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This is our discussion of the novel....

First Lord's Fury by Jim Butcher

The sixth and final book in the Codex Alera series. See The Codex Alera discussion hub for more info on the series and pointers to discussion of its other novels.

non-spoiler: This book does a better job reminding me of what was going on in the previous book than previous books did.

Chapter 1: So, Kitai can definitely Furycraft. Also, "wimmin, can't live with them, can't live without them."

Couple hundred pages in. The Amara/Bernard storyline managed to go downhill in interest given that everyone else is dealing with the end of the world but they are teaching a little girl to ride a horse. Not saying it's not realistic, or maybe even important (after all, life goes on), but I wanted to get back to what everyone else was doing ASAP.

Wonder what Tavi has planned that will cause glaciers to cover the world a few thousand years in the future. Going to make a big pile of ice that they can slide all the way down to Riva? Though you'd think the Wall itself would be furycrafted so you could run fast along the top of it and that's a pretty straight line from where they are to where they need to be.

I'm hoping for a "battle of the five armies" type thing by the end, with the Alerans, Marat, Canim and Ice Men all fighting together against the Vord, assuming the Ice Men ever figure out that the Vord are a danger to them too and they do more than just sit the battle out.

Andrea wrote: "Couple hundred pages in. The Amara/Bernard storyline managed to go downhill in interest given that everyone else is dealing with the end of the world but they are teaching a little girl to ride a horse..."

That didn't bother me (I don't think it took a lot of space.)

Amara in this novel gets some story separate from Bernard, I think for the first time since the start of Book 1 when she was working with / betrayed by Fidelias.

Masha, on the other hand, doesn't get much of a role.


Andrea wrote: "Wonder what Tavi has planned that will cause glaciers to cover the world a few thousand years in the future. Going to make a big pile of ice that they can slide all the way down to Riva?..."

Good call :)

G33z3r wrote: "Andrea wrote: "Wonder what Tavi has planned that will cause glaciers to cover the world a few thousand years in the future. Going to make a big pile of ice that they can slide all the way down to Riva?..."

Good call :)"

Yep, I was decently close though not quite, it wasn't exactly a toboggan sliding downhill the whole way (I was trying to picture how huge a hill they would need to generate the necessary slope to cover all that distance). Let's just say that ride sounded terrifying and you'd not be be getting me on one of those boats!

I'm interested to see where he's going with the humanization of the Vord Queen. Already her children think she's defective. But here she is playing "human" to understand us better (which doesn't seem useful militarily since generally just her numbers are enough to crush us, dinner etiquette doesn't add much) and she's thinking of Tavi as her "father" and Isana her "grandmother" as if she's longing for a family. After all I doubt her minions actually love her, they simply mindlessly obey, they can't love. And you can't exactly have an intellectually stimulating conversation with a croach spiders.

I'm wondering if Butcher is setting up a solution where:
1 - the Vord get to keep Canea (after all it's totally lost now anyway) because the Queen is now so human she can be negotiated with, and the reader is getting to feel sorry for her a bit so be weird to kill her off after we're made to feel something
2 - the Canes settle in Alera maybe reclaim some Croach infested area...after all there are a LOT less Alerans to fill the available land now
3 - the Ice Men, as we already know, will use the Wall to keep the Alerans out instead of the other way around
4 - the Marat I guess stay where they are
5 - and pretty much everyone lives happily ever after (more or less since each of those people seem like like fighting amongst themselves let alone with each other)...after all they can now be "entertained" by the rogue furies and impending ice age :)

As I was updating my progress noticed that the edition I shelved had a mere 495 pages...must have to read it with a magnifying glass since my actual copy has over 700!

Andrea wrote: "I'm interested to see where he's going with the humanization of the Vord Queen...."

Andrea wrote: "I'm wondering if Butcher is setting up a solution where:"

Since I've finished the book, I don't want to comment much on either of those suggestions, except that they very closely match my assumptions early on in the book.

Andrea wrote: "As I was updating my progress noticed that the edition I shelved had a mere 495 pages...must have to read it with a magnifying glass since my actual copy has over 700!"

