Battle Ground (The Dresden Files, #17) by Jim Butcher

I saw her study my face and then ask, “How bad does it have to be for you not to be making jokes?” pg 3

The last book in the series, Peace Talks, set up the epic battle for Chicago between the wizard Harry Dresden and his various allies against a relic of the old world and her vassals.

Jim Butcher delivers that battle in a very major way in Battle Ground.

“I hadn’t even seen what was coming for Chicago, and I was already bloodied and exhausted. This was going to be a long night.” pg 17

As per usual, Butcher is heavy on the puns and pop culture references, but I thought he did a fantastic job with this installment. Long-time readers of the series get to enjoy scenes from characters who haven’t made an appearance for awhile.

There are also some serious consequences from this book which, I thought, would have made an epic conclusion to the whole thing. However, Butcher teases more to come at the end of the novel, so I suppose it will continue.

“But whatever happened, after tonight there would be walls coming down between the mortal world and the supernatural one that had stood solidly for centuries. Stars and stones, I didn’t think anyone knew what that might mean.” pg 72

Which I’m not opposed to. You’d think I’d be sick of Harry Dresden and his constant, and ever increasingly powerful, problems. But I’m not. I enjoy this urban fantasy series very much.

Part of that is because of the writing and the characters. Despite the fantasy setting, Butcher manages to make everybody feel very real. I like to imagine that if magic were real, that it would function similarly to how Butcher has crafted it in his books.

The other reason I probably enjoy it so much is because I’m a big nerd. Whenever Harry gets into a bind and makes a cheesy joke to relieve his tension, I always get the feeling that I’d do something similarly silly. When the end of the world is staring you in the face, what else is there to do but smile?

Battle Ground is a must-read for fans of the series. If you haven’t read any of the other books yet, please do yourself a favor and start from the beginning.

Thanks for reading!

Skin Game (The Dresden Files, #15) by Jim Butcher

Harry Dresden, wizard-for-hire and Winter Knight, joins a group of unsavory characters to pay off a debt owed by Mab and to steal something incredibly valuable from a god. And he thought he had bad days before this. At least he still has a way with words.

“… Nicodemus is a murderous murdering murderer,” I said. “And if he’s picking a crew, they’re going to be just as bad.” pg 26, ebook

Is there anyone he can trust? Can he even trust himself with the strange “parasite”-thing growing in his head?

“Sometimes when you find yourself alone, for whatever reason, you review every little thing you know about someone, searching your memory for small, subtle things that you may have missed about them.”pg 10, ebook.

Any guesses on what they’re going to be stealing?

“My sources say he’s the collector of the supernatural world. He’s famous for it. Art, treasure, gems, jewels, antiques, you name.” pg 37, ebook.

Skin Game is a clever mix of heist and The Dresden Files. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And now my heart is broken because the next book isn’t written yet.

We were finally getting somewhere with Harry’s relationships with his friends and a certain someone in particular. (No spoilers!) Harry was learning how to juggle his “mantle of power”. Molly was coming into her own unique situation.

We’ve learned about angels, demons, fairies, pixies, gods and more in this series. I’ve really come to enjoy the world and the strange things that happen in it. I love the shifting balance of power and how when Harry’s up, he’s really up. And when he’s down… well…

“And since when had I become the guy that things happened to ten years ago?” pg 49, ebook.

I think all of the readers are wondering that too. Not that we’re complaining because this series seems to have such staying power. I really wish it would keep going for awhile longer, just spit-balling here, how about another 15 books? 🙂 Or, at least, perhaps we could tie up the loose ends.

“I know that things happen to people,” he said. “And maybe you’ve got excellent and real reasons for doing what you’ve done. But… at the end of the day, there’s just no replacement for being here.” pg 84, ebook.

I like being in this world and I think plenty of other readers do too. Jim Butcher, give the people what they want. Write, please. Write now!

Thanks for reading.

White Night (The Dresden Files, #9) by Jim Butcher

Someone is killing people in Chicago and leaving clues that only a person with magical ability, like a wizard named Harry Dresden, could see. Why would they do that?

