After the Battle

Harry Dresden is at a personal nadir, badly wounded physically and emotionally by the battle with the Titan Ethnui. Karrin Murphy is dead. His brother Thomas is dying, with Harry forced to place Thomas in magical stasis until Harry can fix him. Thomas’s lover Justine, expecting Thomas’s child, has disappeared. Mab, Dresden’s liege-lady, ordered Harry to marry Lara Raith, leader of the White Court Vampires, within a year. Harry was expelled from the White Council. His beloved Chicago was trashed.

Twelve Months picks up where Battle Ground left off, following what happens to Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden and the city of Chicago in the year following the battle there.

The battle gave Chicago the equivalent of a massive electromagnetic pulse. Anything with a microchip and virtually everything electrical is dead. Chicago’s infrastructure has collapsed. The streets are so debris-strewn that travel is possibly only by foot, bicycle, or motorcycle. People lack shelter, food, and heat. A massive effort to rebuild the city has commenced, but the scale of the devastation limits what even the government can accomplish. A million people were displaced.

With order broken down, human and supernatural predators abound. Harry cannot let himself stand aside. He opens his castle – which appeared over his old rooming house – to refugees. He provides what he can spare to his neighbors. He fights to protect Chicago's survivors from predators and from those attempting to bully them.

He must also deal with his own issues and obligations. He must establish a working relationship with Lara Raith, leading to marriage. He has to resolve the guilt he feels over Murphy’s death. He has to meet his daughter's need for a relationship with her father.

Harry is faced with hard choices, leading to resolutions that fail to deliver the “happily-ever-after” ending he was striving to get. Yet Harry accepts that perfection is unattainable. Sometime you must settle for the best you can get. The Harry Dresden at this book’s end is more mature, more realistic about outcomes, and even happier than the Harry Dresden of the earlier books.

Instead of the dark ending which cap many of the series books, Twelve Months ends optimistically. Dawn seems to be breaking, Harry has healed, and Chicago is healing. The book should leave regular readers of “The Dresden Chronicles” satisfied, eager for the next book in the series. It may be the best book of the series.

Twelve Months (Dresden Files), by Jim Butcher, Ace, January 2026, 480 pages, $30.00 (Hardcover), $14.99 (E-book), $24.50 (Audiobook)

This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.