My ebook claims it's 691 "real pages." I guess the Hardcover edition has larger pages (and possibly smaller type :)

Hve you noticed an evolution of furycrafting from control of specific named entities to general elemental control (e.g., shift from Pokemon to Last Airbender.) At the start everyone seemed to have a named fury: e.g Cirrus, Rill, Brutus,.... and they did things for their Aleran masters. But lately (and this didn't start in this finale, but just intensified) more and more characters (Tavi & Kitai most notably just do elemental stuff with generic furies.

G33z3r wrote: "Hve you noticed an evolution of furycrafting from control of specific named entities to general elemental control (e.g., shift from Pokemon to Last Airbender.) At the start everyone seemed to have ..."

There was always a little bit of the generic, like the furylamps that everyone could control. Though someone had to furycraft those lamps so maybe in those cases one could argue the furies were controlled by the maker to be subservient to everyone. Which still leaves other random uses of wild furies not explained.

Not everyone can manifest a fury (and it was considered provincial to name your fury so not everyone does), you know get a lion or dog or something to show...guess that's only the stronger crafters, but presumably people still had a specific fury that was theirs? Isana never manifested Rill...wonder what it would look like :)

And maybe Tavi & Kitai are always using the same furies, they just haven't gotten them to show in a specific form and give them a name?

One thing I found odd is that people's furies travel with them. I mean Rill came from a specific river but no matter where Isana is she can call on him. And while having a water fury associated with a specific source of water seems clear...what does a fire fury associate itself to? A specific candle flame? Other than say a volcano, fire is pretty transient. Same with air, I mean technically it's the same air everywhere unless you have a really enclosed area cut off from everything else. Maybe it's still the same cohesive batch of air, it can just travel around more freely than a river...

Alera is different again, an accumulation of furies given independent thought. She doesn't belong to Tavi, he's just in the bloodline and she finds it interesting to hang out with them. Interesting that she does help Tavi, but at the same time claims neutrality. I know she said she's not actively harming the vord, but by helping one side you are indirectly harming the other...fury ethics *shrugs*

Complicated, and not sure it all holds to the Pokemon premise. It could, just maybe not well explained.

And update on my progress - the Marat just joined in the fight....can you picture the gargants as badgers??? Badgers are so low to the ground a squat, to have one that is 8 feet high must mean it's at least double that wide!! Maybe they aren't as squat as their smaller relatives, but then why not base it off an animal whose shape grows 8 feet tall without being really weird looking proportionally. I actually pictured something more like an mammoth but without the big ears and trunk.

Andrea wrote: "Not everyone can manifest a fury..."

Apparently it's also possible to bind new ferral furies (as Lord Acquitaine is seen (apparently) doing in the battle for Riva) and to transfer a fury (as one steadholder did for his son (in book 2, I think.)

Andrea wrote: "Alera is different again, an accumulation of furies given independent thought. She doesn't belong to Tavi, he's just in the bloodline and she finds it interesting to hang out with them. ..."

In previous book (#5), becfore he dies Gaius Sextus elicits some (unspecified to the reader) promise from Alera, presumably related to Tavi (I assume to train him.) Alera seems to be some sort of ability-magnifier? It's not clear � to me � that other than manifesting Alera has an actual abilities. But then that may be because she won't act directly against the vord, or perhaps because she was uniquely created by Gaius Primus when he built some mosaic in the palace.


Andrea wrote: "One thing I found odd is that people's furies travel with them. I mean Rill came from a specific river but no matter where Isana is she can call on him. ..."

Both Issana and Bernard make reference in early books to Calderon being the their home turf and Rill in particular being more powerful there, but apparently not by much.

In (book #4?) Issana does some ocean diving/crafting and seems to increase her powers (though she doesn't use them significantly in book 6). (How does sea water crafting work anyway. Salt spray disrupts wind furies, but apparently not the watercrafters.) But she's nowhere near the Rillwater.

If we were in the world of The Bear and the Nightingale, the Fire furies would be the family/steadholt's hearth or forge. Admittedly more transient than the apparent lifetime of a fury,

G33z3r wrote: "Apparently it's also possible to bind new ferral furies (as Lord Acquitaine is seen (apparently) doing in the battle for Riva) and to transfer a fury (as one steadholder did for his son (in book 2, I think.) "

Maybe minor furies can be bound and released with barely a thought, while you have to work with the big ones. So that perhaps explains being able to manipulate the ambient furies, and the more powerful you are, the more powerful a fury has to be before you really have to work to claim it as your own. I actually thought Aquitaine doing that big battle with his own furies just for show to be quite amusing.

