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 Dresden Files and this book is mostly action. He does do a pretty good job varying the tone of the story so that it’s not just one big battle, but a large portion of this book does blur in my memory, which means a large portion of it didn’t need to be there.
- Butters is awesome.
- I continue to love what Butcher is doing with Lara.
- I am loving Mab more each book.
- I think a lot of good themes and character work were buried here under The Battle.
- Some cool revelations about side characters like Marcone that have been building for books and books, but again, which were sort of lost amidst the chaos of The Battle.
- I don’t care if it’s the Winter Mantle or not (and it probably is) I’m really tired of the horny thoughts from Harry and am ready for him to get a handle on them so I can stop reading them.
- I’m not a fan of the way the Carlos/Harry relationship was handled here. I did not understand Carlos’s motivations.
- There was a bit of a conflicting tone here, even after some really really bad things happened, Butcher still wanted to preserve his smart-ass tone for the rest of the narrative, which I don’t think was a good decision and didn’t work for me.
- SPOILERS: The thing. Look, I knew Murphy was toast even if I didn’t want to say it/type it out loud. I’ve guessed since we learned in book seven that Harry was going to live for hundreds of years. I’ve pretty much known she was goig to die since Skin Game when Murph didn’t qualify for the sword, and Butters got it instead, and my feelings were only confirmed in Peace Talks. Butcher had to have some other role in mind for her that would have leveled her up enough to remain in the game long enough to stay narratively interesting, and it was only after PT that I thought she might turn out to be a Valkyrie. This is honestly the only reason I’m not mad she’s dead, because I’m convinced Butcher killed her solely so he could make her a Valkyrie, and honestly, I’m totally okay with it if that’s the reason. I honestly never saw Harry with her long term anyway. This way, she’s not really dead, and who are we kidding, there’s no way that she’s not coming back into the story. My bet would be in the Big Apocalyptic Trilogy down the road, which will probably be quite a ways down Harry’s timeline, if I had to guess. Plus Murphy as a badass Valkyrie is an appealing thought. The one thing I’m not sure about is how she died. I get she killed a big monster and saved people, but it was Rudy that killed her in the end. I’ll have to think about it a little END SPOILERS.
- FUTURE SPOILERS? In case you were wondering what the other thing I have predicted after reading Peace Talks was, it’s that Thomas will get the last sword and it will finally give him some sort of peace from being a vampire. It’s the sword of love, which is like his thing. No idea when this will happen, but I have a really good feeling about it.
