of polyamory. Relationships with muggles would be extremely complicated for any of those folks. The dating pool for werewolves and Knights of the Cross, as well as Wizards, is probably pretty small.
I don’t either. She’s been deceptive since we first met her, towards everyone except Thomas (and maybe to him, too). That’s fine when she’s playing double agent like in “Even Hand” but she’s deceived Lara Raith in the past, too.
Nope, not just you. But I think it was Nimue.
Agree absolutely. Also, I want Harry to have say something in public like “this spirit is my daughter that I had with a fallen angel”. Because that would provide more opportunity for rude humor at his expense. Rather like when folks found out he was head-pregnant.
Yes, Molly needs to tell her family. Forget Michael - I’m worried about Charity’s reaction.
I am replying to you to ask you to edit the title with SPOILERS. Thank you in advance. 
Some more things I forgot to say: specifically, starborn things.
-I wonder if the starborn “spotlight” is temporal or spatial. And if it’s spatial, how big an area it covers. Because I’m wondering just how many starborn you normally get in a batch. Are there thousands of 'em running around, or is Harry the only one, or somewhere in between?
-Six hundred sixty six years, huh? That’s… uh… not a reassuring number.
-Wonder why people specifically can’t/won’t tell Harry the details?
Finished the book two nights ago (at 8AM, yesterday…was on a roll, rough day) and am finally ready to get into it. I got “spoiled” on reddit and had to unsubscribe from the sub to avoid any others. Fortunately the spoiler turned out to be partially wrong.
For the curious, I saw a Patrick meme about Mab getting ‘one-shotted’, which I took to believe that Mab was outright killed which would have been something else.
[OPEN SPOILERS FROM HERE ON]
So, about the book. I agree with most of the critiques posted in this thread so far, but all in all I still really liked it. I think a lot of people tend to have a really strong negative reaction to cliffhangers and multi-part stories that aren’t really, really obviously multi-part stories. These people need to get a grip, it was fun and we get Act II (III?, II & III?) in like 2 months. I’m thrilled to have the content, I’d rather have 2/3rds of a book and another full book than one complete book that feels rushed.
I agree with everyone who said the cornerhounds are a stupid idea and the scene felt kinda pointless and it dragged on. My suspicion is a few things. The hit on either Harry or Eb was a critical move to ensure the success of the coming betrayal from the Fomor/Outsiders, but neither Harry or Eb really take much time to consider the objectives of it and without that it feels like a bit of filler. They don’t really even ponder it at all. Maybe it’ll all get tied in later, but it feels like fluff. It also served to get Harry and Eb a little more time “on screen” together before the big fight at the end of the book. Maybe the editors felt like there needed to be an excuse for some additional exposition there and showing Eb and Harry as allies in a fight would contrast with the anger they’d show later. Maybe the one important point is that it could be a bit of foreshadowing for the coming plan to encircle Ethniu. As a nitpick…the ring of fire tactic seemed total superficial. We’ve got a million examples of Harry creating circles with string and dirt that are just as effective, so once Eb created his circle trench that would have done the trick without Harry needing to flip the truck…but action, I guess?
I was digging the Ferrovax/Vadderung stand off throughout the peace talks. In general I really liked the entire idea of getting all these nations together under one roof to see how they work together or not. If anything, I would have liked a little more politicking and sniping back and forth before the big blow up. Harry spends half his time at the talks outside of the main room, so we miss a lot of that stuff. I also expected many more nations to be involved. I only counted 9 (Winter/Summer fae, Vadderung/Ferrovax, White Court/Svartalves, White Council/Ghouls and Marcone), I guess the Reds and Blacks are each basically extinct, but we know there’s more nations out there. Marcone being the one that rallied the nations together after Mab gets smacked was interesting.
I was sort of getting Murphy from Fool Moon vibe from the Blackstaff here. Him acting wildly irrational when it comes to Harry. I know there’s plenty of build up to it, but honestly it stretched credibility a bit. This is a trope in this series though, people wildly overacting to perceived slights. Ebenezer, being the Blackstaff and all, should understand that there are no black-or-white issues.
I’m a little curious about the weird relationship between Ethniu and Corb. I mean, the leash would make sense with Ethniu being a goddess and all, but Corb still was walking around and talking like the boss. Kinda weird, but that’s probably the point.
By the way, is it just me, or were there an unusual amount of references to short stories in there? Jury Duty, Cold Case, the Bigfoot trilogy… it’s not that there haven’t been shoutouts before, but there seemed to be a lot at once.
My opinion is that the worst book in the series is still worth reading, because it’s still an entertaining story.
It seemed to me that there was a lot of strategic positioning of opposing parties opposite/distant from each other. Because you wouldn’t want war breaking out during peace talks, right? (Except that sort of happened anyway…)
Yeah, I think you’re right. Most of the stuff between Harry and the Ghouls is in the short stories.
Still reading myself, but I got the impression that the first several chapters were having Butcher ‘touch base’ with all of the major people in Harry’s life. It’d been several years, real-time, since the last book, and having one chapter with Harry interacting with McCoy, one with Butters, one with Murphy, one with Maggie, one with Molly, etc…it just felt like we were being re-introduced to all the players, even as the current story progressed.
Not necessarily a bad thing, as there were advancements in the relationships on all fronts, but it came to feel like there was a checklist in play. I’m still being entertained, but my perception of this unfolding is also leaving me bemused. Maybe it’s all in my head, but even so, like I said, I’m being entertained.
I think that’s largely true of all of his books, especially now that Harry is mostly well-adjusted and because Skin Game changed a lot of character’s situations pretty dramatically. Not checking in probably would have been weird, even if it hadn’t been 6+ years.
I thought the scene was silly as well but Harry said that fire significantly increase the effectiveness of the circle (by providing some kinda feedback or signal bouncing or something) and he used that extra juice to banish the outsiders.
I think the main purpose of the corner hound bit was to demonstrate that Harry and grandpa ain’t playing in the same league. Harry had a decent showing, but grandpa handled damn near the whole pack by himself while being at the bottom of a literal dog pile.
Overall I though the book was pretty good. Not good enough to justify the wait, but good enough for me to want to revisit in the future.
- I didn’t like the fact that most of the plot consisted of a rehash of all the other plots: The cops are looking into Dresden and crew (again), the white council is looking to expel Dresden (again), the white court are looking to manipulate Dresden (again), Mab pimped Dresden out to pay off her debts (again), Thomas is held captive while being tortured and beaten (again), Sanya has fate and circumstance trap him in Chicago (again)…I could go on but I think you get the point. I figure this is the beginning of the endgame so I guess Butcher is just gonna throw everyone and everything in the blender and see what comes out in the smoothie.
- I like the fact that lots of old characters have made a return. But if you’re gonna get the band back together how the hell can you leave out Bob and Toot?
- Butters is still the nerdiest bad ass in all of fiction and I am endlessly amused that he has a Safety Sword. I look forward to him getting kitted out with Bob powering his enchantments again.
- Mab got Sparta kicked and I still don’t know how I feel about that.
- Ethniu sounds like she’s gonna be a major pain in the ass to beat considering she has god like power and skin covered in some kinda fancy magic metal. It would take nothing less than a fucking light saber to even scratch her. Now I wonder where Harry & Co. can find a light saber…
When I finished I didn’t get that warm fuzzy feeling I enjoy after reading (listening) to Harry fight the good fight but I figured Butcher is saving that for the conclusion of Battle Grounds. At least we don’t have to wait years for the next one…