I think the argument that Harry hasn't had time is false. Again, 3 years between Red Court finale and BG. No new powers, no skillups, nothing that makes him more of a threat than he was.
My real problem with the series and it ties into what see317 brings up is that the series started out as a guy being a detective solving mysteries in Chicago, and he's also a wizard so you get that cool world. It's never been close to that in the last few books. If the author wants to foreshadow "A"pocolypse, then there needs to be foreshadowing of how the hero can overcome that. I miss the good ol detective Harry. Maybe the books have moved on from me and that's ok. Peace Talks and BG should have been one book and it probably would have felt better especially regarding
Justine
The vast majority of those 3 years he was either dead, recovering from being dead, or stuck on his island (that hates all visitors) lest his head explode.
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tzeentchlingDoctor of RocksOaklandRegistered Userregular
I think the argument that Harry hasn't had time is false. Again, 3 years between Red Court finale and BG. No new powers, no skillups, nothing that makes him more of a threat than he was.
My real problem with the series and it ties into what see317 brings up is that the series started out as a guy being a detective solving mysteries in Chicago, and he's also a wizard so you get that cool world. It's never been close to that in the last few books. If the author wants to foreshadow "A"pocolypse, then there needs to be foreshadowing of how the hero can overcome that. I miss the good ol detective Harry. Maybe the books have moved on from me and that's ok. Peace Talks and BG should have been one book and it probably would have felt better especially regarding
Justine
Honestly, most of that time (when not dead, or in physical rehab) appears to have been mastering his Winter Knight mantle and his abilities as Demonreach warden. He hasn't gotten much more magically powerful because he's been focusing more on the physical aspects, learning how to use his new strength and endurance, and dealing with random Winter and Demonreach stuff. On the other hand, we have seen him incorporate more winter magic into his typical array - before Changes, he was almost all a fireball/scorching ray user, and now he's got a bunch more ice and air spells that he's been practicing with. The Infriga/Forzare combo he uses to ice cube Sidhe nobles in Cold Days is an example. The additional stamina boost from the mantle is also letting him cast more spells with a bit more power without running out of energy or exhausting himself, and to take more physical hits. It's true we haven't seen anything on the power levels of say his grandfather, who casts with ease and at will, but then his grandfather is also I think at least a hundred years older than him, possibly two?
I think it's also the case that he's not facing the low-level problems that he did in the beginning. He's not dealing with wannabe sorcerers or a couple vampires or curse spells on ex-wives, because his abilities at this point make them not really a threat, and he's got bigger fish to deal with. So we don't really get a sense of "wow, he's a lot more powerful" because the enemies he's dealing with now still match him or better in power level. It's like the scene in BG where
he and the jotun are trading brags, and Harry's all "I'm the Winter Knight! I destroyed the Red Court! I stole from Hades vault!" and the Jotun just says "I survived a fight with Thor," and Harry immediately realizes he's still probably outclassed despite all his skills. But like, that's a demigod-tier opponent, right? Early Harry wouldn't have even stood a chance.
tzeentchling on
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WhiteZinfandelYour insidesLet me show you themRegistered Userregular
Early Harry would've had a convenient love/escape potion or some other kind of oneshot magical tool handy to finagle his way out of the situation.
The plot device potions were silly, but I think I enjoyed them more than one TOTALLY BADASS FIGHT following another TOTALLY BADASS FIGHT leading into another TOTALLY BADASS FIGHT.
a banner that people will follow. doesn't increase his personal abilities, just allows him to bring more people into a fight
some knowledge from lash being in his head, maybe?
soulfire infused magic (this was a big upgrade several books ago but also has a hefty price to use)
being able to use ice as a go-to instead of fire - sidegrade
peak human physicality / ability to ignore pain - killing himself basically
RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
You guys are completely overselling Harry's abilities here, for all his Wizardly Winter Knight power, he's only as good as the fight he's prepared for. He can't brush off some random mook with a gun
I dunno. One thing running through a good chunk of the series is that influence is a power in its own right. Harry's been able to pour higher and higher amounts of joules of energy into something, or withstand being on the receiving end of same, fairly steadily as the series goes along - at least when he's had some time to himself, which has probably been cut in four or five the last few years - but a bunch of the last several books revolve around his understanding that the ability to throw down only goes so far if you aren't playing the broader game. A good chunk of his character arc up until somewhere around Changes is the tough-guy loner figuring that he's going to have to start thinking ahead, collecting favours and gathering allies...
Vague BG spoilers
...and a good chunk of the Battle of Chicago is that realization's chickens coming home to roost en masse.
I dunno. One thing running through a good chunk of the series is that influence is a power in its own right. Harry's been able to pour higher and higher amounts of joules of energy into something, or withstand being on the receiving end of same, fairly steadily as the series goes along - at least when he's had some time to himself, which has probably been cut in four or five the last few years - but a bunch of the last several books revolve around his understanding that the ability to throw down only goes so far if you aren't playing the broader game. A good chunk of his character arc up until somewhere around Changes is the tough-guy loner figuring that he's going to have to start thinking ahead, collecting favours and gathering allies...
Vague BG spoilers
...and a good chunk of the Battle of Chicago is that realization's chickens coming home to roost en masse.
