Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the novel....

Captain's Fury by Jim Butcher

The fourth 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.

I'm just starting the book.
I'd have thought Tavi would be a General by now, at least :)

G33z3r wrote: "I'm just starting the book.
I'd have thought Tavi would be a General by now, at least :)"

He starts off slow but then makes some big leaps in the last two books ;) Guess it doesn't count as a spoiler if the books titles give it away LOL

Butcher really doesn't help with reminding readers what happened before. It's only been a month since the last book, and I'm already trying to figure out who the heck is Frederick (he actually wasn't in book 3; had to go back to book 1 to find him the son of the garrant herder from the steadhold.)

Isn't Frederick the Earthcrafter who tends to go to battle with a shovel, originally from Bernard's steadholt? I always end up picturing the shovel guy from Mystery Men movie. I could be wrong of course, I had similar issues keeping track of things when reading the Amber series one per month, though that one was much more complicated to keep track of what was going on, it's very nature (a guy with amnesia trying to figure out the court politics with everyone lying to him) is more complex than Codex Alera. But Alera has a lot more characters to keep track of. I'm only now starting to keep the Lords decently straight now!

Andrea wrote: "Isn't Frederick the Earthcrafter who tends to go to battle with a shovel, originally from Bernard's steadholt? ..."

Yeah, same dude. Well, apparently he's getting married. It was just a quick reference, but it sent me looking for "who...?"

Had you noticed before that Tavi's name (view spoiler)[is embedded in OcTAVIan (hide spoiler)]? Took me awhile to suss that out even after Tavi made an oblique comment on it.

I like the idea that you can practice sword fighting with real blades and cut each other up, then jump in a tub and have the watercrafters fix your wounds.

As before, the Amara/Bernard plot is boring me. A lot of the restrictions smell of plotonium (must get Giaus Sextus incommunicado.) Spoiler for around chapter 20ish: (view spoiler)[So, Giaus's feet hurt, and he can't craft them whole because Kalarus has set special wards to detect Gaius's crafting (new trick!) How come Gaius can't ride Brutus? We know Bernard's Earthcrafting can do that from books 1 and 2. And Bernard isn't shy about using his other crafting tricks.) (hide spoiler)]

I haven't made it to chapter 20 yet (I'm around 15 or so) but there is the scene with Amara and Bernard "enthusiastically" greeting each other in the woods while the First Lord "stretches his legs" nearby. It doesn't bother me when the Marat do it publicly (after all if they don't care why should I), but seems very awkward when those two do it, whether in the presence of the First Lord or an entire Legion...I guess we should be happy Isana and Araris spend so little time together :)

Pretty sure Isana spelled out the Octavian thing at the end of the previous book, although in my head I was thinking Sextus, Septimus...must be Octavius, even though there's a real world Octavian in our history :)

In fact I was quite surprised that (view spoiler)[ Arraris goes ahead and spills the beans to Tavi so early, there are still another two books, guess battling the Vord will take up one of them. And that Tavi even had some suspicions, partly because of his name...which should probably have been a big red flag to anyone of more importance? I mean if country bumpkin Tavi sorta figured it out, what stopped Aquitaine from making such a name connection (at least before now)? The First Lord figured it at the end of the first book, and Fidelias at the end of the third. (hide spoiler)]

G33z3r wrote: "As before, the Amara/Bernard plot is boring me. A lot of the restrictions smell of plotonium (must get Giaus Sextus incommunicado.) Spoiler for around chapter 20ish: "

I was wondering the same thing, why couldn't (view spoiler)[ Cirrus carry him, I actually thought that's what they would do after all the Knights Aeris are constantly flying everyone around (hide spoiler)]

Andrea wrote: "I haven't made it to chapter 20 yet (I'm around 15 or so) but there is the scene with Amara and Bernard "enthusiastically" greeting each other in the woods while the First Lord "stretches his legs"..."

Yeah, there's something strange about the Amara/Bernard sense of appropriate time & place.


Andrea wrote: "Pretty sure Isana spelled out the Octavian thing at the end of the previous book, ..."

If she did explain the little name trick, I missed it.


Andrea wrote: "I was wondering the same thing, why couldn't [ Cirrus carry him, I actually thought that's what they would do after all the Knights Aeris are constantly flying everyone around.."

I think they didn't want Amara (or the original bunch of Knights Aeris) to fly them because Kalarus has a bunch of wind furies watching for any fliers in his demesne. Also, I'm not sure if Amara is supposed to have the strength lift 3, though she has done 2. Though by the end of their little adventure Amara does use Cirrus to float Gaius a bit off the ground (on a litter, like an aircar, I thought) so they can drag him faster.

But the real answer is because the plot requires Gaius to be out of touch for the same amount of time it takes Tavi's Canin adventure to resolve itself. (BTW, how to you think the singular "Cane" is pronounced? "cane", "cahn" or "cahn-ay"?)

G33z3r wrote: "BTW, how to you think the singular "Cane" is pronounced? "cane", "cahn" or "cahn-ay"?"

