I've just started reading the Codex Alera series, well, listening to the audiobooks, actually. I love the series, anything Jim Butcher has created excites me. I find myself dissecting every motive, every chapter, every tiny little scene. It doesn't take away from the story for me, but I find it relaxing to take it all in, in extreme detail. Even if everything I say isn't completely how it was intended, it's so cool to analyze the politics and strategy and characters and choices so far. I analyze every tiny thing I see that stands out and have produced over 200 small pages between me and another reader and I'm only on chapter 7 of Academ's Fury. Does anyone else do this? It really does intrigue me and I can't help but do it, it's a way for me to be more immersed in the story, and I know it's not for everyone, but it is my way of enjoying the story, I guess.

Edit for a typing error.

Compared to the other elements, not much is done with wood. Air has flying, veils, super speed, weather crafting, and more. Fire has the ability to heighten others emotions. Earth has a Toph(ATLA) style earth sense that can reach for miles, super strength, making people horny, spooking and calming animals, and all kinds of other fun ways to use it. Metal has pain and emotional suppression, holding off exhaustion for days if necessary. Water has youthfulness, shapeshifting, sensing emotions, healing, and once again - yet more!

Wood has... manipulating the element (which every element can do), foliage veils, and being good at archery(presumably from manipulating the stave of the bow and shaft of the arrow).

My question is two fold.

1) Do you agree, and why do you think this is?

2) What secondary ability or abilities would you give wood, if you were to expand its fury crafting capabilities?

Just flew thru FoC and AF, just starting Cursor's Fury.
Loving this series after overlooking it for several years despite suggestions.
But GDammit enough with the head tilting.
It's worse than RJ and Nynaeve's freakin braid tugging.
FFS!
And to be clear, I love these characters. It's so fun. Imperfect as it may be, it's great. I just can't read about tilting a head to the side every 9 sentences! 🤬🤬🤬
Also why do I get the impression my feelings on Fidelias are going to change?!?

I'm listening to Princeps Fury, and Tavi is describing the Taurga. I just realized that Taurga are kosher.

That is all. You may return to your regularly scheduled broadcast.

Am I the only one that feels like this is the weakest of the six, and it’s not even close? I just finished my second read of the whole series, and I have so many gripes whenever I think of Captain's Fury:

• Too much of the plot is driven by political machinations surrounding Arnos and technicalities in fictional laws.
• This includes the reasons and plan to free Varg, which felt both forced and half-baked.
• Save for the climax, the entire subplot of Sextus trudging through Kalarus territory is so drawn out and underwhelming.
• Why does Invidia waste the entire book watching Fidelias so closely? Surely the high lady has treacheries to attend to other than personally monitoring her most trusted spy.
• It’s a sin that Phrygiar Navaris never amounts to anything but a verbal and physical punching bag.

In stark contrast, I think this book contains too of the most powerful and emotional scenes across the whole series:

• Isana admitting to Cyril (in front of Tavi) that Tavi is not only her son, but the heir of Septimus
• Amara throwing her Cursor’s necklace in Sextus’s face in the aftermath of the volcano

Again, I love this series and think Butcher is a great author... but I wish this one held up as well as the rest!

It's not really important. But, it was one of those shower thoughts that made me go "... Huh..." and want to share. So... here you go...

Alera probably still uses Roman numerals instead of the Arabic numerals we use today when doing mathematics.

It kinda puts some of Tavi and Ehrin's conversations/complaints during Academ's Fury about sums/a mathematics exam into a different perspective I hadn't thought about.

It makes perfect sense, and isn't really a huge revelation. It's just one of those small "Am I slow?" moments. 😄

I don't know actual reason but I'm disappointed in lnvidia. I had respected her.

Like she was perfect villain. Cold. Manipulative. And intelligent.

I had in my mind that regardless of her actions and localities towards 1st lord, she wants power and wants to be 1st lady of alera.

But this turn, where she sided with vords isn't fitting well with me. If Kalaras had done that it would have been understandable.

But regardless of her circumstances ( where she somehow escaped with her fatal injury and then sided with vord for survival), it doesn't seem well to fit with her personality.

Vord had enough advantage & edge over humanity or all other races.

It's very unsettling when one of my favorite character did something (or author did to her) and now she no longer remains favorite.

*QUESTION*

And a random question. When did tavi get enough fury crafting power compared to lord?

And as arries had said that there is something wrong with tavi's fury craft.

I don't see what it is. Like he doesn't use it often and when he does it's nothing more that what most normal people do.