Like that moment where he scared/impressed basically everyone at the castle including the likes of Odin, Mab, and River Shoulders by enlisting the aid of the entirety of the small folk, which is a relationship he's been building since book one.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
In D&D (3.5) terms, I think that Harry is like a high level sorcerer who, for some reason, capped out at level three spells. His fireball has gotten much stronger and he can blaze away with it more often, but he’s not really doing anything new.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
In D&D (3.5) terms, I think that Harry is like a high level sorcerer who, for some reason, capped out at level three spells. His fireball has gotten much stronger and he can blaze away with it more often, but he’s not really doing anything new.
But as Harry has been harping on about for numerous books now, all of those high level spells he sees Ebenezer and the rest of the senior council throw around are so complex that he'd need another 4 decades or so of dedicated study time to not blow himself up even attempting them.
Harry has pulled off lots of new kinds of magic, but they're mostly not the kind of magic that gets used in high level D&D, which would largely be either impossible or Black Magic in Dresden's terms. He (pre-Peace Talks)
created Little Chicago, mastered the Darkhallow, raised the shade of a dinosaur, pulled off the Sanctum Invocation at Demonreach, made a shield able to block any kind of energy, summoned a cyclone to redirect an opponent's spells and use them for his own purposes, etched his old ring energy storage runes on his staff 77 times, pulled off a veil...
The powerful spells in D&D are often save or suck, like mind control, polymorph, or necromancy: directly messing with the mechanics of life, which is a big no-no. Evocation tends to be the sort of thing Harry fights with, and higher level spells there are mostly just more damage over larger areas, which he's certainly done.
You guys are completely overselling Harry's abilities here, for all his Wizardly Winter Knight power, he's only as good as the fight he's prepared for. He can't brush off some random mook with a gun
BG Spoilers
Just ask Murphy
And how did that end in the end? Plot worked against him there.
In D&D (3.5) terms, I think that Harry is like a high level sorcerer who, for some reason, capped out at level three spells. His fireball has gotten much stronger and he can blaze away with it more often, but he’s not really doing anything new.
But as Harry has been harping on about for numerous books now, all of those high level spells he sees Ebenezer and the rest of the senior council throw around are so complex that he'd need another 4 decades or so of dedicated study time to not blow himself up even attempting them.
Yeah, he's stressed rather often that he has a lot of amperage but his finesse and efficiency suck, with the latter being what really makes a Serious Wizard in his mind. Sheer raw power is nice to have but it not being the be-all-end-all is a recurring theme.
I mean, both at once doesn't hurt, like the Merlin's "single ward" situation, but I got the impression the Merlin's communications spell impressed Harry a lot more.
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tzeentchlingDoctor of RocksOaklandRegistered Userregular
Also, consider that wizards typically measure power in decades, if not centuries. It's been a mere 14 years since Storm Front, where Harry was an above-average but ground level wizard. Now he's a major player in the world with a frankly impressive level of power and clout for such a short time scale, and has been the cause of or present for at least 8 or so major shake-ups of both magical and political power in the world, and he's not even 40. If I were a 200 year old wizard on the council I'd probably be worried as hell about him.
What's the statute of limitations on opening up spoilers for PT / BG?
It's a lot easier to talk without clicking through a half dozen spoiler tags.
Usually the latest book is to stay in spoilers till the next book because we have people coming in who are reading for the first time. And its just polite. Like a TV show. But even so BG is less than a month out. Give it at least a three to four months on it.
Finished BG. Taking PT and BG as one novel (which I am), I'm not unhappy, but I am underwhelmed. I am not whelmed. I think Butcher's personal life really took a hammer to his writerly energy for both of these endeavors (obviously, this is just butt talking - I have no idea how the guy is handling everything). It just felt rote. Visit cast of regulars, check. Have manly throwdowns with a number of those characters (friend and foe), check. Use some new toy or ability to fend off new big bad (who equals previous big bad + 1 in the numbering scheme of bad guys but otherwise doesn't feel organic at all). And there were a few speechy social commentary moments that struck me as off, but again, I think dude's just tired (both Jim and Harry). They both need a vacation.
I'm trying not to be overly critical - I can't imagine how you maintain a world that's become this unwieldy as a writer, especially when you've got loyal fans taking ownership and sniping at you the whole way to and through release (sorta like I'm doing now). Add in real life, publishing deadlines, and a friggin' mortgage, and it's gotta be a heck of a road, even with its rewards.
I just hope the next book is better, and he can take as long as he wants to make it so, because these two weren't worth our wait.
[In retrospect to my own post, I would pay good money to have a short story collection of Harry on vacation on some tropical island solving completely inconsequential mysteries for the locals]
Yeah, Harry's credited with being the one to put Ethniu away, but I'm pretty sure what we saw was a glimpse at what putting Kemmler down must have been like.
because in the end he had to 1v1 her in will to will combat to bind her. Nobody else had any way to make that stick if harry had not done so or failed nothing any of the others would have done mattered. He bound and then jailed a titan in his own private prison of the damned. That he got massive credit for doing so is warranted and getting his lab back is the very least he deserved. He kinda tricked marcone but the eye was not really a price to be kept it was something to be stuck into the deepest damn hole you can find and then dig some more and then bury it and wipe your memory of where you stuck it.
