I found myself exhausted by the end of Jim Butcher’s Battle Ground. It’s a series of battles with Chicago as the prize. Plenty of fighting, plenty of action, plenty of deaths.
Battle Ground is the 17th book in the Dresden Files series. It seems to me that in the 20 years Jim Butcher has been writing these Urban Fantasy novels, all the plot lines have been building to this titanic crescendo of violence and fury. Harry Dresden started out as a wizard who was also a private investigator. Over the span of a couple of decades, Dresden has grown into the Protector of Chicago from Supernatural Threats. The greatest threat Dresden has ever faced shows up in this book: The Last Titan, a nearly invulnerable entity.
If Battle Ground was just a series of fight scenes, the brutal action would become numbing. But, Butcher manages to infuse the plot with some cunning mysteries and surprises that explode at the book’s conclusion. Sadly, much of what happens in Battle Ground depends on knowledge of the preceding volumes in the Dresden Files series. I don’t know how many people in our circle would want to commit to reading 16 books in order to make sense of the 17th–other than me. But, I’m glad I did. GRADE: B+
Harry Dresden sounds like a very interesting character, wizard, PI and now guardian of Chicago. I like the sound of this series and its action-mystery-fantasy elements.
Pradshant, the Dresden Files series is nearly 20 years old and looking back, it’s amazing how Jim Butcher took a simple idea–a Wizard who is also a private investigator–and transformed it over the years into something as epic as the titanic events in BATTLE GROUND. You would enjoy the entire series!!!