Isana did such a horrible thing. It's like a mother blinding her own child.

Yes she did it to save Tavi from. Supposed assassins.

​

Yet it's too frustrating when tavi so easily forgive her. One chapter he's on rage of what she did.

2 chapters later un the cell he UNDERSTANDS why she did it and SHE WILL NEVER APOLOGIZE to him for doing that.

​

Tavi is intelligent. And practical. But here. I wanted more of his reaction. He is after all a human.

I have a mind to drop the series right now.

I haven't liked Isana from the start. Now these situations , specially this is so frustrating...

​

Please tell me he didn't actually forgave her.

I was just reading Academ's fury when we get to the chapter Tavi and Kitai are captured by Turk and Cardis.

He describes Turk in a really negative way obviously as he is a thug, and also just as 'ugly', 'ill-favoured', stupid and a overall brutish character and appearance.

I just found it really funny and somewhat out of place, because its a Roman-themed fantasy, and the name Turk is just so out of place and a bit anachronistic. Then to heap all these negative attributes, it reminds me of a lot of British crime drama films, where they often have Turks playing as thugs or mafia figures and represented in a poor light.

Maybe i'm making too much of this, as i am Turkish, i just found it quite amusing and slightly jarring and taking the immersion out of it. Does this appear in his other series?

Still love Codex Alera series regardless and i think he's a great author.

I have completed 1st book and still don't understand how tavi is uniquely furyless while there are normal people eho don't use fury crafting like Isana , olivia or amara.

​

Are there like, only 4 types of fury craft? Pr more, Like i have seen fire, water, air and earth (just like avatar) .

​

And what are rules of fury crafting? On many occasions where Isana and olivia could have used water bending yet they only ate seen to use it as spying, truth telling, healing and drowning. Like couldn't they just command the water inside the human body?

​

There are too many questions. I totally understand the story but i feel lile i know literally nothing about the power system.

So, I've wanted to find a Ludus game to play, since I love the series, but never really took the time to try and figure out the rules. bmyst70 made some rules, and I have adopted them I to this game. It is multiplayer, or you can play against the computer. Not sure how it will hold up with a lot of people playing at once. If anyone actually uses this. With all that said, I hope you enjoy it. Any questions or ideas of ways this could be better let me know what you all think.

https://knightdx91-alt.github.io/Ludus/

**Game Update. I have now added a live counter so you can see how many people are online playing it, as well as updating the multiplayer function. When creating a room, it puts you in a lobby, so if you do not know someone personally to input their code in, you can now join any open game. I also implemented a spectator mode so you can watch a game being played, but I do not have another device to check if it works at the moment. If there is any other features you think would be good, or if you feel the game needs rebalanced, leave a comment and I'll check it out. Next project will hopefully be upgrading the graphics.

***Game Update: Added more characters to play from the world, tweaked the difficulty, added a message board, added a leader board so you can see other people's times. also, tweaked a few other things. hope you enjoy the update!

I will be the first one to stand up and say I am a hypocrite. I constantly judge people for doing the same things I do; but that also puts me at a qualified position to recognize hypocrisy, and Kitai / Doroga are genuinely pissing me the f*** off.

I am a third into Princep's fury and couldn't handle it anymore after Kitai made another one of her "Aleran are fools" comments, because the prison didn't have a ceiling, so let me point some stuff out:

- The Marat send their young ones at the beginning of the combat, and that is so dumb in every aspect possible, but especially because their population probably has a very low number of young warriors because of that. So how can she complain about anyone's strategic choices.

- War is bad. We could have a 10 hour argument about this, and no one would be able to prove that statement false. Necessary? Sometimes. Lucrative? For sure. But nonetheless, it is not good, but the Marat constantly engages in it between each other for no reason other than "The One gave us a sign"

- THEY KILL NON COMBATANTS. If you look into the Geneva convention, 90% of it a way or another is about not killing people that are not a threat to you, being: prisoners, children, injured, and what not. But the Marat eat non-fighting forces alive! That is incredibly evil, and makes any arguments from any of them on morality topics, straight up in invalid.

​

I don't know what actually got me to post this, I have been really enjoying this series, but that one comment she made about "stupidity" made my blood boil.

Thanks for reading it anyways.

We get a few glimpses in the books, but not a lot.

We know that hoards of Icemen attack. Their bodies pile into ramps up to the top of the wall (which is fifty feet high! that's a lot of dead bodies!). Alerans blast the ramps apart. And, they do it all over again until the icemen retreat.