G33z3r wrote: "How does sea water crafting work anyway. Salt spray disrupts wind furies, but apparently not the watercrafters."

Each fury type is thwarted by something else...so you need to keep earthcrafters from being in contact with the ground, salt disrupts wind...was it fire that blocked Isana when she was captured by that evil Steadholder in an early book? Think she was in a circle of fire than the Steadholder's son then left a gap in through which she could start pulling water.

While Tavi was bringing down the gate, he pulled fire just from ambient heat, so guess it doesn't need a literal flame source.

And yep, retaking Riva is pretty much where I am now.

Andrea wrote: "Each fury type is thwarted by something else...so you need to keep earthcrafters from being in contact with the ground, salt disrupts wind...was it fire that blocked Isana when she was captured by that evil Steadholder in an early book? ..."

yeah, they put Isana in a circle of fire, though I thought the idea was just to keep her hot and overheated, dehydrated. After all, a circle isn't a sphere; what about calling water from below?

Note that when Amara is captured (with, apparently, Fidelias) in the chapters 1&2 of book 1, she's buried up to her neck, and says, "Dirt. Earth to counter air. Cirrus can’t hear me." (Fidelias appears to be suspended off the ground to prevent Earthcrafting, though it's a sham as Amara eventually figures out.)

Later, in chapter 8, Tavi uses Salt to rescue Amara from feral windmanes, but there's no particular discussion of why salt affects them that way (or whether salt would affect other furies.)

You're right that salt only seems used on the Wind furies.

(BTW, while reviewing that section, I noted Fidelias's fury is named Vamma. Also, Vamma is not affected by salt � Fidelias even sends Vamma to collect salt from the nearby ground.).

In book 5 where all the citizens were imprisoned by the Vord they had they different types of cages to deny them their furycraft, don't have it with me to double check what they all were, but presumably against every element there's some way of blocking it. Must be an interesting cage for the powerful crafters that control many fury types (like needing that tower where Varg was kept to hold a Lord)

In my next chunk of reading - Vord attacks Calderon walls and everything goes more or less as planned (took me a bit to figure out what kind of sneak attack one could do with a bunch of "mules"). The mountain gets pissed and dumps some rocks on those who would dare come too close. Tavi finds out he's a father, and I stopped just as the taken earthcrafters are sneaking under the ground to the command tent.

I know you already know, but I find it hard to believe that Ehren is actually dead...if yes, I'll give Butcher credit for describing a death scene from the POV of the character himself and not from someone watching the event, since you only find out later, from some unrelated conversation, what actually happened. Makes it hard to believe it happened. Especially since the other characters weren't close to him, so it was more a "well that's too bad, kinda liked the guy" rather than how Tavi might react. You'd expect more of a scene when dealing with a character whose POV you are provided.

In fact POV characters tend not to die in books structured this way...even in ASoIaF where half the cast dies, the POV's tend to be given to characters that survive...or at least reanimate after they die...

Andrea wrote: "I'll give Butcher credit for describing a death scene from the POV of the character himself and not from someone watching the event...
In fact POV characters tend not to die in books structured this way..."

I recall a book by Seanan McGuire (I won't say which to avoid spoiling it) in which the 1st person PoV narrator of the entire book was killed at the end. That was a surprise.

Andrea wrote: "In book 5 where all the citizens were imprisoned by the Vord they had they different types of cages to deny them their furycraft, don't have it with me to double check what they all were, but presumably against every element there's some way of blocking it...."

The majority of them were imprisoned in the various different cages required to hold strongly gifted furycrafters. Firecrafters were those imprisoned beneath the steady rain-shower trickle of water that poured down from pipes overhead. Earthcrafters were being held in cages suspended several feet from the ground. The windcrafters, as Amara well knew, would be inside the low brick cubes of solid stone, with no access to air but for what could come in through a few holes no larger across than Amara's thumb. A metal cage sufficed for woodcrafters, though they were placed far opposite the courtyard from the heavy wooden beams that restrained the metalcrafters inside.
Most interesting were the cages that had to take multiple layers of precautions to contain their prisoners � doubtless the captured Citizenry. One metal cage that swung high off the ground and was simultaneously drizzled with water and fine black dirt caught Amara's eye, particularly. The cage held a number of damp, mud-spattered figures, only two of them armored men captured during the battle. The other four were women, probably taken when the Vord overran their homes to the south. All of them � and most of the prisoners Amara could see, for that matter � lay in the loose-limbed stupor of the aphrodin addict.

