Fuck you, Ender's Game is wonderful.

 

I would rank the books from worst to best as: Acedem's, Calderon, more or less a tie between Princep's and First Lords, Cursor's, and by far Captain's fury.

 

Mine:

Cursor's
Academ's
Captain's
Princeps'
First Lord's
Calderon

 

Mine list is essentially the same as Taure, 'cept Academ's would tie with First Lord's.

 

My list is the same as this.

 

Did anyone else find it anyone how Butcher tried to make it a happy ending when it really isn't? Reminds me of those movies that end in a sunset but the viewer realizes everyone is dead, and they can't rebuild.

I mean the land is more or less totaled since they scorch earthed it. There are volcanoes in two major cities. Their best seaport is Canim now, the Icewall belongs to the Icepeople. They have vord in all the major cities, almost everyone is dead, their infrastructure is destroyed. And they have an enormous vord enemy across the ocean.

 

Coulda been way fucking worse.

I view the series as a whole, and refuse to rate via individual books. And as a whole, it was excellent.

I do agree with the people who said that we missed out on a lot of potentially satisfying reactions however.

 

Yes the book wasn't bad, but the series as a whole was great, plus it showed Butcher doesn't need 23 books to wrap up a series.

Actually my favorite part of Alera ending is that we'll probably be seeing a new series by Jim next year! (If anyone knows otherwise please tell me before my hopes get to high.)

 

I haven't seen anything to indicate a new series is on the horizon.

However, worst case scenario is 2 Dresden Files books a year, which simply can't be a bad thing.

 

I believe Butcher has a sci fi series in mind. I can't remember many details of it, but it did seem to be planned out a bit.

 

The only thing I really wish we had seen more of was Octavian's unique uses of furycraft; I mean, the only thing that counts in First Lord's Fury as something akin to that were his using the "gentler" crafts of water and wood to destroy Riva's gates and him making a tornado around his sword instead of making it burn. After the end of Captain's Fury, where we saw him pretty much combine internal water and metal crafting so that he could pretty much know what his opponent was going to do next.. I expected so much more. When it didn't happen in Princep's, I just assumed it'd have to wait until Tavi was able to make furies manifest themselves..

Ah, that was also another huge disappointment for me: we never got to see Tavi get his own personal Furies. I had looked forward to that ever since the end of Cursor's Fury, and for it to not happen even by the end of the series.. it sucked.

In the end, I still absolutely love the series as a whole, but here's hoping we'll get to see some short stories to help answer our remaining questions.

 

Ugh. No Epic moments. The romance felt off. And the climax was disappointing. The quality of writing also seemed to go down - 200 pages in, I started getting annoyed by his style.

Ah well. At least there was closure.

 

I was also disappointed in the manifested metal fury. I suppose its not Butcher's fault but being the only fury left that we hadn't seen manifest, Metal Mario was a let down for me.

 

I remember in an interview he mentioned a couple series he wanted to write, (Warning, paraphrasing ahead) one he compared to LOTR but on much more epic scale. Another was a sci-fi reminiscent of X Files, in which criminal aliens used earth as a sort of hideout as it is on the fringes of the universe. The main character was supposed to be an agent or something that brings them in.

I think there was another, but I forget what it was about.

 

Just finished reading, and although the last book seemed kind of lame compared to the rest, the series as a whole was awesome, filled with the kind of backstabbing Lords that I like.

Now I'm off to reread the Dresden files to get ready to the next book.

 

I have a theory that First Lord doesn't stack up because everything is focused on repelling the Vord threat and whenever the view point was anyone in Riva or Calderon, it was focused on their fights with the Vord and how they were falling back until they hit Garrison. Butcher spent 2 books (Princeps and First Lord) basically writing about how all the Alerans could do was fall back to the next city or whatever, wait for the Vord horde to strike at them, lose, and then fall back again.

Add to that the fact that throughout the book until like the last 100 pages or so, Tavi's parts are filled with him just traveling. Sure he comes up with a great idea about how to get across the continent really quick, but that's really the only thing that he comes up with that really used his smarts, when during Cursor and Captain you had something resembling one ah ha! moment every time we had his viewpoint.

The Bernard and Amara parts aren't as bad in this book because they are at their home that they had just spent 5 years preparing for the inevitable last stand. And really there wasn't anything too special about their plans; dig up coal and oil set fire too it at the most opportune time to destroy as much as we could and give us time to fall back to the more fortified second wall, hold the second wall while our mules pound the Vord with a tactic devised by Tavi, and finally just hold out until Tavi or anyone can kill the Vord Queen. I see nothing wrong with them taking five years and coming up with that plan. But Amara using the High Lords and Lady to draw out the Queen and Invidia in that failed attack and the High Lords and Lady not seeing it for what it was, just shake my head at it. No reason that they shouldn't have at least saw that Invidia would betray them and that Amara would use the moment of betrayal to kill her.

Too much time was spent on the fight with the Vord and not enough on the interactions afterwards, all we got was a brief summary about what happened since, hope for the immediate future, and then a chance at a future story about the Cane Vord Queen down the line. I mean exactly how long had it been since Tavi saw Isana and more specifically his uncle? I think you could count on one hand the amount of times Tavi and Bernard had interactions after the first book. Too much big epic battles back to back, and not enough character interactions.

I'll say this as a whole though, I really want to see this series as a movie and frankly kind of surprised that no movie studio hasn't jumped on the rights (though I may be wrong). Great potential as it's a mixture of Gladiator and Lord of the Rings. Though I guess it could be hard work trying to adapt the books to movie format, but it's been done before.

 

Woah, while I didn't read your whole post, I did see the mention of this as a movie.

And quite frankly, that is an excellent idea. An amazingly excellent idea. There is nothing about huge powers or anything, special effects wouldn't have to be too over the top, but just the whole focus on intelligence as being part of the movie would make this an excellent plot.

Do want to see that.

 

I think a movie of Calderon could work really well. There's romance with Amara and Bernard, an interesting villain in Fidelias, Tavi as a quickwitted but comparatively weak protagonist...also, I would love to see who would get cast as Doroga.

 

Edit: I'm a hypocrite.

 

"What is this crap with him screwing a barbarian girl? Hook him up with that spy chick, that's got more zazz. Now turn the Emperor evil and have the main character defeat him. Cut out all that nonsense about dog-people and ice-people. And give him those superpowers from the start, people don't like pussies for heroes."

I'd rather keep Codex Alera far, far, far away from Hollywood.