Well, I can tell you Princeps is pronounced Prinkeps and not Prinseps (courtesy of watching a documentary on ancient Rome recently). I'd guess Cane would be Cahn-ey, but can only find actual latin words Canis and Canes which don't necessarily pronounce the same as Cane

Having read a historical novel taking place in Rome, the author had some notes at the end explaining that "Valerius" would be pronounced "Walerius" and that "Julius" would be "Yulius" but most people these days don't bother and use the English way. I remembered that because the character had both those names and put together is sounded like what parents do when talking to a baby :)

I must say that, on the whole, the series has improved. I went from not really caring about any of the characters to feeling particularly attached to Tavi, Max and Kitai, with the "love story" between Tavi and Kitai being interesting rather than intolerable (unlike with Amara/Bernard or Isana/Araris...not sure what is bugging me about those but it's eye rolling somehow, Butcher's romances in The Dresden Files never really worked for me either, but they were far and few between). Fortunately Amara/Bernard don't take up that many chapters and Isana/Araris nearly not at all.

But the rest of the story I'm finding pretty engaging. On par with the third book, which is better than the first two.

There are still some flaws as noted in earlier books, like throwing in perhaps a few too many awkward challenges/restrictions to make the characters fail (don't want them to be so lucky there's no suspense, but it can become to ridiculously unlucky too), and ignoring available powers e.g. there were two furies capable of carrying Gaius, which (though I didn't get there yet), it seems they ended up using anyway, so why not at the start? The latter is a pet peeve of mine, often comes up with an author supercharges their characters to the point of deus ex machima, and then realize they've done, so they conveniently "forget" they had a power they could use so the situation could be drawn out instead.

Andrea wrote: "I must say that, on the whole, the series has improved. .... Fortunately Amara/Bernard don't take up that many chapters and Isana/Araris nearly not at all...."

I think you hit on the reason for the improvement right there. :)

Ignoring the minor Amara/Bernard/Gaius plot dev ice. this felt like an almost linear story.

I don't think anyone else is reading this so I'll leave off the spoilers since I see that you finished the book already :)

You know, I have to wonder if the First Lord could have just walked up to the Canim army and wiped them out with a flick of his wrist (in fact he could have flown up since there would be no inconvenient furies designed to attack him there). After all he just wiped out an entire human legion that way, and Pompeii'ed an entire region with only slight effort.

I get why he can't just go around turning volcanoes on people that annoy him, but the Canim would have been "acceptable" casualties from an Aleran POV (except Tavi who doesn't much care for massacres, even those of his enemies, in fact he has a way of making enemies into friends). And he even wouldn't need to use volcano power, just his "Fire Sword of Terror" that apparently makes people's heads explode in fear. Or Mastings is a port right, he could just summon a tidal wave. Or just have the earth swallow them up like Bernard did with the dead body. And if he couldn't quite use that much Earth Power, I'm sure if you brought all the Lords together they could have swallowed a couple dozen Canims that way...

Guess that's the problem when you have characters with too much power, you are forced to leave them on the sidelines otherwise your story ends in a couple chapters :) At least there was an ethical conflict there, with Amara's loss of respect for her patron. He made the choice he felt he had to do but it was a repulsive one. It's pretty much the atom bomb in Japan argument, wipe out a bunch of innocents to stop the war, or let the war keep going and a bunch of people still die, maybe even more people.

Hehe, loved the scene where Tavi had to grab an ear and bite Varg on the neck to show dominance. Though if the Canim think the Alerans are violent, what was with that fight between Varg and Nassaug? What a way to greet long lost family...

And that's pretty much where I'm at now, just have to wrap up a Canim war and deal with Arnos :)

Wonder if the Vord will take up both remaining books? Or maybe Vord followed by Aquitaine revolt (or vice-versa)

Andrea wrote: "You know, I have to wonder if the First Lord could have just walked up to the Canim army and wiped them out with a flick of his wrist (in fact he could have flown up since there would be no inconvenient furies designed to attack him there). After all he just wiped out an entire human legion that way, and Pompeii'ed an entire region with only slight effort...."

I think the premise was that the volcano housed a feral super-fury (I forget Gaius's exact term) and all Gaius had to do was let it loose. Part of that is a bit vague: Kalarus had somehow irritated the fury but kept it in check in such a way it would only go off if Kalarus lost – a sort of Doomsday Device. Butcher's vague because he probably doesn't know how it works himself, but also because if he explained the mechanism we'd expect Gaius Sextus to figure out how to disarm it instead of going Dr. Strangelove on it.) At last we get to see Gaius as something other than the kindly, avuncular old man.

But, yeah, the "Fire Sword of Terror" would come in handy in a fight, too. Too bad Gaius couldn't use it to lift the siege of Cereus's Keep last book. I guess the First Lord can't be flying all over the kingdom putting out every little fire. :)

Tavi, on the other hand, has a broad sense of "Aleran," including slaves in open revolt. (Maybe he just wants to kill Sparticus and put the others back to work :)