I think the argument that Harry hasn't had time is false. Again, 3 years between Red Court finale and BG. No new powers, no skillups, nothing that makes him more of a threat than he was.
My real problem with the series and it ties into what see317 brings up is that the series started out as a guy being a detective solving mysteries in Chicago, and he's also a wizard so you get that cool world. It's never been close to that in the last few books. If the author wants to foreshadow "A"pocolypse, then there needs to be foreshadowing of how the hero can overcome that. I miss the good ol detective Harry. Maybe the books have moved on from me and that's ok. Peace Talks and BG should have been one book and it probably would have felt better especially regarding
Justine
The vast majority of those 3 years he was either dead, recovering from being dead, or stuck on his island (that hates all visitors) lest his head explode.
As harry has said over and over the wizards greatest power is preperation. He has had basically none recently aside from recovering from being dead he was crashing at other peoples places lacking his equipment/tools and stuck running around for mab and putting out fires. Has his innate power level raised yes but until he has a chance and tools and facilities its doubtful we are going to see more than his normal combat magic.
Finished my second time through BG, first time total listen.
BG is maybe my favorite dresden book, but I haven't read 'em all recently.
Wow, really? Direct opposite here. I did a full re read for the PT / BG release and I think they were a low point for the series.
Not the lowest, I'd argue that was Full Moon, but pretty bad.
I reread the series in advance of PT, but I’d put it solidly in the middle. Maybe upper half of the middle. But really outside of the first two or three books, even the worst of the series is pretty readable.
Finished Peace Talks/Battleground and I think I concur that they would have worked better as one book. BG suffered from being one battle scene after another with no time to breathe and would have been better if the events had occurred as the climax to PT. Butcher's editor let him down by not putting his foot down and insisting on cuts until the books could be combined. Not the worst books of the series but not as good as the last few books.
I do love what happens to Harry at the end through, that's going to make for a very interesting relationship indeed.
I received Peace Talks on time, got like 1/4 of the way in, and then it just fell off my radar for a while. Given that it's been like half a decade (no, I'm not over that yet), I guess it was a bit hard to really get back to the 'finished the whole novel in an evening' that I was back when I got into the series and started getting hard covers as they came out. Battle Grounds was supposed to be delayed substantially and then apparently Amazon found a spare one laying around, and I finally got it a while back, late, but not "whenever we're good and ready" that it seemed to be.
As I basically finished PT and dove into BG, they're kind of one big book in my mind, so I'm just going to deal with them both together.
UNREPENTANT SPOILERS FOR BOTH BOOKS YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
So, this is kind of stream of thought.
Butcher has always relied on 'reiterating the same thing we already know' for a long time. We all know this. Some even appreciate it, as it makes later entries a bit more accessible, both for people who don't want/care to jump in from the start, or for those of us who haven't done a fresh re-read of the series in something approaching a decade now. I get that. But PT in particular seemed to egregiously re-iterate the same points again and again. Like a kid trying to fill pages of an essay that they know is still way too short after adjusting the font size. Someone earlier in the thread said that it felt like his editors let him down, and I agree with that strongly. Yes, we get it, the Winter Mantle constantly wants to fuck or fight (or both at the same time, #NoKinkShaming, etc), having the text go on about it at length got a bit tedious. I can't believe that something worked on over these years, with other eyes on it, didn't catch that basically the same thing comes up what at least felt like half a dozen times, maybe more. Hell, I could swear there's at least one situation where it practically comes up twice back to back. YES. WE KNOW. PLEASE MOVE ON. Harry has always been somewhat driven in that regard, but ratcheting up that inner monologue isn't helping, and I feel like the point was already made a while back.
However, I think it's part and parcel with them working to undermine Harry's humanity. It came up a few times in the text where I was confused by what felt like an odd word choice. Not even an obscure synonym, but an odd turn of phrase entirely. I distinctly recall at least once (I think it's in BG) where Harry refers to something being "earthball sized", as though his mind was thinking basketball or softball, but blanked and that's the closest it came. I went back over it thrice when I came across it. It felt very much like a Fae might try to do a Steve Buschemi "hey there fellow kids" kind of way.
Using it, relying on it, enduring things through what it allows him to, it's making me think that either the editors fucked up royally, or Butcher is sowing the seeds of Molly not being the only one who is slipping more and more under the sway of the mantle, and losing an aspect of her humanity for it.
PT dragged a bit. As a standalone, it's rough for being almost entirely setup, and little payoff, whereas BG is like Payoff: The Novel. Or as someone else said, "what if an entire book was the third act?" That got a solid laugh.
The ongoing matter of 'everything being way more complicated because nobody will say anything to anyone' grated a bit. Yes, I know that's a staple of the series, but the stuff with Carlos and Ebenezer in particular stood out.
I'm not sure with how I entirely feel about some of the façade fading on the courts, but at the same time, I'm wondering/hoping that maybe some of it is that Harry's humanity is such that as the Fae might be sloughing off some of it through their influence and the mantle, maybe close ongoing contact with him is bringing it to them as well?
