Battle Ground (The Dresden Files, #17) in Cannonball Readers

Nov 10, 2014 Ashley rated it really liked it

Shelves: i-do-believe-in-fairies-i-do-i-do, violent-and-epic, murder-most-foul, a-cat-is-in-this, fantasy, urban-fantasy, a-dog-is-in-this, i-vant-to-drink-your-blood, paranormal-and-supernatural, audiobooks

I am going to do the opposite of what I did for Peace Talks for this book, which is I’m not going to write hardly anything, and only one thing will be under spoiler tags. If you have read the book, you know what that thing is.

So, bullet points!

• I do not think either of these books was really served well by being split in two. I think they should have been one big book, and maybe cut like 100 pages from both. Maybe more from this one.

• Action scenes have always been my least favorite part of the ...more

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Dec 05, 2020 Ula rated it it was ok

First, this isn’t a *book*. A book has a beginning, middle, and end. This…whatever it is, has only one of the three, and not even a good one. It’s entirely self-indulgent and instead of being epic, it’s simply boring.

Second, I’m just exhausted by the lack of resolutions to all the hint hints and nudge nudges. This is book seventeen. Can we just not? Can Harry get answers? The carrot on the end of the stick is rotting, the rope that ties the carrot is fraying, and the stick itself is cracking apa ...more

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Jan 08, 2023 Ashlie aka The Cheerbrarian rated it it was ok

Shelves: audio, cbr-15

At the time of this writing, I have not finished reading this book, but I needed to take a break to commit some rage to the page. If anyone knows the whereabouts of author Jim Butcher so that I could have the quick opportunity to kick him in the shins, please let me know. I'll be in and out before he knows what hit him, the "what" being my tiny feet.

This is going to be a spoiler-tastic review (in fact, I'm going to reference my favorite show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and spoil some of that too) At the time of this writing, I have not finished reading this book, but I needed to take a break to commit some rage to the page. If anyone knows the whereabouts of author Jim Butcher so that I could have the quick opportunity to kick him in the shins, please let me know. I'll be in and out before he knows what hit him, the "what" being my tiny feet.

This is going to be a spoiler-tastic review (in fact, I'm going to reference my favorite show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and spoil some of that too) so if you haven't consumed either property but would like to, I suggest you skip this review. If you'd like to know what has me at def con fuchsia levels of irritation, stick around. (view spoiler)

And the rest of this book? I have listened to six hours of battle scene after battle scene after battle scene, with 7 more hours to go? Snooooooooooooooozefest.

To sum up, I'm too mad to continue on now, but when I do (and I will) I'll come back around and finish out this review and adjust my 2 out of 5 if it is warranted, but I'm not holding my breath. ...more

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Dec 21, 2020 Malin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audible, how-many-books-2020, cbr12, finish-the-series-2020, new-releases-2020

Spoiler warning! This is book 17 in a long, ongoing series. This really isn't the place to start. In fact, this book doesn't even work on its own, so don't even think to read this review if you're not caught up. Normally, I'd recommend that you start with book 1, but the first three books of The Dresden Files are pretty bad, so you'd be better off starting with book 4, Summer Knight. I highly recommend the audio books, narrated by James Marsters. They're what finally sold me on the series.

In my Spoiler warning! This is book 17 in a long, ongoing series. This really isn't the place to start. In fact, this book doesn't even work on its own, so don't even think to read this review if you're not caught up. Normally, I'd recommend that you start with book 1, but the first three books of The Dresden Files are pretty bad, so you'd be better off starting with book 4, Summer Knight. I highly recommend the audio books, narrated by James Marsters. They're what finally sold me on the series.

In my review for Peace Talks, I mentioned that it's been six long years since Jim Butcher last published a full Dresden Files novel. This year, we got two, but only because the original manuscript got so long that Butcher decided to split the story in two. There was clearly some rewriting done to make the parts stand a bit on their own, but mostly, this feels like one of the many YA movies that they split in two (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay), where you pretty much start the second film with the very next scene and no time has passed at all. Having now read both books, I think Butcher and his editors should have done a better job of just chopping a lot of unnecessary stuff and make it all a slightly longer, cohesive story.

While Peace Talks felt like a lot of the story lagged, and far too many story strands were left hanging, this book doesn't bother much with long-winded recapping, it throws the reader straight into a massive supernatural battle, where all of Chicago is at risk and losing might mean certain doom for all of humanity. So no pressure then, Harry.

Butcher makes some choices in this book that I'm not happy about. Some of the things that happen, clearly need to happen for the story to work out in future books, and have been hinted at for a while. That doesn't mean I have to be happy about said developments, and I'm not. For all that I'm fond of action movies, and this book felt like a non-stop action extravaganza, I'm also glad that the readers got a bit more insight into characters like Mab and Marcone, and even Lara. The final chapter, where we get to see a glimpse of Molly and her family was also very nice.

Six years ago, I was absolutely hooked on this series, now I'm wondering just how long Jim Butcher is going to drag things out before I get a satisfying conclusion to Dresden's journey. This is book 17 and I'm not sure I care all that much where things are going. These books used to be an automatic pre-order for me, now, I think I'll wait until I can get them at the library, or on sale. I still like the character and the writing, mostly, but I've just emotionally moved on in the long years since when I read most of them.

Judging a book by its cover: This is a better cover than the one to Peace Talks, but it still feels very generically urban fantasy AND The Dresden Files. I suspect I like it better because you can actually see what is going on in the image. ...more

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