This morning I finished the fifth and latest installment in Butcher’s Codex Alera series, Princeps’ Fury. I have been a fan of them since picking them up from the library earlier this year. I now own 1 to 4 in paperback, all ready for me to read through again.
Back to Princeps’ Fury: it was both excellent and fairly surprising — in a good way. (I’ll keep it general until I give you the spoiler warning.) The characterization, plot, and pacing were all as excellent as in any other installment of the series — the events involving the secondary characters were treated with the same gravity, care, and patience as the events around the protagonist, Tavi, which is something that deterred me from the first book (I love me my hooking protagonists) but ultimately drew me back in and made me appreciate the world anew in the successive books. In a lot of epic fantasy (I mean it, here, to refer to fantasy series where events happen on a large, world-wide scale), I tend to get pulled toward the main plot involving the protagonist because it’s simply the most interesting and exciting, ultimately making all secondary plots/characters annoying and more bland by contrast. (Robert Jordan & Terry Goodkind do this quite a lot.) Butcher doesn’t do that. He gives us enough reason to care and root for the secondary cast as he gives us reason to root for Tavi, but without diminishing Tavi’s importance. The secondary characters and plots are simply different, but commutatively crucial to the overarching plot of the series.
Now for the potential spoilers. You’re warned.
I adore Tavi. The terrific characterization given him (and his band of merry cohorts) is so excellent and so consistent. Except for Max perhaps being a little too annoying, I enjoyed his plot the best. The interplay between he and the Canim was excellently portrayed, and I especially loved the “Tavar” name given him by Varg. Kitai shined, as usual, but expressed an interesting gravity of emotion that was not so “feminine” as demonstrating a maturation of her and Tavi’s relationship that really moves toward deep, devotional, permanent love, and I liked that a lot; it was done organically. In other plots: Isana’s was so exciting, hilariously surprising and yet typical, and very emotionally moving. I loved the revelations about Septimus and their past that Isana, naive as she is and has always been, learns along with us. I love that we’re not learning what she’s always known in that regard; it would change her character if she had been aware all along of what Antillus Raucus and Aquitanus Attis have been. I enjoyed that a lot. That, and her juris macto challenge had me gasping with shock, awe, and glee. I enjoy that the resulting fight was completely in character for her, too, with the defensive movements and the desire to talk, emotionally, with Raucus; she’s not Araris, nor Tavi, and through her I can see how Butcher is really working to demonstrate Tavi’s difference from Gaius Sextus in terms of sheer upbringing and raw personality. The Septimus/Sextus divide is interesting enough, but I don’t know Septimus — neither does Tavi. I don’t care much about how great he was (so I’m glad Butcher kept it relatively toned down), I only care about how what people think and thought of him are reflected in their current actions, beliefs, and motivations (like with Aquitaine; the scene with Amara/Isana at the end was perfect).
Fidelias as usual was entertaining but not nearly as much as in previous books; what little we saw from his perspective this book seemed to built toward the (inevitable?) revelation of his identity to Tavi. I naturally hated him at first but once I (finally, ugh) got to understanding his type of hatred of Gaius and his subsequent motivation, I like him a lot. I think that’s the point, though.
Amara and Bernard’s plot was much more interesting in this book, consistently, than in the last; the slog through the swamp could only captivate me for so long, regardless of the (awesome!?) Gaius Sextus’s involvment in it. Amara’s deception with Brencis was excellent and surprising, but not nearly as surprising as where Invidia’s plot has taken her — with the Vord queen?! So interesting, the layers built into that “relationship.” Bernard, cute as always… aw, Bernard. Sure and steady in a way that annoys me in other characters in the genre, though not here. I actually do not really like Amara as a character. I think she agonizes a little much over things — thank goodness it was less in this book than the last two; I was getting tired of it — and I am trying to figure out why I don’t particularly like her. It’s weird. I love Kitai. I love Isana — not quite as much as Kitai, who from the first line of her dialogue I knew she would be important, surprising, and engaging — but Amara has never effectively held my interest. Maybe it was my experience in Furies of Calderon with her, her interaction with Tavi and the others… I put my support firmly behind Tavi from the start and her (quick, infrequent) remarks against him must have hit home? I don’t know why I don’t like her. But even though I don’t like her, her plot was interesting and I do love Bernard. So. I suppose I’m really quickly judgmental about characters? Maybe I don’t like her hot, ridiculous hatred streaks? (Fidelias, Gaius Sextus?) Oh, well, I liked her better in this book and that’s good, I guess.
And then Gaius. He’s been a fascinating character from the start — the hard-edged First Lord whose complexity makes him terrifically fascinating. He’s not nice. He’s not bad. He’s perfectly, reasonably, understandably gray; he does bad things for good reasons, he does good things for layered, deceptive reasons. The quintessential politician and perfect person whom Tavi should both emulate and avoid becoming at the same time. Amara, Aquitaine, Isana, and Antillus (and others) are all justified in their different, complex hatred of him, all for different reasons and with different corresponding reactions. They all ostensibly hate him but none acts on that hate in the same way or with the same ends. His end was brilliant but bittersweet in a way that could only have come across because of the build up to it through the series. He had to go out in a terrific way; the little (almost after the fact) addition that he’d been slowly poisioned by his second wife was relatively unnecessary, to me, but helped explain some things… possibly. I would have accepted pneumonia and gone with it willingly, though. Not every important death (few though they are) in his series needs be motivated by greed, anger, revenge, ambition, hatred, disgust, or jealousy, right? I liked Ehren’s point of view with Gaius; it would be strange to see Gaius’s point of view and I’m glad I never saw it.
It all leaves me excited for the next installment. First Lord’s Fury, perhaps? One wonders what its title will be. And is it the last book in the series? I don’t read enough forum/website information for me to know (some fan I am!) and I’m curious. But I’m not usually an avid website-checking fan, anyway; I have too much to work on with my own material to be much devoted to anything but the books I read themselves, I guess.
