Battle Ground (the Dresden Files, #17)

Battle Ground, the seventeenth installment in the Dresden Files urban fantasy series, continues directly from Peace Talks. The novel follows Harry Dresden, a professional wizard and the Winter Knight, a mortal champion bound in service to Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness, who rules the Winter Court of the Fae.

Harry races across Lake Michigan toward a blacked-out Chicago aboard the Water Beetle with his lover, former police lieutenant Karrin Murphy, and Lara Raith, the de facto queen of the White Court of vampires. The Fomor, an ancient aquatic nation led by the Last Titan Ethniu, are launching a full-scale assault on the city. Ethniu wields the Eye of Balor, a supernatural superweapon capable of leveling buildings, and wears Titanic bronze armor impervious to attack as long as her will sustains it. A kraken attacks the boat before they reach shore. Molly Carpenter, Harry's former apprentice who serves as the Winter Lady (Mab's second-in-command), arrives with Freydis, a Valkyrie. Together with Lara, they kill the creature.

At McAnally's Pub, a designated shelter for the supernatural community, Harry warns the gathered practitioners that the Fomor intend to kill everyone. He produces a sacred artifact, the placard from the Cross, and persuades Mac, the pub's enigmatic bartender, to anoint it with blood and hang it on the wall, creating a powerful protective threshold. Harry assigns Murphy to coordinate the neighborhood defense alongside the werewolf Alphas and the Paranet, a network of minor practitioners.

At Castle Marcone, the fortified stronghold of Gentleman John Marcone, Chicago's supernatural crime lord, the leaders of the Accorded nations, a supernatural treaty alliance, outline the strategy. The Erlking, a faerie lord of the goblin court; Vadderung (Odin in a modern guise); and Harry's grandfather Ebenezar McCoy, the White Council's Blackstaff (its sanctioned magical assassin), explain the plan: Force Ethniu to expend her will through sustained combat, then drive her to the lakeshore, where Harry can use a binding crystal linked to Demonreach, his island prison for supernatural entities, to imprison her. Harry's fellow Warden Carlos Ramirez warns him that the White Council is growing suspicious of Harry's secretive alliances; Harry deflects with a lie. He summons Toot-Toot Minimus, his faerie vassal, and the Little Folk mobilize to intercept the Fomor's flying creatures. Mab broadcasts her voice across Chicago, announcing the enemy's arrival and shattering the secrecy between the mortal and supernatural worlds.

When Huntsmen, packs of creatures from the Welsh Land of the Dead whose strength grows with each packmate killed, begin slaughtering civilians, Harry and River Shoulders, a Sasquatch ally, break ranks to fight them. Harry pressures Marcone into sheltering fleeing civilians. The defenders push toward the lakefront, but Harry's strike force is diverted to Graceland Cemetery, where Drakul, the ancient father of Dracula, leads Black Court vampire elders in a necromantic ritual to raise the dead. The fight is devastating: Drakul sends Warden Chandler through a mysterious portal, and the vampires kill Wardens Wild Bill and Yoshimo. Drakul reveals he is "starborn"—an apparently rare innate designation—like Harry, and taunts him that the White Council has hidden the true meaning of that status. Listens-to-Wind, a Senior Council member, drives Drakul off, but the losses are severe.

The battle escalates. Fire giants, Jotnar from Muspelheim (the fire realm of Norse cosmology), emerge from the lake. Ethniu fires the Eye, collapsing a skyscraper and the defenders' position. Harry reunites with Waldo Butters, the Knight of the Sword of Faith, and Murphy. Bob the Skull, Harry's spirit-of-intellect assistant, warns that the battle's energy is eroding the barrier between the mortal world and the Nevernever, the spirit realm. Harry embraces the full power of the Winter mantle, the magical force that empowers him as Winter Knight, drawing creatures of Winter to his command and gathering nearly twelve hundred armed civilian volunteers, each of whom he feels through a psychic link.

