Rating: WORTHY!
So in volume three of Jim Butcher's Excellent Adventures of the Warrior Goddess Kitai, we find Tavi with the First Lord, who seems to be taking an unseemly interest in Tavi's sex life. Not that he has a complete one from what he reveals. The First Lord proves that despite his awesome fury-crafting powers, he's even more clueless than is Tavi with regard to how deep this bond is with Kitai. He dispenses pretty much the same advice that Norman Osborn offers his son Harry with regard to Mary Jane in the original Spider-Man: "A word to the not-so-wise about your little girlfriend. Do what you need to with her, then broom her fast."
Tavi is almost panicked at the thought of spending significant time away from Kitai, and to give him his due, he does honestly worry that she might suffer, because of their bond, if she's forcibly kept from him for long periods of time, but in this same concern, he's actually disrespecting her strength and independence, so even though he's beginning to recognize their bond, he's still essentially clueless about her. This will come back to haunt him humorously, as it happens, in the final novel of the hexalogy.
Fortunately he doesn't need to worry. When he arrives at the legion camp and settles in, he gets into the habit of visiting the public baths, run by Cymnea, the brothel keeper. He tosses a coin to a blind beggar girl on his way in, and sitting in the bath later, he thinks, "Crows" and runs outside to discover that, as he's just begun to imagine, the beggar girl is actually Kitai spying on camp activities to learn all she can about what's really going on. She does this routinely throughout the novels from this point on, delivering invaluable information to Tavi because of her excellence in this pursuit. She chides him about taking so long to recognize her.
Before he gets to the camp, however, Tavi is sent to meet a crafting master to try and get his non-existent skills kick-started. There's a reason his skills have shriveled on the vine, but we don't learn of this until later in the series. He's dragged from his crafting lessons by Max, rather like Luke Skywalker is forced to abandon Yoda's teachings to address a problem. Hmm! Come to think of it, there's rather a lot in common between Tavi and Luke, isn't there?!
We learn a bit of Max's past here, because his stepmother who hates him with a vengeance and has tried to kill him, and his step brother who will inherit if Max dies, has also joined the new First Aleran. What happened to the original First Aleran isn't specified!
Tavi is now supposed to be a fully-fledged cursor, but given that he has no windcrafting - or crafting of any kind for that matter - he's pretty much useless as a cursor. In the legion, they call the newbies 'fish', so this novel really ought to have been called 'Fish's Fury'. Tavi goes under a false name: the bizarre name of Rufus Scipio, which no doubt was all the rage in the real Roman era, but strikes me as one of the most hilarious names I've ever seen. Perhaps that's why Butcher chose it?
Lord Kalare, is the bad guy in this instalment. Because of a letter the First Lord sent, written in a deliberately provocative manner because he knew it would be intercepted by Kalare's spies, the wannabe First Lord has launched a war upon what he considers is the real, but weak First lord. Kalare wants to be First Lord himself. He has kidnapped more than one person in order to hold them hostage and thereby prevent people from doing things he does not want done.
One of these kidnappees is a cursor friend of Tavi's - or rather her child, so that she then had to become a spy for him. Another is the wife of one of the other lords of Alera. It is Count Bernard, his wife, the cursor Lady Amara, and the problematic Lady Aquitaine, who are tasked with rescuing her. Lady Aquitaine holds the allegiance of Isana, Bernard's brother. Isana isn't involved since she's spending way the hell too much time trying to revive Fade, her slave (who is way more than that we discover) and who has been poisoned. So focused on him is she that she neglects to help the wounded in the battle.
Tavi is supposed to be garnering military experience for himself as the sub-tribune in the First Aleran. He discovers that things aren't working the way a well-organized military should be: supplies, for example, are disappearing, so he brings in Cymnea to take charge!
Lord Kalare has made an alliance with the Canim. They are to help him become First Lord in return for his granting them a portion of Alera upon which to live. The reason they need Alera rather than their own land is something to be explored in vol 4 of this series, but in this volume, Tavi is the only thing standing in the way of the Canim running riot. He establishes a front line in a fortified town, and holds the line. Kitai helps immeasurably by riding the land as a spy, at times taking Tavi to show him curious and vital secrets.
One of these secrets is that the Canim have a warrior leader and a spiritual leader, Sarl, and the spiritual leader has a magic of his own. He uses this magic to turn the sky red, and he plans to use it to strike down Tavi when he meets with the warrior leader, but his plan fails, because Tavi has possession of Lady Antillus's Bloodstone which prevents the Canim magic from destroying him. At the start of the novel, Tavi was playing chess with the warrior Cane who is now leading the Canim. During a truce, he's invited to play a game again with this Cane, and he does so, listening carefully as the Cane, who is not at all a friend of Sarl's, passes important information to him in a coded way, which helps him to understand why the Canim came here.
Tavi, of course, holds the line and repels the invaders, and kills Sarl after discrediting him to show the Canim that he, Tavi, was far stronger than their best magician, even though he really isn't. The novel ends with Kitai suggesting that Tavi let her bring in some Marat horsewomen to act as spies and scouts. She, of course, would lead them. She already has her hair shorn with a crest, in the tyle of the horse tribe of the Marat, and she has been at Tavi's side the whole time, so his army is used to seeing a Marat helping them.
Tavi considers this, and reacts by pushing her against the wall in his quarters and kissing her passionately. He forces himself to stop, complaining that the fury-crafted light in there is a signal to his officers that they can come in any time with issues and concerns. He needs to have Max put out the light, but as he says the words, the light goes out, and he discovers that he can command it to turn on and off at will. Kitai is not impressed with this, and at the very end of the last chapter, she tells the light to go out, and it does! A great read!
