Spoiler: Wild Ass Guess for BattleGround I'm guessing Murphy dies heroically, and then is "loaned" to Odin by Uriel and comes back as a einherjar or a Valkyrie
Spoiler: Additional speculation for Battleground Butters gonna use his lightsaber to kill Thomas' demon, making him a non-vampire. Thomas will be angry about this. Alternatively, Thomas will die because he and his demon are inseparable. There will be significant deaths (hinted at in Butcher's Christmas Eve story that he released in 2018). Double spoilers if you want to read that story, I guess, as we know certain characters are still alive. Interesting folklore connections between Ethniu, a being named "Mac" and the Leanansidhe:
Spoiler: Character Reveal Spoiler So Mab is the original Morgan La Fey? That was a huge throw away reveal by the titan. And given Morgan and the original Merlin's relationship, it kind of explain her relationship to Harry (Star Born, Warren of Demon Reach, mother was also known as LaFey and had a strong Winter relationship)
I didn’t even catch that. I’m also guessing that: Spoiler: Speculation At some point, Merlin is going to make an appearance. Even if he’s dead, we know he traveled time to set up Demonreach. He could appear at any time. Not sure this will happen during the next book, but by the end of the series it’s likely.
Damn this should have been obvious to me. Wasn’t really critically thinking at this point I the book though. Just gobbling it up on my way to the end.
Spoiler: More theories I've also heard that she might be the lady of the lake. There's a few more theories on reddit with more obscure Arthurian characters, also apprenticed/banging Merlin, who were twin sisters like Mab and Titiana are. Also expecting the Mothers to make a major appearance in BG
Spoiler makes sense, her character arc has been on course to her getting some kind of supernatural powers for awhile. Spoiler i mean that would be nice but do you really want that? It’s more interesting when he isn’t in love
Spoiler couple of immediate thoughts/questions/predictions after finishing: What is the deep pain driving McCoy’s hatred of the white court? Is it just that Raith killed (and banged) his daughter? Lara is old AF, did she try to get involved with him like she is with Harry? Will we find out in Battle Ground because I don’t think he survives it and I bet he dies saving Harry Thomas’ shit won’t be resolved in battleground, that’s going to be another book down the line. By shit I mean him being locked in Azkaban so his hunger doesn’t kill him. We will find out why he did what he did (if he even did it) Murphy gonna die Harry won’t be the winter knight by the end of battleground. Titan chick strips the power and the mantle from him somehow? Mab wants him to fight at the gates and he wants to fight for Chicago and somehow doesn’t die with his refusal (because McCoy steps in)? Harry’s daughter shows that she has abilities what was with the conjuritis? Seems like it would have been the comedy arc but I can believe it doesn’t have some other reason Harry going to be moving into that castle. Not sure if with Marcone or if Marcone dies or otherwise leaves? kind of worried about the power scaling going forward. Harry seems to be on the dragonball super track
Spoiler could be, the cornerhounds kind of speak to some sort of time travel shenanigans when Harry banished them by calling them the hounds of tindalos
Spoiler had some time to marinate and feel that there is definitely some time travel shenanigans going on and I think it’s McCoy. As the Blackstaff he has the ability to break the laws of magic like by messing with time. He keeps showing up kind of at random where Harry is; shows up at his (Molly’s) apartment seemingly without going through the high security to get there, outside of Thomas’s building when they were attacked by the cornerhounds, and on the docks at the end. I don’t know if all of these are instances of McCoy messing with time but the attack of the cornerhounds definitely leads to the idea that him or Harry did something time wise since the hounds of tindalos attack people that mess with time travel. there are also the instances like Etri’s sister thinking that Harry had been in the building prior to the attack on Etri when he wasn’t (maybe he gets to time travel to see what Thomas was doing?). Then there was who put the ink for the tracking spell on him. Harry assumed it was Carlos but Carlos never actually shook his hand, McCoy did before the first accords party though. Harry not remembering that he actually had been in Marcone’s castle before in the flesh because McCoy fucked with his memory so he wouldn’t try to rescue Thomas? (this may just be a continuity error by butcher) I’m thinking that what will be revealed is McCoy put the ink spot on Harry before the first party so he could keep tabs on him throughout the peace talks. However, upon Harry revealing later that Thomas is McCoy’s grandson too, he feels guilt and tries to help him and goes back a little bit to find Harry by using the tracking spell (somehow through time?) which is why the cornerhounds came after him in the alley. I’m not sure if he is actually trying to help Thomas or to help Harry by trying to keep him away from Thomas and the obvious conspiracy or if he is doing it for more sinister reasons like he was the one to setup Thomas in the first place to get him out of the way so his association with Harry wouldn’t effect the white councils vote on expelling him
So this thread's been pretty quiet. Battle Ground coming out in a couple of weeks, but Butcher released the first three chapters if anyone is interested.
is Summer Knight the best of these books? I don't think I made it past many after it . I can't even remember much about the books.