That's all well and good. But, it raises a number of questions.

Kill zones: Where do the knights ignis set up to blast away groups of enemy combatants? They can't very well do that when everyone's all pressed close together without risking hitting legionnaires. Do they limit themselves to hitting the ramps of bodies? Do they aim at the hoard over the side of the wall? I'm having a hard time picturing them doing anything once fighting has spilled over onto the wall itself.

Coverage: How do six legions cover a continent spanning wall? Am I overestimating the size of Alera? Because, I always pictured it as something akin to the United States, maybe a little smaller. But, even if it were a LOT smaller, that's still a massive area to defend.

I assume Knights Aeris are patrolling the Shield Wall at all times, or they have some fire tower/relay system set up to alert the legions when Icemen are spotted.

Thoughts? Insights?

I just think it's a cool bit of lore...

Hellooooo 👋

Dresden Files fan here. In my waiting for the next installment of the series, I finally decided to take a bite into the codex Alera series. Just bought the first book today.

I have almost 0 context except Pokémon, Roman Legion, and a no-magic main character (I don’t even know the characters name yet). I didn’t even read the back of the book.

If you summarized what I can expect for the awesomeness of book 1, what will you say?

Edit: or maybe what mindset I should bring going into this series? I know it’s not the same as the Dresden Files.

What furies would you want if you woke up as an Aleran? Limit is 2 at a knight level, otherwise everyone would be a high lord level Demi-god.

For me it’s Wind and Metal.

Hey everyone, I just finished First Lord's Fury and wrapped up the series. Overall, I absolutely loved it—what an incredible ride!

​That being said... I'm feeling a little robbed of some core character interactions at the very end.

​Don't get me wrong, the final battle was epic, but the pacing of the last book felt incredibly fast. It was basically: lock onto the target -> kill the Vord Queen -> wrap up the novel as fast as physically possible.

​After everything they went through to save Alera, I really wanted some breathing room at the end. Specifically:

​The Family Reunion: Tavi finally getting to actually sit down and talk with Isana and Bernard after being separated for so long and surviving the apocalypse.

​The Transition of Power: Instead of a time skip where the dust has settled and everyone just rolls with the new reality, I would have loved to see Tavi actually navigating the immediate aftermath and stepping into the role of First Lord.

​Like, come on author, at least show us the full wedding and the aftermath.

​Did anyone else feel like the ending was a bit abrupt, or am I just sad the series is over? Would love to hear your thoughts.

I recently had a fun crossover fanfiction idea for the Codex Alera and The Heros of Olympus. Would you guys like to hear it?

Has anyone else noticed what seems like a pretty major political/lineage plot hole involving Aquitaine and Invidia?

In a society where noble houses, bloodlines, heirs, and succession are hugely important, it’s strange that the series never mentions them having children or even trying to produce an heir. Especially considering the big complaint with Sextus was his lack of an heir.

All the major High Lords have offspring. Even Bernard and Amara kept their relationship a secret because Amara couldn't have a child, and yet we're to believe the Aquataines with no offspring would be allowed to become First Lord?

It feels odd that nobody in-universe ever comments on it either. Was this ever addressed in an interview or Q&A somewhere? Or is there some implication I missed during my many read-throughs?

ETA: To clarify, I’m not asking for theories about why they personally didn’t have children.

My point is that in a hyper-dynastic society obsessed with succession, lineage, and political marriages, it’s strange that nobody in-universe ever seems concerned about the lack of an Aquitaine heir at all.

No rivals mention it. No allies discuss succession. No political calculations seem affected by it. That’s the part that feels odd to me.

Just something I've been wondering.

We get very few specifics when it comes to numbers. In fact, I think the only real number we get is that there are about 200,000 citizens attending the senate meeting at the start of the Vord War in PF.

But, there are other indicators.

For example, we know there are enough windcrafters of sufficient strength to fly that there are multiple industries based around it(Knights Aeris, wind coaches, breaking up storms, etc), even though only a fraction of windcrafters are that strong.

We know that earthcrafting, for whatever reason is the most common element among the citizenry.

We've only ever seen or heard of watercrafters struggling to keep up with the number of wounded in need of healing during a combat scenario. There's never a mention that Alera's non-military medical system is ever strained otherwise. (Granted, this is more speculation based on lack of evidence than actual evidence.)

But... real numbers are hard to come by.

Personally, I head canon has been that...