During a fire giant attack, Murphy kills the Jotun Svangar with a rocket launcher. In the aftermath, Detective Rudolph, a panicking police officer, draws his gun and accidentally shoots Murphy in the neck. She speaks Harry's name, tells him she loves him, and dies in his arms. Consumed by rage, Harry pursues Rudolph and begins crushing him with his shield. Sanya, the Knight of the Sword of Hope, intervenes, but Harry overpowers him. Butters then stands between Harry and Rudolph, raising the Sword of Faith. When Harry strikes at the blade, it burns a line into his forearm, shattering the Winter mantle's suppression of pain and grief. Harry breaks down, and his friends hold him.

Harry carries Murphy's body to the Bean, a large public sculpture in Millennium Park, where Mab's Sidhe (faerie noble) warriors lay her in state as a Jotunslayer. He takes Murphy's handgun, naming it "Backup," and returns to the fight. Mab makes her stand at the Bean, using illusory duplicates of herself and her warriors to sow confusion while systematically destroying enemy units. She is impaled through the throat by a cold iron spear but recovers after Butters cuts it free.

Reinforcements arrive: Marcone leads a combined force of Einherjaren (revenant Norse warriors), svartalves (master craftsmen-warriors), White Court vampires, and White Council wizards. Molly's hidden army, composed largely of faerie-trained human youths, strikes the Fomor's flanks, while the Wild Hunt, a supernatural raiding host, descends from the sky. Titania, Queen of the Summer Court, disperses the Eye's energy into a massive rainstorm, weakening the weapon. Multiple champions assault Ethniu, and Marcone's bodyguard Hendricks dies shielding Marcone from her spear. Odin, barely conscious, speaks the true name of his stolen spear, Gungnir, and it turns in Ethniu's hand, plunging into the Eye and destroying half her skull and one arm. Lara kicks the cracked Eye free, and Marcone seizes it.

At the lakeshore, Harry assembles the Spear of Destiny, a dagger from Hades' vault mounted on his staff, and confronts the maimed Titan. Ethniu projects a psychic vision showing Harry's daughter Maggie murdered, but Harry realizes Molly staged the scene with faerie glamour to protect the family. He completes the binding using Bob as a living circle, the Titan's blood on the Spear, and a crystal linked to Demonreach, anchoring his will in the memory of Maggie. Alfred, the spirit of Demonreach, surges from the lake and drags the bound Titan into the island's prison. Marcone survives Ethniu snapping his neck, revealing he bears the coin of Thorned Namshiel, a Fallen Angel bound to one of the coins of the Blackened Denarius. He yields the Eye to Harry.

Dawn breaks. National Guard helicopters destroy the fleeing Fomor. Murphy's body has been claimed by Odin's Valkyries, replaced by the valknut, Odin's mark for a collected fallen warrior. She has been taken to Valhalla as an honored Einherjar. Harry threatens Odin through Gard, Marcone's Valkyrie adviser, that Murphy had better be treated well.

In the aftermath, Harry argues at the first Accords Ministry meeting that the supernatural nations owe reparations to Chicago's mortal population and claims Marcone's castle as his new home. The White Council expels Harry, strips his Warden status, and places him under a suspended death warrant. Mab announces that Harry will marry Lara Raith to forge an alliance between Winter and the White Court; Molly and Lara negotiate a one-year delay.

Harry then discovers that Justine, the pregnant girlfriend of his half-brother Thomas Raith, has been possessed for years by Nemesis, a Walker (a powerful class of Outsider, hostile entities from beyond reality). The Walker reveals it orchestrated events, including compelling Thomas to commit the crime that landed him in Demonreach, to gain access to the prison and free its inmates. Harry steers the boat toward Demonreach and throws himself overboard; Alfred seizes him and prevents Nemesis from following, trapping the possessed Justine on the grounded boat. Harry holds a memorial at Graceland Cemetery, burying a coffin of photographs under a tombstone reading "They Defended Chicago," and resolves to build something worth fighting for.