Being a firecrafter is clearly the most miserable being wet all the time. Watercrafters were left out. But seems if metal / wood cancel each other out, water / fire do the same. Hmm, and earth / air (not as directly but stone keeps the air out, while air between you and the earth blocks that too)

I'm up to the chapter where we go through all the POV characters and each section ends with "soon". Seemed the right kind of place to stop before "soon" becomes "now".

Alerans riding Canim :) They could probably manage just by holding hands but the Canes move faster so have to ride. At least it's less humiliating for the Cane than being pulled along in wagons by Alerans. And amusing imagery for anyone seeing them pass by.

Ah, and we got a couple more Marat tribes fighting. Still waiting for the Ice Men to get involved by I guess that's not going to happen unless they come up from behind Tavi's group. They could have easily been edited out of the story entirely really.

Almost finished, Tavi is in flight towards Garados with the Queen in pursuit. I decided I didn't want to cram the end of this long 6 book series while fighting to stay away. I put enough effort into it that I should try to enjoy the ending a bit.

Looks like they won't be coming to terms with the Queen...though I suppose it could happen with just a couple pages required. And not sure what's going to happen to vord infested Canea...I mean those queens could pop over and try again at any time, maybe that will be covered by the epilogue. At least I know what happened to Ehren now :)

Andrea wrote: "I'm up to the chapter where we go through all the POV characters and each section ends with "soon". Seemed the right kind of place to stop before "soon" becomes "now"..."

I made the same judgement when I reached that chapter. Seemed like we were about to start the Big Finish, so I set it down for when I could read the rest in a sitting.

Yep, read it in one sitting.

Bit disappointed the Ice Men weren't involved, but then you can't come down from the north in Calderon what with Garados up there (I got quite the image of what his manifestation must have looked like, would have been interesting to watch that from the walls where Ehren and Bernard were)...how did Kitai calm him down? She couldn't bind him fully right? So she "froze" him like the queen did? But does that means there's a mountain sized man stuck to the side of the mountain from now till forever? What happens when she dies? Is he freed to take vengeance?

Interesting Butcher decides to not deal with the Vord on Canea, left up to the imagination of the reader to figure out what the future of Alera will be like. But it's pretty much the end of Tavi's tale, will be someone else's problem.

Wonder if a half Aleran half Marat child can bond with both furies and an animal?

Overall, after a slow start with the first two books, it was a fun ride and I enjoyed the mix of Roman Legions and Pokemon :)

Andrea wrote: "I'm interested to see where he's going with the humanization of the Vord Queen...."

In the end, Butcher didn't do anything with this except use it for a reason the Queen didn't make more Queens, an important plot point to create the single point of failure of the Vord, but not really capitalizing on the "Vord Queen goes native" idea.


Andrea wrote: "I'm hoping for a "battle of the five armies" type thing by the end, with the Alerans, Marat, Canim and Ice Men all fighting together against the Vord. ..."

You got most of what you were expecting, but then the general shape of the ending seemed shaped by general fantasy formula: enemy defeated in heroic struggle, survivors learn to live in peace under Octavian the Great & Wise Unifier. :)


Andrea wrote: "I find it hard to believe that Ehren is actually dead. ...
In fact POV characters tend not to die in books structured this way..."

I was a little disappointed in all the authorial armor given the main characters. No noticeable sacrifice needed. Not that I have anything against Ehren... :)



Andrea wrote: " (I got quite the image of what his manifestation must have looked like, would have been interesting to watch that from the walls where Ehren and Bernard were)..."

I was thinking Disney's "Night on Bald Mountain" chapter of Fantasia.

G33z3r wrote: "I was thinking Disney's "Night on Bald Mountain" chapter of Fantasia. "

That's a pretty good one, what with all those dancing devils as the windmanes.