Codex Alera

Six elements. Water Earth Fire Air Metal Wood.

That was me failing to count... I mean, I mentally went through all 6, and counted 5...

edited 3rd Jun '12 8:04:01 PM by deathpigeon

For those in the first two, wait till you get to Cursor's Fury. Butcher's got a bad case of the book three awesome.

I wouldn't say it's any more awesome than the first two.

Seriously? Magnifying air lens flare of death notwithstanding?

The thing I love about this series is how they keep coming up with new and creative ways of wiping out massive forces of enemies. That lense attack was spectacular to be sure, but the first two books were just as epic, so I can't really place it above them. I actually place it a bit below them, because of how the first couple's climaxes were very clear cut. "This is the final battle, this is how many pages you have left, have fun." while Cursor's Fury kind of edged into the climax, if that makes any sense at all.

I liked Cursor better because it upped the scale from mundane to epic, personally.

I personally think that the Vord are a bit of a Villain Sue. Kalares and Aquitaine as well as the Canim might have been a better combination.

And I agree that this needs to be an RTS.

I'm also reading book three right now. I actually find the "impending civil war and invasion" plot to be more interesting than the Vord. When they popped up in the second book I was thinking "Where the hell did this come from?!"

edited 6th Jun '12 7:21:49 PM by theLibrarian

I initially thought the Marat were pretty lame (they're basically humans, except they DONT have magic!), but now that they've actually been shown up close (I recently read the scene where Fidelias confronts the chief) I think they're pretty cool. For one thing, they're cultural way of thinking is pretty interesting, and I like the whole beast-master angle they've got going, I just hope they don't all use the same kind of animal, that would be kind of boring.

They are tribal. (that should be enough of a clue)

Not really spoiler... you should hear about that soon enough.

So each tribe has a different animal? That's....ok, I guess, it would be cooler if they had a bunch of different ones they could pick from. I mean humans get six furies to mix and match.

edited 6th Jun '12 7:46:40 PM by Bluespade

Well, being born into a tribe doesn't mean you get that type of animal. I believe how it works is that, if you bond with an animal, you join the tribe that bonds with that animal...

I wonder where these Marat are supposed to have come from though. If humans are the descendants of the Lost Roman Legion that got sucked into another world somehow (this is Word of God, right?), then why is there another race that is completely human except for their eyes there?

Because they were sucked into the world from their own, according to a Word of God, I believe.

edited 6th Jun '12 8:42:52 PM by deathpigeon

The Marat aren't human, though. They're superficially similar, but there are several details that crop up across the books - boy temperature, physical strength and agiliy, gestation time that are different. I think Word of God is that they're descended from Neanderthals who fell through the same portal the Romans did, but don't quote me on that. I tend to think of them as barbarian elves, myself. And they do have magic, albeit of a very different kind from flashy Aleran furycrafting, as Kitai's experience later in the first book should testify to.

Well they can't have gone though the same portal, since wasn't there this thing about how they portal jumped from other worlds that were overrun by Vord? So it may have gone Earth > doomed world one > doomed world 2 > Alera.

Yeah - they've definitely world-hopped a couple of times. Same kind of portal, anyway.

...Who did that?

I ask because I don't believe any of the races did that...

Did what? I can't tell what you're asking, unless it's about world-hopping, which Doroga explicitly confirms the Marat have done more than once when talking about the Vord, since they met the Vord on multiple occasions and the world was destroyed each time.

...I was pointing at the post above yours, so yes... And I thought what it was is that the Marat went through a portal to the world, which I can not, for the life of me, remember the name of, and set up a whole civilization here, like the Legionnaires did with Alera, but, then, the Vord came, and they were able to drive the Vord back into the Forest of Wax, but their civilization collapsed in the process as most of them died, so they became tribal...

edited 6th Jun '12 8:56:11 PM by deathpigeon

I got the impression that they escaped from the Vord but didn't drive them back, and that the Wax Forest was totally unrelated. Remember, they had no idea what that place really was until the Queen woke up. If the ancient Marat had imprisoned their ancestral enemy there, I'd think they'd have put the oral tradition equivalent of big warning signs on it. If the Marat=Neanderthal bit is accurate, then I think they started on Earth, got sent to another planet by a dimensional rift of some sort, got forced off by the Vord, escaped to another planet, repeated the process, and then made it to Carna, at which point the tribes-and-totems Marat society we know from the books came into being. But really, it's a topic I wouldn't mind knowing more for sure about.

They did have an oral tradition that the Forest of Wax was extremely dangerous. That's why the competition between Tavi and Kitai was to go into the Forest of Wax. I mean, if it were easy to get something from there, they would've used someplace more dangerous.

The Forest of Wax is pretty self-evidently dangerous. It being a Vord nest is a whole level beyond that, I think, though I suppose the last Vord War could have been so long ago that the specifics were lost or muddled.

It was at least before the Romans showed up, and i'd peg it at several millenia before the series.

edited 7th Jun '12 10:06:22 AM by deathpigeon

If I'm not mistaken, the Marat came from another world first. Then they came to Carnia, where they made a big civilization, which was destroyed by our buggy friends. They managed to contain them, but they were reduced to savagery in the process.