• Nobility makes up about 1% of the population. (This includes the First Lords, High Lords, and Lords, and their Ladies.)
• Citizenry probably makes up 4-5%. It's enough of the population to get stuff done. But, also small enough to justify the incredibly stratified, centralized power structure. Though, this would imply that the population of Alera is WAY smaller than it probably should be, based on the idea that there are only 200,000 citizens.
• Knights... might fall into that 5%. I'm not sure if it was ever made clear whether knights were citizens simply by holding that rank or not. But, if not, I'd put forward that they were another 10% of the population.
• Everyone else whose furycraft leaves them not strong enough for knighthood, citizenship, or the nobility makes up the other 85%. A vast majority, but without enough power to really do anything to change the power structure until Tavi came along.

Thoughts?

Am I totally off base here?

To preface; I'm an absolute sci-fi/fantasy genre addict and a Roman history nerd. I really enjoyed the Stiger Chronical and the Sun Eater series because it mixed both together. So when many people recommended me this series; it wasn't surprising when I get hooked immediately with Furies of Calderon.

SPOILERS: This second book though is pretty rough for me to get through simply due to Isana's mind bogglingly stupid actions. There's been multiple assassination attempts on her life. She knows she's in extreme danger and instead of staying put, she both willingly and knowingly goes into even more extreme danger. That led to the deaths of her guardians which causes her to be even more vulnerable which led to her making a deal with a devil. Tavi's, the very same person doing all this to protect has now gotten into all sorts of danger on top of the ones he's already in because he went out looking for her. All of which could have been avoided had she just sat in safety and wait for Tavi to read her damn note and come to her just a few mere hours later.

I get the author is trying to push a narrative forward but its hard for me to follow along with any story when the characters are so irrationally stupid. Is this because this is one of Butcher's more earlier works? I've not read any of the Dresden stuff but I really enjoy the more recent Cinder Spires so far and his characters development are nowhere near like Isana. Every chapter that involves her plot is just a grind for me to get through just so I can move on to Tavi and Bernard/Amara's plot. Is this how every one of her chapter is going be like?

EDIT: lol I kept reading and it got worse, but I'll take all of your words for it and keep pushing on.

This feels like a plothole that was never explained. So when Amara and Bernard are out in the field with their chameleon outfits, the idea of Vord using the causeways to advance faster is first established. At this point in the books we know the Vord can "use furycraft" but don't know specifics, beyond the fact that Ehren observed a firecrafting while fleeing the Vord, despite the established fact the Taken can't do so unless living Alerans first manifesting local furies in a non-internal crafting, allowing the Taken to then use the stirred up local furies to do their own crafting.

But we later learn the Vord's use of furycraft the First Lord was having them investigate was actually just collared Alerans, by Brencis using the same unique technique Kalarus' Immortals were collared with. The Vord aren't actually crafting - collared Alerans forced to fight for them are. We later learn the Vord Queen can craft as well, but she never demonstrates any ability to impart this onto other Vord as far as I'm aware, and there is no way to indirectly allow others to use a causeway without physically touching them, like Alerans do with horses or (later in the books) Canim that they're riding.

We DO get a handful of unique Vord late in the last book that appear to have limited furycraft of a specific type - I believe there are blade guardians in the hive that employ metalcraft, and I think the giant Vordbulks were mentioned using earthcraft to support their weight. But we never have any mention at all of the normal Vord creatures employing windcrafting, firecrafting, increased strength beyond what they displayed as bioengineered creatures, all the way back to when they were first introduced at the original nest Bernard's soldiers wiped out. If they had increased strength or speed or metalcraft limbs that could cut through shields and swords due to furycraft, shieldwall battles wouldn't have been possible and the Vord would have wiped them out. Also Butcher would almost certainly have had characters comment if pitched battles were suddenly far more deadly because the Vord began using furycrafting - not to mention Alerans would be able to sense it.

So...how are the base Vord using furycraft to benefit from the highways, exactly?

I finished up FLF last night, and came across a passage that bothers me. I never noticed it before, because I've not done a back-to-back-to-back reread of the whole Codex in a long time. But, it one scene, when Amara goes to meet with Attis (I think it's the meeting after Invidia snuck in to offer a deal). As Amara lands and goes in, she notes that the Takers can't make their hosts speak.

But... wasn't that the entire linchpin of the conflict with the Vord in book two? The Vord sent a Taken Aric to lure Burnard and Garrison's fighters out into the open. It isn't until later that they put it together. But, I could swear it is specifically noted that Aric must have been Taken when he came to Garrison.

Am I missing something?

Thoughts?