Meanwhile, most everything else in Harry’s life is going spectacularly wrong. He has an unruly apprentice who had an unfortunate brush with dark magic awhile back. The White Council is still at war with the Red Vampire Court which was Harry’s fault to begin with, but we don’t need to go into all that.

He’s still got a fallen angel’s shadow in his head, trying to convince him to wield a coin that will give Harry unimaginable power but also consume his soul. Thomas, the vampire, has been acting really weird and he’s probably eating people again which, vampires do, but it’s kind of a problem because Harry is supposed to be protecting people.

And now this, a serial killer. Perfect.

The Dresden Files, as a series, is really starting to come together. I like how Jim Butcher starts to layer the books on top of each other, each plot line leading to more complications and depth.

Normally, Wardens existed to police wizards, to make sure that they didn’t use their power against the rest of humanity in violation of the Laws of Magic. Things weren’t normal.” pg 59, ebook.

Harry has to juggle the politics between the wizards, the vampires, humanity, the faeries… and also keep his sanity when someone from his past shows up and he has to rehash some old wounds.

Real fright isn’t like the movies. Real fear is an ugly, quiet, relentless thing. It’s a kind of pain, and I hated seeing it…” pg 129, ebook

And we can’t forget Bob the Skull, one of my favorite characters. He seems to always get a few good lines in, no matter how busy the plot is.

“What’s up, boss?” “Evil’s afoot.” “Well, sure,” Bob said, “because it refuses to learn the metric system. Otherwise it’d be up to a meter by now.” pg 154, ebook.

Though I had some difficulties with the way Harry behaved in the latter part of the last book, I feel like he’s more of the flawed character I’ve come to know in this entry. Yes, he still makes mistakes sometimes and can be an idiot, but it makes more sense. There are circumstances beyond his control that are acting on his mind in ways he may not be aware of yet. But he’s learning about that, and his friends won’t let him get too out of hand.

Or, at least, they’ll all go down together… probably spectacularly and in flames. Highly recommended for urban fantasy readers.

Here are more reviews I’ve written for this series:

Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1) by Jim Butcher

Fool Moon (The Dresden Files #2) by Jim Butcher

Grave Peril (The Dresden Files, #3) by Jim Butcher

Summer Knight (The Dresden Files #4) by Jim Butcher

Death Masks (The Dresden Files, #5) by Jim Butcher

Blood Rites (The Dresden Files, #6) by Jim Butcher

Dead Beat (The Dresden Files #7) by Jim Butcher

Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files, #8) by Jim Butcher

And thanks for reading!

Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files, #8) by Jim Butcher

The wizard Harry Dresden continues to anger the White Council, the Red Court of Vampires, the winter court of the Fey and pretty much everyone else in the universe. He and Bob have a new (dangerous) project in his work space. He’s worried about his half-brother, Thomas, who has been acting kind of weird and may or may not be feeding off of people again. He and Murphy are starting to talk about their interesting relationship and there’s a fallen angel in the concrete of his house. Could things get much worse?

Yeah, it could. When Michael’s daughter begins to have problems, Harry has to deal with those too.

First, he has to witness an execution of an evil magic user by the council. It makes him sick to his stomach because the boy was never trained and didn’t know that what he was doing was wrong. It reminds Harry of his own questionable past and how close he came to the same fate.

“But it doesn’t change the fact that we’ve just murdered a boy who probably never knew enough to understand what was happening to him.” pg 15

The White Council is so stretched by the war with the vampires, they’ve giving less time to social niceties than perhaps they able to in the past. They’ve also been able to train fewer wizards. And there’s a new threat running around Chicago that Harry has been tasked to discover.

“As the senior Warden in the region, it falls to you to investigate and find those responsible. In my opinion, it is vital that you do so immediately. To my knowledge, no one else is aware of the situation.” pg 29

I really enjoyed this entry in the series until the end of the story arc with Michael’s daughter. That part felt off to me and crossed a line that I didn’t know I had for these books.