The series vastly improves once it moves on from being primarily a PI/detective series. Series took off around book 5 and never really let down. I've done a reread prior to the latest book, and my favorite is still Changes followed closely by Turn Coat.
I finished it a few days ago. It really should have been combined with Peace Talks into a single book, but whatever. Where Peace Talks was disappointing, Battle Ground was satisfying. Most of the book is the battle with the big bad. Major spoilers below, so don't click if you care about that kind of thing. Spoiler: Where does he go from here? Murphy is dead, and Butcher seems to go to great lengths to tell us that she's for-real dead, not-coming-back-as-anything-else dead. Probably no love interest for Harry for a while. Marcone took up the coin of Thorned Namshiel, and now he's a mega-wizard. Interestingly, in Small Favor, Namshiel attacked Arctis Tor and Mab named him as an enemy - but in Battle Ground, Namshiel is an ally fighting against the Titan (Mab had to have known that Marcone had the coin). Anyway, there has to be a battle between Harry and Marcone at some point - and Marcone was dangerous before he got super-powers. The Fomor are still out there, and one of them - "Listen" - is also a "star born." Gonna see that come back for sure. Justine possessed by the parasite/outsider - did she survive? Thomas' plot is still unresolved - do the svartalves still want their justice from him? Has Harry's part in his escape been discovered? The Black Court vampires are still out there. Mavra and Drakul are obviously super-powered - that threat will have to be taken care of. I thought Ramirez turning against Harry was a little forced. They were so buddy-buddy in past books, and Ramirez seemed to be as rebellious as Harry, it's hard for me to believe that he's a loyal errand-boy for the White Council. Speaking of which, I have to think that the White Council will be too weakened and busy to come after Harry much in the next couple of books at least. But if faced with the choice, what will Harry's allies on the White Council do? McCoy? Listens-to-Wind? Rashid? I find it hard to believe they'd turn against him.
Spoiler I thought the Gatekeeper was conspicuously absent, especially given that when Harry un-died the GK said he’d take care of Harry’s membership issues. The full scale attack in the Outer Gates mentioned in Peace Talks was also never mentioned again in BattleGround. It was a fun read but very much could have benefited from being a single book and being edited as such.
Spoiler Agree. There's this whole big war simmering in the background (and now we know that the parasite is an Outsider, too). Didn't they say in Peace Talks that most of Mab's forces were already committed to defending the Gates? On which side of that conflict will the Denarians fall? Or the Angels, for that matter? Just how "outside" our reality are the Outsiders?
Finally got around to reading it and finished it today. This is going to be stream of conscience and I’m not going to spoiler since it’s been out for 2 months. It was ok but while reading it I kept imagining that Butcher watched Endgame and then was like “fuck yeah, imma going to write that!”. It felt like he was trying to get every single past faction into it somehow and a couple seemed a little shoehorned. For example the black court stuff really didn’t add much except an action sequence and setup a future twist with his warden buddies coming back as bad guys in a future encounter with Drakul. I’m excited to see where that goes especially with Drawl also being a starborn, but it didn’t add anything to this story. The Murphy death was expected and I do expect her to come back in the series even though they tried to make it sound like she wasn’t. Gard said that she won’t come back while people still remember her or something but I just take that as when he gets a new love interest then she will pop back up for the mindfuck twist. it was cool to see some of the big guns like the fae queens, one-eye, and blackstaff cut loose Marcone’s reveal made me actually say “really? Come on” out loud. him being a vanilla human with no super powers except his brain and ruthlessness was his character. Now that Murphy is dead and he is a super wizard, there are no vanilla humans left. Also, after it was all said and done, why wouldn’t Dresden say “BTW, Marcone is a black knight in case anybody didn’t know”? Seems weird he would keep that secret. I don’t think anyone else knew, or at least let on they knew and that seems like pretty important info for the players involved. The whole Thomas subplot getting wrapped up as “Justine is possessed and made him do it” seemed like a cop out; like butcher forgot about wrapping up that plot until the book was almost done being written. Really now that I think about it, that whole subplot really had nothing to add to either peace talks or battleground overall. They could have started the plot at the beginning of the actual peace talks where the titan showed up and made it just one book. I would have liked some more (even just a little) explanation of the starborn stuff. Like all we got was more people telling Harry that he is not being told the whole story. Wtf with the marriage thing? I could go on but this post is already long. Overall I enjoyed the book but would have liked more substance. It was really just a hugeeeee chain of action scenes with some callbacks/Easter eggs and setup for future books/stories.
Agreed, they could have cut all the Thomas stuff and just started from the lead up to the peace talks and made it all one book. The Thomas stuff should have been it’s own separate plot that got more fleshed out and resolved
Also, what was the deal with Harry asking Molly for the Redcap so that he could go to the other side of the roof and summon Toot Toot? Did I miss something? I thought they were about to go do something and it then it was like “hey I just wanted to talk some shit for a minute and have you watch me summon something over here, all done, thanks, bye”