Overall, the action sequences were fun, the heroes won in a way I generally enjoyed. Some of The Big Things That Happened I'll have to mull over. Maybe even dive into that reread, or see if I can find the audio books somewhere that won't cost me an arm and a leg apiece (it has been years but last time I looked they were like $20-30 apiece for purchase, so if there's an app/service where I could chew through them all with a month or two of subscription time, I might be game for that).
I'm sure more thoughts will come to me in time, and even if I don't go for the whole thing, re-reading these two might help straighten some things out.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Finished my second time through BG, first time total listen.
BG is maybe my favorite dresden book, but I haven't read 'em all recently.
Wow, really? Direct opposite here. I did a full re read for the PT / BG release and I think they were a low point for the series.
Not the lowest, I'd argue that was Full Moon, but pretty bad.
For background: I watched Marvel's The Avengers three times in a row on a plane across the country back when it was released in 2012. Battle Ground is Dresden's Avengers. I felt Changes was real good, too, from a narrative standpoint, but that one's more like ... I don't know, Captain America: Civil War. It was good and necessary and made a lot of the narrative shifts required to get us to Infinity War / Endgame, but it's not as satisfying by itself.
Anyway Battle Ground ties together the dresdenverse in a way that's viscerally palpable. Every chapter feels vital and alive, meshing together threads that have been running for fourteen books. A good novel spends Act 1 backing the main character up a tree, Act 2 throwing rocks at them, and Act 3 getting them to jump down. Each chapter should include need, roadblock, and change. While there can be surprises, these should be implied as possible beforehand, either gently or blatantly.
And, yes, good plots have elements of rhyme to them.
Battle Ground does all that really, really well. It brings together shit that has been cooking for five or six books. It's also incredibly lean; every chapter has teeth and meaning. It's like the opposite of Ghost Story, which I felt dragged on forever with, like, two chapters with any payoff.
Just finished my listen to of Peace Talks and Battle Ground
My thoughts:
I thought it was a pretty good book. Not the best of the Dresden Files, but in the upper half. Note that I'm referring to it as one book because let's be honest it pretty much was.
James Marsters reading the novels continues to be the superior delivery method.
As far as Ramirez and the Council go, I can see Ramirez's point. Harry is not telling them things, he is withholding information and he is getting more and more heavily aligned with monsters. I do think Ramirez is wrong and that even if Harry had been completely up front and honest all the people who died would still have died.
But the Council and Ramirez are also reacting out of fear. You can judge someone by the results of their labors and while Harry is as out on the fringes of Wizard society as Kemmler was, his labors are bearing different fruit.
I did love Harry telling the council to pound sand.
I like that Mab reacted to the White Council throwing Harry out with a "we all saw it coming" and her getting Harry protection from the White Court.
Overall it was a good book. The the battles were fine the confrontation with Ethniu was fine.
The best part will and always will be the bits with Toot-Toot.
Just finished my listen to of Peace Talks and Battle Ground
My thoughts:
As far as Ramirez and the Council go, I can see Ramirez's point. Harry is not telling them things, he is withholding information and he is getting more and more heavily aligned with monsters. I do think Ramirez is wrong and that even if Harry had been completely up front and honest all the people who died would still have died.
But the Council and Ramirez are also reacting out of fear. You can judge someone by the results of their labors and while Harry is as out on the fringes of Wizard society as Kemmler was, his labors are bearing different fruit.
I recently reread White Knight i and...
Harry has been being an ass to Carlos over this shit for a fucking while. He doesn't clue him in to the ambush shit at all despite Harry 100% expecting it and preparing his own counter ambush. He spends like half the climax casually speaking in ancient evil McDemon language in front of Carlos without fucking ever acknowledging it. That leaves Carlos surrounded by packs of hungry mind vampires with no clue what is happening and all Harry actually says to him is to rip on him about his virginity.
I meant to check up on how many more times Carlos shows up between that and Battlegrounds, I know about his run in with Molly fresh queen of frost. If White Knight didn't explicitly have Harry marveling over how solid of friends he and Carlos were I wouldn't have guessed they were actually friendly.
Yeah, I think Carlos might also bereacting at least in part out of hurt as much as fear/frustration.
He likes and respects - well, liked and respected - Harry a lot, and getting frozen out by someone you view that way sucks enough when there aren't repeated doses of life-and-death stakes involved. He's tried letting Harry in a few times (e.g., their Black Hats conversation) and hasn't gotten a lot of reciprocity in return. If I was in that situation I'd be pissed at Harry, but "pissed" definitely wouldn't be the only thing I was feeling about it all.
The two of them also aren't all that dissimilar in temperment when it comes to their pride. Harry getting pissy about being kept out of Ebenezar's loop kind of has echoes there.
The Carlos and Molly short story more than explains how Carlos is absolutely right in suspecting and not trusting Dresden.
I am in the business of saving lives.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Tongue in cheek, but I think the magic using community's allergy to all things technological is the problem. If they just were able to hang out with computers more, they'd understand that security through obscurity just doesn't work.
