Obviously there will be spoilers, cover your eyes & ears while humming a little tune in this thread if you don't want to know them.

Anyway, I ended up downloading the book through B&N's ebook site, which I highly recommend that no one ever use again. Required me to verify my purchase no less than three times, with a credit card number, before I could even read it. (This is after I had completed the purchase). Only upside is that I had the book at 12:15 AM today.

I ended up liking it, but one thing really bugs me. In the end, we hear that there are about 100k Marat warriors ready to fight.

Okay, what? Didn't the Marat get like stomped on in both the first and second books? Hell, even in the second, with the great march against the scourge; there was only like 2k or so total gargant warriors. (Before they set off, not after causalities). Where the hell did Butcher get 100k Marat from?

A nit pick, but a very annoying one.

 

Just finished it. A good book, but not the best in the series. I'll put it at third, behind Cursor's and Captain's Fury.

The biggest problem to me was that no one died. It's the last in the series, the big climax to the entire story, and only bad people and Foss died. Seriously. Foss is the biggest casualty on the good guy side. Sure, Ehren almost kicked the bucket, same with Max and Crassus, but none of them did. Kinda dissapointing, IMO.

And this also blatently leads into another series, which I guess I'm fine with. Butcher made a big show of stating how it'll take a century and a half for the Vord to consolidate power in the Canim territory, and that gives us plenty of time for all Alerans to die and a new cast to be raised in it's place.

Chapter 38 had my favorite moment in it, BTW.

 

Spoiler

Didn't Aquinate die?

 

I'm not spoiler taging anything because spoiler is in the thread title.

Yeah, well he was a villain for the the first four and three quarters books, so I just counted him as a dead villain.

That also really pissed me off, actually. One of the things I was really looking forward to was a showdown between Tavi and Aquatine. I pictured some big, dramatic event where Tavi used his wits and charisma to make Aquatine see that he was the right man for the job, and to gracefully step aside. He'd then probably fall in the final battle.

But no. Instead, we got Ehren assassinating him, using his wife as the weapon. While cool, it still deprived me of one of the scenes I was most looking forward to.

 

We have to remember Jim was getting tired of the series, but yeah, I was also looking forward to that battle.

 

It wasnt bad but its no Captain's Fury, which until Butcher comes out with something better is far and away his best novel in my opinion.

I was disappointed in the lack of Raucus, after hearing about him threatening Gaius over Marcus, and how he is considered the greatest battlecrafter in Alera... theres next to nothing. I mean he gets his ass handed to him by the Vord Queen, and some remarks about how he isnt too bright.

But this isnt really limited to Raucus, but to all the High Lords, characters known for their power who take a back seat to Amara and Bernard, who while not as annoying as in previous books are still having to save the day.

I was shocked at how useless the High Lords appeared in this book. I mean sure I get that the Vord Queen is more powerful, but power doesnt guarantee victory. Experience, knowledge, and skill have alot to do with it. In a relatively short amount of time, the Vord Queen has become the match of multiple High Lords and Ladies. Octavian atleast had the theory on how it all worked from his time at the Academy.

 

i liked the book
lets just wait and see what Jim will make to finish the battle =)

 

Huh?

The series is done, there's no battle left to fight.

 

hm the end left me thinking there would be a sequel or something, to show the final battle with the vord in the future.
shame if it was realy the last book =/

well it was a nice book anyway =)

 

Anyone else feel kinda sorry for the vorde queen? All that talk through out the book about her learning emotions etc..

 

As with the fifth, in the end it couldn't live up to my expectations.

 

His attempts at garnering sympathy for her were, for the most part, too ham-handed. The matricide was a nice touch, though. Really nice.

 

I enjoyed it a lot. I've been reading the entire series for the last week now, and I really prefer looking at it as a whole instead of individual books... it was great. He wrapped up as much as he could, I guess, but I think another book would've made everything feel a bit more finished.


God, the High Lords made me laugh sometimes.

 

Most of the book was good.

The ending fell a bit flat.

For a start, it was never explained how the two great Fury's were tamed after they were enraged at the end. Just that Kitai would do it following Alera's instruction.

The ending as a whole was rather unfulfilling. The entire book was leading up to this one moment, the "hammer against the anvil" moment when Tavi turns up with an army at his back and saves the day. A "Pelenor Fields" moment when the banner of Elendil unfolds and you feel a shiver go down your spine and want to shout "yes!" and pump your fist.

Captain's Fury has a moment like this. "My name is Gaius Octavian". First Lord's Fury never had the moment we were all waiting for. The big reveal of a regal and powerful Tavi and everyone's reaction.

That never happened.

As a result we feel a bit cheated.

 

I find myself with nothing to say that has not already been said. Finished reading the book about 2 hours ago, and while it wasn't the worst book in the series it certainly wasn't the best. Have to agree with everything Taure said.

 

Finished reading it last night and overall, I thought it was good. Big list of problems with it but most have them have been covered. I'm surprised the big one wasn't mentioned first. Wtf was with "The unleashed great furies will destroy everyone" turning into "Great furies? What great furies?" A passing line or two mentioning that Kitai and Alera dealed with them. :-/

As Taure said, I was hoping for the "fuck yeah" moment when Tavi slammed into the rear of the vord horde with an army of Canim and Aleran soldiers, before meeting the Vord queen and beating her down in full view of everyone at Garrison.

I was also hoping for a bit more reaction to Tavi ripping apart half of Riva, something that was supposedly impossible.

Amara's still a cunt but I do like Bernard, I've always pictured him as one of the hikers from the pokemon games...:?:

There were so many moments that reminded me of Return of the king. A returning king leading an army of reinforcements into the defence of a besieged city against overwhelming odds and with a force nobody expects. A massive horde going insane and suddenly ceasing to be a problem once their leader is killed by the main character.

The huge lumbering vordbulks even replaced the Oliphaunts...

 

Just finished reading this after reading through the entire series in order, for the first time, over the last week (Swine Flu is good for some things I guess).

Amazing series, but I actually think this is probably the worst book in the series somehow. Reading the series start to finish was an amazing crescendo of brilliance (admittedly the first half of Furies was a little hard to get into) which peaked at the end of Captain's. Princep's went steadily downhill- it was so repetitive, but still went out with a 'bang'. This final book was just repetitive...way way way too many fight scenes with nothing of interest to punctuate it. You know you're in trouble when you find yourself skim-reading action scenes.

I think the only real redeeming feature was the characterization of the Queen.

There was so must stuff missing it was painful.

Its almost as if Butcher intended for there to be some actual interesting scenes/moments and then just couldn't be bothered writing them. The entire purpose of senators seemed to be to literally piss off the reader, and you never got to see how they were resolved. Great. This book in particular had literally zero of those magic scenes which just make you stop reading and go 'wow'; Captain's had several such moments, Princep's had one or two. This book literally had none.

Seratin said it reminded him a lot of ROTK, to me I barely got any LOTR parallels. There seemed to be endless references to bloody Eddings' Belgariad, which I suppose is all well and good except that Eddings' books are awful in comparison.

I actually thought as a series as a whole, the books most closely resembled Ender's Game, except not as bad, fortunately.

TLDR: Pretty impressed by the series as a whole...this book was probably the worst of the series, unfortunately.