Captain's Fury by Jim Butcher

The Alerans have been at war with the Canim for two years, but the Canim have stopped sending attacks to Alera. All that are arriving now are frightened Refugees. The other Alerans have wondered what this means, but Tavi, properly Gaius Octavian, son of the former First Lord of Alera (as we dicover in this book), knows: The Vord have managed to take over the Canim homeland.

While the Canim have maintained that they would never fall to the threat of the Vord, it appears that, lacking furies, the Vord have simply rolled right over them. But, if the Alerans could ally with the Canim, perhaps they could free both lands from the Vord. Unfortunately for Tavi, other Alerans higher up in the nobility and military, don't see it that way.

They are glad to see the Canim, long foes of theirs, cast down, and would rather wipe out the few remaining Canim than make friends with them. And Tavi, currently the commander of the first Aleran legion, will be forced to break into a supposedly impregnable jail to release a friend, and be forced to an act of treason to prevent his new noble superior to stop an act that could end the war- and at the same time doom them all.

But Tavi also discovers a number of things about himself during the course of this novel. For one, he's not just a poor farm boy without magic, he's actually the son of the woman he thought was his aunt, the Steadholder Isana. And her husband was Gaius Septimus, the former First Lord of Alera, who died while she was still pregnant with Tavi. To keep her son from being discovered through the force of his Furies, Isana used her water Fury magic to suppress his magical talent, making it seem that he had no power over the Furies at all. And the facts of Tavi's birth means that he is the heir to the throne when the current First Lord dies. And his friend Fade? He was the former First Lord's bodyguard who stayed behind to guard Isana after she found out she was pregnant with Tavi.

Tavi is hurt by these revelations. But he can't stop loving his aunt/mother or the man who has been his best friend. He's also now in a relationship of his own with Kitai of the Marat, and she keeps his thinking on the straight and narrow. But Isana has motivations of her own, and she's joined with other nobles in opposing the First Lord. But to save Alera, she might be forced to work with the First Lord, a man she despises.

Tavi knows that the Alerans must ally with the Canim and the Marat if they wish to save Alera, and while Isana wants him to keep his identity private because of the risk to him of being killed by someone more skilled than he at Furycrafting, he does reveal his identity to make an overture of alliance to the Canim peoples. The journey to their homeland will keep him safe until he can learn to use his Fury magic strongly. The Question is, what will they find in the Canim homeland, and will their be any Canim left to ally with?

I really enjoyed this book, which combined magic and battle and great storytelling. Jim Butcher seems to have the ability to write fantasy that is both gritty and High Fantasy-ish along with military fantasy, as the Aleran Legions are based on another type of Legion familliar to those with historical knowledge- The Roman Legions. All the Aleran Legions, however, have magic, and are broken down into the Six different kinds of Furycrafters. Knights with Air Furies are Knights Aeris. Knights Ferrous have Metal Furies, and Knights Flora have Wood Furies, along with the other "Normal" types of Furies like Earth (Knights Terra), Water (Knights Aqua), and Fire (Knights Ignis).

We learn a great deal about Tavi in this book, but also about some of the people close to him, like his aunt/mother Isana, and his friend Fade, a former slave who was never really a slave. Even the brand of "traitor to the Legions" on his face was all a ruse, put there to hide so that no one would remember or reveal his former identity as Araris Valerian, the best (after Gaius Septimus) swordsman in Alera. And even then, people wondered if he let Gaius Septimus win their bouts or if the former First Lord was really that good. But Fade has a secret of his own. He's been in love with Isana for years. Can she accept the love of a man who was so close to the one she loved? Apparently so.

The action scenes in this book are really good and move the story along. While this series has all the drama and angst of, say, Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series, Jim Butcher doesm't get bogged down in the details, even when the story takes off in a new direction due to events in the book. This prevents this six book series from becoming a 20-book mess (which it easily could have become, because so much interesting stuff goes on) and keeps the story snappy and flowing. And the story threads I revealed in my review aren't the only ones going on during the book, just a few of them, because if I talked about them all, this review would be three times its current size!

I highly recommend this book and this series. For those who like some military with their fantasy, this series will provide it in spades. And this book sends some quite interesting twists and turns at the reader, but instead of making you go "wha-?", it makes you go "Wow!" Another utterly fascinating story that will keep you turning the pages while you should be doing other, more important things, you'll need to rip yourself out of the story to get anything done. Be warned.