In my mind, The Dresden Files are sort of the “junk food” of my to-be-read pile. The hero of the stories is not perfect and admittedly so. He’s kind of a dog when it comes to women and relationships. He tries to make the right decisions but it sometimes back fires in his face. But I usually agree with what he tries to do and understand his motivations behind it.

But the way that he treats Michael’s daughter… I didn’t agree with that. There’s a kind way to go about things and a cruel way, and I felt like he unnecessarily chose the cruel way. It’s not what I look for in my “junk food” reads. Plus, the whole scene gave me the creeps and made me feel like I didn’t know the character after all.

And perhaps that was the point. Sometimes Harry does the wrong thing. Sometimes he thinks the wrong thing. But at the end of the day, in this book at least, he didn’t make a different type of unforgivable mistake.

That being said, if he lived in my world, I wouldn’t let him be around my kid, end of story. And if this book hadn’t included the icky part with Michael’s daughter, it would have been a five-star read for me.

Here are more reviews I’ve written for this series:

Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1) by Jim Butcher

Fool Moon (The Dresden Files #2) by Jim Butcher

Grave Peril (The Dresden Files, #3) by Jim Butcher

Summer Knight (The Dresden Files #4) by Jim Butcher

Death Masks (The Dresden Files, #5) by Jim Butcher

Blood Rites (The Dresden Files, #6) by Jim Butcher

Dead Beat (The Dresden Files #7) by Jim Butcher

And thanks for reading!

Dead Beat (The Dresden Files #7) by Jim Butcher

This entry in The Dresden Files has wizard Harry Dresden fighting necromancers to protect his friends and contemplating his own mortality. We also get to hang out with a few side characters and see a fascinating new side of Bob, who just happens to be one of my favorite characters in the whole series.

“Because that Kemmler was a certifiable nightmare,” Bob said. … That got my attention. Bob the skull was an air spirit, a being that existed in a world of knowledge without morality. He was fairly fuzzy on the whole good-evil conflict…” pg 39, ebook.

There’s some ridiculousness and danger to the story, but mainly Harry-angst and the perpetual struggle against darkness.

“And despite every religious faith, the testimony of near-death eyewitnesses, and the imaginations of storytellers throughout history, death remains the ultimate mystery. No one truly, definitely knows what happens after.” pg 30, ebook.

And a few old enemies, of course: “She laughed harder, and the sound of it spooked the hell out of me. … There was no warmth in it, no humanity, no kindness, no joy. It was like Mavra herself…”pg 33, ebook.

Harry is still dealing with his disabled hand, which he burnt the heck out of in the last book. “I had a responsibility to keep that destructive strength in check; to use it to help people, to protect them. It didn’t matter that I still felt terrified. It didn’t matter that my hand was screaming with pain.” pg 65, ebook.

Also, some of Harry’s previous decisions about vampires and the Wizard Counsel have some serious consequences. But, anybody who’s been reading this series for awhile, knew that that was only a matter of time.

And there’s the small matter of a certain silver coin that Harry picked up a few books ago and buried under the concrete in his lab. But whatever is in the coin can’t get out of the circle he put it in… right?

“I just keep getting more wounded and tired. … I’m not some kind of superhero. I’m just me. And I didn’t want any of this.” pg 131, ebook.

If you haven’t read this series, I highly recommend you start with the first book. The stories build on each other and become quite satisfying, in my opinion.

The ending of this one contains some ridiculousness that I was not prepared for, but after some thought about the series, I’ve decided that it doesn’t matter.

There is very little Jim Butcher could write in here that I wouldn’t like. Somewhere along the line, I’ve become quite a fan of The Dresden Files.

I didn’t expect it. But that’s the truth.

Check out my other reviews of the series:

Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1) by Jim Butcher

Fool Moon (The Dresden Files #2) by Jim Butcher

Grave Peril (The Dresden Files, #3) by Jim Butcher

Summer Knight (The Dresden Files #4) by Jim Butcher

Death Masks (The Dresden Files, #5) by Jim Butcher

Blood Rites (The Dresden Files, #6) by Jim Butcher

Thanks for reading!