Take Mab and the Winter Court for example:
In the first novels (and I'm going with everything being 'canon' so to speak, instead of it just being Butcher not having planned out all the things of a multi-decade long series) Harry has zero inkling about Mab other than she's insanely powerful and eeeeeeevil, though in the Fae way of rules lawyering you to death. Then we get the big reveal way later on that the sociopath who designed the universe had created the Winter Court as meat shields to be thrown into the grinder in a perpetual war against the Outsiders. And that the Senior Council has no idea about the full scope of Mab's forces (I think Harry throws out that their estimates are off by an order of magnitude or two) and that the Winter Court is all that prevents the Outsiders from eating everything. And that's with a member of the Senior Council literally on site, so either he's not reporting back accurately or the Senior Council is keeping secrets. Plus the whole thing with the law that says "Thou shalt not open the Outer Gates", which everyone generally takes to mean don't mess with Outsiders, but there's literally Outer Gates that get opened on a regular basis to allow Winter forces to attack and retreat. And this is all a shock to Harry, who is about as plugged into things as anyone not on the Senior Council. Your average wizard is just going to be utterly clueless.
It makes a bit of sense considering that the Council's recruitment and training seems to be limited to having an armed guy show up on your doorstep with a pamphlet detailing what you can't do unless you want your head chopped off, but the lack of information sharing seems to extend to people who probably should be in the know. There are conclaves of the 40k Inquisition that are better at sharing information than these guys.
Probably doesn't help that the Dresdenverse wizards seem to have a similar range of personalities to those at Hogwarts. 75% are various flavors of positive personality traits, the remaining 25% are borderline sociopaths who all end up hanging out together and start lighting things on fire.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
The White Council's failures are numerous, but not updating with the times is probably the root of most of them.
When Anastasia and Harry talk about sex because they are looking for a monster who wanted virgins or something, Harry quips that they must be hard to come by. Anastasia explains that people have always been fucking on the regular and even if they weren't there would be more virgins available in modern times because there are just so many people now.
Now the Council doesn't have the staff to keep tabs on a lot of things, but they clearly don't try to educate anyone to protect themselves.
Also I think it's weird that no members outside of the Wardens seem to have any responsibility towards the organization. You think at bare minimum being ambassadors to new and small magical talent would be a good idea.
I am in the business of saving lives.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Kind of makes you wonder what the Council does that requires all the clerks and paperwork back in Scotland. It's almost like the White Council is Pratchett's Unseen University played straight. A giant bureaucratic edifice designed to draw in wizards and keep them distracted with board meetings, departmental politics, and banquets so that they don't wreak havoc on the rest of the world.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Just finished my listen to of Peace Talks and Battle Ground
My thoughts:
As far as Ramirez and the Council go, I can see Ramirez's point. Harry is not telling them things, he is withholding information and he is getting more and more heavily aligned with monsters. I do think Ramirez is wrong and that even if Harry had been completely up front and honest all the people who died would still have died.
But the Council and Ramirez are also reacting out of fear. You can judge someone by the results of their labors and while Harry is as out on the fringes of Wizard society as Kemmler was, his labors are bearing different fruit.
I recently reread White Knight i and...
Harry has been being an ass to Carlos over this shit for a fucking while. He doesn't clue him in to the ambush shit at all despite Harry 100% expecting it and preparing his own counter ambush. He spends like half the climax casually speaking in ancient evil McDemon language in front of Carlos without fucking ever acknowledging it. That leaves Carlos surrounded by packs of hungry mind vampires with no clue what is happening and all Harry actually says to him is to rip on him about his virginity.
I meant to check up on how many more times Carlos shows up between that and Battlegrounds, I know about his run in with Molly fresh queen of frost. If White Knight didn't explicitly have Harry marveling over how solid of friends he and Carlos were I wouldn't have guessed they were actually friendly.
I wonder if we're seeing another
Long con. Remember Harry and Carlos talking about the Black Council in White Night? They never mention it again. Ever.
Kind of makes you wonder what the Council does that requires all the clerks and paperwork back in Scotland. It's almost like the White Council is Pratchett's Unseen University played straight. A giant bureaucratic edifice designed to draw in wizards and keep them distracted with board meetings, departmental politics, and banquets so that they don't wreak havoc on the rest of the world.
It's brought up in the books that the Councils job is just to limit the damage wizards can do to humanity and the world. So this may be accurate.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Just finished my listen to of Peace Talks and Battle Ground
My thoughts:
As far as Ramirez and the Council go, I can see Ramirez's point. Harry is not telling them things, he is withholding information and he is getting more and more heavily aligned with monsters. I do think Ramirez is wrong and that even if Harry had been completely up front and honest all the people who died would still have died.
But the Council and Ramirez are also reacting out of fear. You can judge someone by the results of their labors and while Harry is as out on the fringes of Wizard society as Kemmler was, his labors are bearing different fruit.
I recently reread White Knight i and...
Harry has been being an ass to Carlos over this shit for a fucking while. He doesn't clue him in to the ambush shit at all despite Harry 100% expecting it and preparing his own counter ambush. He spends like half the climax casually speaking in ancient evil McDemon language in front of Carlos without fucking ever acknowledging it. That leaves Carlos surrounded by packs of hungry mind vampires with no clue what is happening and all Harry actually says to him is to rip on him about his virginity.
I meant to check up on how many more times Carlos shows up between that and Battlegrounds, I know about his run in with Molly fresh queen of frost. If White Knight didn't explicitly have Harry marveling over how solid of friends he and Carlos were I wouldn't have guessed they were actually friendly.
