First Lord's Fury

An insanely good finish to the six-book series. Lots of things explained, loose ends tied up, and nearly nonstop action as everything is about the final battle or preparing for the final battle.

I struggled to “get into” the series as the Romanesque setting wasn’t of great interest to me, but the storyline had so many hints and mysteries that I had to stick around until the final unraveling. I am really glad I stayed. I highly recommend reading the entire series. ( )

I liked the whole series. But, maybe I’ve read too much GRRM, but all the major characters made it through. Still a worthwhile read. ( )

Life, Tavi reflected, seldom makes a gift of what one expects or plans for.

It's darkest before the dawn.

Things have been going badly for the Alerans for a while now. The Vord are here and they're winning, driving the Alerans back time and time again. If only there were a brilliant leader with a known tendency to come up with sideways solutions to impossible problems... Unfortunately, Tavi is stuck on the other end of the world. So what's next.

Structurally, [b:First Lord's Fury|6316821|First Lord's Fury (Codex Alera, #6)|Jim Butcher|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327903582s/6316821.jpg|6502096] really feels more like the second half of [b:Princeps' Fury|2903736|Princeps' Fury (Codex Alera, #5)|Jim Butcher|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1315082776s/2903736.jpg|2930878]. If not for the sheer size such a book would have been, I wouldn't have been surprised had they been a single book originally.

At this point, if you've made it this far, you're going to read this book. And you know they're going to win. But in this case, take the journey before destination[^oath] and see how things get there. There's crazy action, mad plans, traitors and battles galore. It's a solid conclusion to a wonderful series. Well worth reading.

Oh, and my comment about Fidelias? It works. I still don't like him and wouldn't have been terribly sad had he not survived this long. But there's something to be said for redemption...

There are some people who will never understand what loyalty means. They could tell you what it was, of course, but they will never know.They will never see it from the inside. They couldn't imagine a world where something like that was real.

[^oath]: I should re-read Oathbringer again at some point. ( )

This was the last book in the six-book Codex Alera series. This was a really good epic fantasy series, and I’m glad I read it. It was consistently well-written, with characters I cared a lot about, and an interesting story.

I do think I started to experience some “battle fatigue” by this last book. The whole series has quite a lot of action and it’s written well, focusing on the characters so that it stays interesting and doesn’t get repetitive. However, by this book I more or less knew how everything was going to end up and I was just ready to get the last climactic battle over with. It seemed to go on forever. This is probably partly because my work schedule really slowed my reading down, so it seemed to go on forever because it took me (almost) forever to finish the book.

It was still a very good story, and I was mostly happy with how everything wrapped up. I would have preferred though for the main action to end sooner and for there to have been more pages focused on the aftermath. I also rolled my eyes a bit at the end where we see the happily married or soon-to-be-married couples from the series with all their children, babies, and fat bellies. Very cliché. I thought I’d accidentally taken a wrong page turn into the ending of a romance book or something. There’s a decent section toward the end in which we learn about future plans, and that part made me happy, but I would have liked something more substantial. I also would have liked some last moments with some of the other recurring characters we didn’t see again near the end.

As I’ve said in previous reviews, this isn’t the twistiest of stories, but it’s never so predictable as to be boring. It’s good fun with great characters, funny banter, and other occasional humor. It was a satisfying epic fantasy series within a reasonable six-book series size. There’s definitely room for more stories, but I would worry that the next obvious direction the story would take would be too repetitive with what has already been written, so I think I’m glad it ended here. Although I know it’s a very different sort of a series, I’m now more interested in trying the author’s Dresden Files at some point to see if his writing works for me there, too. ( )

The world and character building across this series is pretty darn spiffing. This one seemed a bit disjointed in some of the tactical and battle elements compared to the prior books, but was overall good fun. ( )