Blood Rites (The Dresden Files, #6) by Jim Butcher

In this entry in The Dresden Files, the vampire Thomas asks Harry to help his friend, an adult film maker. People keep dying on set and Thomas thinks its magic-related.

Part-mystery, part-comedy and 100 percent wizard, I think Blood Rites is one of the best in the series so far.

“I was agreeing to help him and taking a job, just as though Thomas were any other client. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done. It had the potential to lead to lethally unhealthy decisions.” pg 17

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Pexels.com

As usual, Harry can’t seem to get his life together long enough to get anything done. He runs from crisis to crisis. But, he’s become self-aware enough to realize what he’s doing.

“My worry and tension slowly grew, and as they did I took a perverse comfort in the familiar emotions. It actually felt good to feel my survival instincts put me on guard against premature mortality. Hell’s bells. Is that insane or what?” pg 93

We learn a lot more about Harry’s personal life in this story.

“The hardest lesson a wizard has to learn is that even with so much power, there are some things you can’t control. No matter how much you want to.” pg 353.

And we also get to meet a shady character or two from his past.

Highly recommended for urban fiction fans.

Check out my other reviews of the series:

Storm Front (The Dresden Files, #1) by Jim Butcher

Fool Moon (The Dresden Files #2) by Jim Butcher

Grave Peril (The Dresden Files, #3) by Jim Butcher

Summer Knight (The Dresden Files #4) by Jim Butcher

Death Masks (The Dresden Files, #5) by Jim Butcher

Thanks for reading!

Death Masks (The Dresden Files, #5) by Jim Butcher

Harry Dresden can’t catch a break… or a full night’s sleep. He’s up against the Red vampire court, he’s being attacked by supernatural creatures with powers he’s never seen before and his ex-girlfriend is back in town.

But, you can’t keep a good wizard down, right?

Even when you introduce a holy relic into the tale: “Someone stole the freaking Shroud of Turn?’ I demanded. ‘Yes.’ I settled back into the chair, looking down at the photos again. This changed things. This changed things a lot.” pg 28

In case you haven’t read the first four entries in this series: Harry Dresden is a wizard for hire. He solves supernatural crimes, he finds lost items and he never seems to make enough money to be comfortable.

“I’d learned something in several years of professional wizarding. Never walk into a fight when the bad guys are the ones who set it up. Wizards can call down lightning from the heavens, rip apart the earth beneath their enemy’s feet, blow them into a neighboring time zone with gale winds, and a million other things even less pleasant- but not if we don’t plan things out in advance.”pg 58

Some criticisms of this series are that the humor is juvenile and corny. I’ll confess: it is. But I still love it.

“I get more threats before nine a.m. than most people get all day,” I responded, and shut the door on him. Purely for effect, I locked it too. Me, petty? Surely not.” pg 110

If I was a male wizard, I think I’d be something like Harry. I’d go in with the best of intentions and end up with the most mediocre of results.

Harry stands up for the little guy and has a soft spot for the ladies. He protects children and holds the door for women.

He likes to drink, wears a leather duster and can’t seem to sleep even when he’s exhausted.

Aren’t we all, in some ways, Harry Dresden? Fighting the good fight, even though we know that death waits around the corner?

“Apocalypse, as you refer to it, isn’t an event. … Apocalypse is a frame of mine,” he said then. “A belief. A surrender to inevitability. It is despair for the future. It is the death of hope.” pg 353

Recommended for fans of urban fantasy and especially the Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne. I am a fan of The Dresden Files despite the fact that it can seem formulaic. I think Harry Dresden is worth the read.

Thanks for reading!

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Sharing reviews and deep thoughts about life.

Tag: wizard

Battle Ground (The Dresden Files, #17) by Jim Butcher

Skin Game (The Dresden Files, #15) by Jim Butcher

White Night (The Dresden Files, #9) by Jim Butcher

Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files, #8) by Jim Butcher

Dead Beat (The Dresden Files #7) by Jim Butcher

Blood Rites (The Dresden Files, #6) by Jim Butcher

Death Masks (The Dresden Files, #5) by Jim Butcher

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