I wonder if we're seeing another
Long con. Remember Harry and Carlos talking about the Black Council in White Night? They never mention it again. Ever.
Maybe,
but you need to drop breadcrumbs on that, and I'm not sure they have. Otherwise you end up with the Harry Potter situation
where Snape is revealed to be a good guy and it just looks like an ass-pull.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Just finished my listen to of Peace Talks and Battle Ground
My thoughts:
As far as Ramirez and the Council go, I can see Ramirez's point. Harry is not telling them things, he is withholding information and he is getting more and more heavily aligned with monsters. I do think Ramirez is wrong and that even if Harry had been completely up front and honest all the people who died would still have died.
But the Council and Ramirez are also reacting out of fear. You can judge someone by the results of their labors and while Harry is as out on the fringes of Wizard society as Kemmler was, his labors are bearing different fruit.
I recently reread White Knight i and...
Harry has been being an ass to Carlos over this shit for a fucking while. He doesn't clue him in to the ambush shit at all despite Harry 100% expecting it and preparing his own counter ambush. He spends like half the climax casually speaking in ancient evil McDemon language in front of Carlos without fucking ever acknowledging it. That leaves Carlos surrounded by packs of hungry mind vampires with no clue what is happening and all Harry actually says to him is to rip on him about his virginity.
I meant to check up on how many more times Carlos shows up between that and Battlegrounds, I know about his run in with Molly fresh queen of frost. If White Knight didn't explicitly have Harry marveling over how solid of friends he and Carlos were I wouldn't have guessed they were actually friendly.
I wonder if we're seeing another
Long con. Remember Harry and Carlos talking about the Black Council in White Night? They never mention it again. Ever.
Maybe,
but you need to drop breadcrumbs on that, and I'm not sure they have. Otherwise you end up with the Harry Potter situation
where Snape is revealed to be a good guy and it just looks like an ass-pull.
We've also been in Harry's head for his interactions with Carlos and he's been genuinely hurt/pissed off at/guilty about him for the last couple of books, and their last argument in Battle Ground was kept out of earshot of witnesses. They're definitely legitimately at odds.
Regarding the discussion about relationships in Battle Ground
Not to be too paranoid, but in a setting with veils and other means of surveillance (including mortal means, even if magic probably ruins a lot of them easily), I imagine one would have to keep even their thoughts in check at all times. Hell, in BG Harry repeatedly references trying not to think about a particular object.
Not to say I disagree with the assessment that they're at odds and he's kind of pissed about this (though the conflict is kind of forced in a way all the same), but it's not unreasonable to be even suspicious of things that 'confirm' how it is/should be.
... and with this post I think I actually understand conspiracy theorists a little bit better.
Hrm.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
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Just finished BG. It's been a while since I read PT, cause it was kind of meh ending, but I ended up reading BG in a day and a half. Stayed up way too late reading. I liked it. I would have rather just read a 1 1/3 sized single volume.
The whole thing with Drakul felt a little weird, almost like a short story that dragged in as filler.
With the White Council kicking him out, it definitely felt dumb from Harry's perspective, but I do feel like it had a certain internal consistency. You have Margaret Le Fey's son, spending significant time with the White Court, having literally sold his soul to the Winter Court. Iirc, on top of speaking ancient vampire, Carlos also saw him speaking Ghoul.
Earlier there was speculation on whether or not he can get Thomas out, and I'm pretty sure Harry has some internal monologue about being able to let things out.
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The vast majority of those 3 years he was either dead, recovering from being dead, or stuck on his island (that hates all visitors) lest his head explode.
Honestly, most of that time (when not dead, or in physical rehab) appears to have been mastering his Winter Knight mantle and his abilities as Demonreach warden. He hasn't gotten much more magically powerful because he's been focusing more on the physical aspects, learning how to use his new strength and endurance, and dealing with random Winter and Demonreach stuff. On the other hand, we have seen him incorporate more winter magic into his typical array - before Changes, he was almost all a fireball/scorching ray user, and now he's got a bunch more ice and air spells that he's been practicing with. The Infriga/Forzare combo he uses to ice cube Sidhe nobles in Cold Days is an example. The additional stamina boost from the mantle is also letting him cast more spells with a bit more power without running out of energy or exhausting himself, and to take more physical hits. It's true we haven't seen anything on the power levels of say his grandfather, who casts with ease and at will, but then his grandfather is also I think at least a hundred years older than him, possibly two?
I think it's also the case that he's not facing the low-level problems that he did in the beginning. He's not dealing with wannabe sorcerers or a couple vampires or curse spells on ex-wives, because his abilities at this point make them not really a threat, and he's got bigger fish to deal with. So we don't really get a sense of "wow, he's a lot more powerful" because the enemies he's dealing with now still match him or better in power level. It's like the scene in BG where
The plot device potions were silly, but I think I enjoyed them more than one TOTALLY BADASS FIGHT following another TOTALLY BADASS FIGHT leading into another TOTALLY BADASS FIGHT.
some knowledge from lash being in his head, maybe?
soulfire infused magic (this was a big upgrade several books ago but also has a hefty price to use)
being able to use ice as a go-to instead of fire - sidegrade
peak human physicality / ability to ignore pain - killing himself basically
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BG Spoilers
Vague pre-BG spoilers
Vague BG spoilers
But as Harry has been harping on about for numerous books now, all of those high level spells he sees Ebenezer and the rest of the senior council throw around are so complex that he'd need another 4 decades or so of dedicated study time to not blow himself up even attempting them.
