The final of the original Planet of the Apes series begins nine years after the events of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Caesar and his followers now live in Ape City outside the radioactive ruins of the city from the previous film. The Apes' new society places them at the forefront, with sympathetic humans as uneasy allies who may never say "no" to an Ape. Caesar, desperate to learn about his Ape parents and the future from which they came, embarks on a trek to the ruins of the city with his closest lieutenants, an Orangutan named Virgil and MacDonald, a human (since the film series changed actors between films, this is the brother of the character with the same name in the previous installment, though he has the exact same personality and ideas). There, the trio encounters the mutated human survivors, including Mendez, the ancestor of the Mutant leader from Beneath the Planet of the Apes. The Mutants follow the Apes back to Ape City, where a battle occurs and the Gorillas drive off the Mutants. After a power struggle for leadership, Caesar asserts his dominance over the warlike Gorillas and makes a promise to live in true equality with the humans rather than seek revenge for past wrongs.
Battle for the Planet of the Apes has a fairly simple story, though it carries forward the Civil Rights message of Conquest and connects to other films in the series, even rehabilitating, to some degree, the story of Beneath. David Gerrold's writing is more than up to the task of telling the story, embellishing every now and then such as when the Mutant army marches on Ape City. In fact, at some points he holds the reader's attention better than the movie did its audience. The book (and film) use a framing device of an idyllic society years after the events of the story to suggest that peace continues to exist between the humans and Apes, but this is somewhat undone by the continued existence of the Alpha-Omega Bomb. If readers have sallied though some of the weaker parts of the novelization series and enjoyed the better science-fiction elements, they will find this a fitting conclusion. ( )