Battle Ground by Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files: Book 17)

10/10

I stayed up till 1 am to read this epic battle and I don’t regret it at all.

If there's one word to describe this book it's 'change'. Some things have been ticking over in the series for a long while now and at times it seemed like Jim Butcher wasn't sure which way he wanted to take the story. Or even what he wanted to do with Harry. All that is done. Every single element of the series has been levelled by the events on Battle Ground, the city razed to its foundations, the characters broken down to their most essential parts. From this destruction will come something new, a rebuilding of place and person that wouldn't have been possible without such a thorough clearing of the way.

For my part, I would have liked to have seen Peace Talks and Battle Ground kept together. It would have read more like the epic fantasy that it actually was, with the heavy foreshadowing of the first book building towards the crushing Sanderlanche style devastation of the final battles. Regardless, this is a beginning, not just the ending such battles usually promise, and I'm excited to see what will come of it.