The powerful spells in D&D are often save or suck, like mind control, polymorph, or necromancy: directly messing with the mechanics of life, which is a big no-no. Evocation tends to be the sort of thing Harry fights with, and higher level spells there are mostly just more damage over larger areas, which he's certainly done.
I think that I recall a Word of Jim that Harry is currently about the equivalent of a 12th level Wizard in D&D.
And how did that end in the end? Plot worked against him there.
Yeah, he's stressed rather often that he has a lot of amperage but his finesse and efficiency suck, with the latter being what really makes a Serious Wizard in his mind. Sheer raw power is nice to have but it not being the be-all-end-all is a recurring theme.
I mean, both at once doesn't hurt, like the Merlin's "single ward" situation, but I got the impression the Merlin's communications spell impressed Harry a lot more.
(Hell, the Gatekeeper's at least 1300 and has been concerned about him..)
It's a lot easier to talk without clicking through a half dozen spoiler tags.
Usually the latest book is to stay in spoilers till the next book because we have people coming in who are reading for the first time. And its just polite. Like a TV show. But even so BG is less than a month out. Give it at least a three to four months on it.
I'm trying not to be overly critical - I can't imagine how you maintain a world that's become this unwieldy as a writer, especially when you've got loyal fans taking ownership and sniping at you the whole way to and through release (sorta like I'm doing now). Add in real life, publishing deadlines, and a friggin' mortgage, and it's gotta be a heck of a road, even with its rewards.
I just hope the next book is better, and he can take as long as he wants to make it so, because these two weren't worth our wait.
[In retrospect to my own post, I would pay good money to have a short story collection of Harry on vacation on some tropical island solving completely inconsequential mysteries for the locals]
As harry has said over and over the wizards greatest power is preperation. He has had basically none recently aside from recovering from being dead he was crashing at other peoples places lacking his equipment/tools and stuck running around for mab and putting out fires. Has his innate power level raised yes but until he has a chance and tools and facilities its doubtful we are going to see more than his normal combat magic.
BG is maybe my favorite dresden book, but I haven't read 'em all recently.
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Wow, really? Direct opposite here. I did a full re read for the PT / BG release and I think they were a low point for the series.
Not the lowest, I'd argue that was Full Moon, but pretty bad.
I reread the series in advance of PT, but I’d put it solidly in the middle. Maybe upper half of the middle. But really outside of the first two or three books, even the worst of the series is pretty readable.
I do love what happens to Harry at the end through, that's going to make for a very interesting relationship indeed.
As I basically finished PT and dove into BG, they're kind of one big book in my mind, so I'm just going to deal with them both together.
UNREPENTANT SPOILERS FOR BOTH BOOKS YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
Butcher has always relied on 'reiterating the same thing we already know' for a long time. We all know this. Some even appreciate it, as it makes later entries a bit more accessible, both for people who don't want/care to jump in from the start, or for those of us who haven't done a fresh re-read of the series in something approaching a decade now. I get that. But PT in particular seemed to egregiously re-iterate the same points again and again. Like a kid trying to fill pages of an essay that they know is still way too short after adjusting the font size. Someone earlier in the thread said that it felt like his editors let him down, and I agree with that strongly. Yes, we get it, the Winter Mantle constantly wants to fuck or fight (or both at the same time, #NoKinkShaming, etc), having the text go on about it at length got a bit tedious. I can't believe that something worked on over these years, with other eyes on it, didn't catch that basically the same thing comes up what at least felt like half a dozen times, maybe more. Hell, I could swear there's at least one situation where it practically comes up twice back to back. YES. WE KNOW. PLEASE MOVE ON. Harry has always been somewhat driven in that regard, but ratcheting up that inner monologue isn't helping, and I feel like the point was already made a while back.
However, I think it's part and parcel with them working to undermine Harry's humanity. It came up a few times in the text where I was confused by what felt like an odd word choice. Not even an obscure synonym, but an odd turn of phrase entirely. I distinctly recall at least once (I think it's in BG) where Harry refers to something being "earthball sized", as though his mind was thinking basketball or softball, but blanked and that's the closest it came. I went back over it thrice when I came across it. It felt very much like a Fae might try to do a Steve Buschemi "hey there fellow kids" kind of way.
Using it, relying on it, enduring things through what it allows him to, it's making me think that either the editors fucked up royally, or Butcher is sowing the seeds of Molly not being the only one who is slipping more and more under the sway of the mantle, and losing an aspect of her humanity for it.
PT dragged a bit. As a standalone, it's rough for being almost entirely setup, and little payoff, whereas BG is like Payoff: The Novel. Or as someone else said, "what if an entire book was the third act?" That got a solid laugh.
The ongoing matter of 'everything being way more complicated because nobody will say anything to anyone' grated a bit. Yes, I know that's a staple of the series, but the stuff with Carlos and Ebenezer in particular stood out.
I'm not sure with how I entirely feel about some of the façade fading on the courts, but at the same time, I'm wondering/hoping that maybe some of it is that Harry's humanity is such that as the Fae might be sloughing off some of it through their influence and the mantle, maybe close ongoing contact with him is bringing it to them as well?
Overall, the action sequences were fun, the heroes won in a way I generally enjoyed. Some of The Big Things That Happened I'll have to mull over. Maybe even dive into that reread, or see if I can find the audio books somewhere that won't cost me an arm and a leg apiece (it has been years but last time I looked they were like $20-30 apiece for purchase, so if there's an app/service where I could chew through them all with a month or two of subscription time, I might be game for that).
I'm sure more thoughts will come to me in time, and even if I don't go for the whole thing, re-reading these two might help straighten some things out.
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Anyway Battle Ground ties together the dresdenverse in a way that's viscerally palpable. Every chapter feels vital and alive, meshing together threads that have been running for fourteen books. A good novel spends Act 1 backing the main character up a tree, Act 2 throwing rocks at them, and Act 3 getting them to jump down. Each chapter should include need, roadblock, and change. While there can be surprises, these should be implied as possible beforehand, either gently or blatantly.
And, yes, good plots have elements of rhyme to them.
Battle Ground does all that really, really well. It brings together shit that has been cooking for five or six books. It's also incredibly lean; every chapter has teeth and meaning. It's like the opposite of Ghost Story, which I felt dragged on forever with, like, two chapters with any payoff.
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My thoughts:
James Marsters reading the novels continues to be the superior delivery method.
As far as Ramirez and the Council go, I can see Ramirez's point. Harry is not telling them things, he is withholding information and he is getting more and more heavily aligned with monsters. I do think Ramirez is wrong and that even if Harry had been completely up front and honest all the people who died would still have died.
But the Council and Ramirez are also reacting out of fear. You can judge someone by the results of their labors and while Harry is as out on the fringes of Wizard society as Kemmler was, his labors are bearing different fruit.
I did love Harry telling the council to pound sand.
I like that Mab reacted to the White Council throwing Harry out with a "we all saw it coming" and her getting Harry protection from the White Court.
Overall it was a good book. The the battles were fine the confrontation with Ethniu was fine.
The best part will and always will be the bits with Toot-Toot.
"My girlfriend is so smart" 😂
I recently reread White Knight i and...
I meant to check up on how many more times Carlos shows up between that and Battlegrounds, I know about his run in with Molly fresh queen of frost. If White Knight didn't explicitly have Harry marveling over how solid of friends he and Carlos were I wouldn't have guessed they were actually friendly.
He likes and respects - well, liked and respected - Harry a lot, and getting frozen out by someone you view that way sucks enough when there aren't repeated doses of life-and-death stakes involved. He's tried letting Harry in a few times (e.g., their Black Hats conversation) and hasn't gotten a lot of reciprocity in return. If I was in that situation I'd be pissed at Harry, but "pissed" definitely wouldn't be the only thing I was feeling about it all.
The two of them also aren't all that dissimilar in temperment when it comes to their pride. Harry getting pissy about being kept out of Ebenezar's loop kind of has echoes there.
Take Mab and the Winter Court for example:
It makes a bit of sense considering that the Council's recruitment and training seems to be limited to having an armed guy show up on your doorstep with a pamphlet detailing what you can't do unless you want your head chopped off, but the lack of information sharing seems to extend to people who probably should be in the know. There are conclaves of the 40k Inquisition that are better at sharing information than these guys.
Probably doesn't help that the Dresdenverse wizards seem to have a similar range of personalities to those at Hogwarts. 75% are various flavors of positive personality traits, the remaining 25% are borderline sociopaths who all end up hanging out together and start lighting things on fire.
When Anastasia and Harry talk about sex because they are looking for a monster who wanted virgins or something, Harry quips that they must be hard to come by. Anastasia explains that people have always been fucking on the regular and even if they weren't there would be more virgins available in modern times because there are just so many people now.
Now the Council doesn't have the staff to keep tabs on a lot of things, but they clearly don't try to educate anyone to protect themselves.
Also I think it's weird that no members outside of the Wardens seem to have any responsibility towards the organization. You think at bare minimum being ambassadors to new and small magical talent would be a good idea.
I wonder if we're seeing another
It's brought up in the books that the Councils job is just to limit the damage wizards can do to humanity and the world. So this may be accurate.
Maybe,
Not to say I disagree with the assessment that they're at odds and he's kind of pissed about this (though the conflict is kind of forced in a way all the same), but it's not unreasonable to be even suspicious of things that 'confirm' how it is/should be.
... and with this post I think I actually understand conspiracy theorists a little bit better.
Hrm.
With the White Council kicking him out, it definitely felt dumb from Harry's perspective, but I do feel like it had a certain internal consistency. You have Margaret Le Fey's son, spending significant time with the White Court, having literally sold his soul to the Winter Court. Iirc, on top of speaking ancient vampire, Carlos also saw him speaking Ghoul.
Earlier there was speculation on whether or not he can get Thomas out, and I'm pretty sure Harry has some internal monologue about being able to let things out.
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