1. Caria - What in the hell happened with Caria. At the end of Princep's Fury she just runs off. Oh I was hoping for her to get her comeuppance in this book, but there was not one mention of her in the entire story.
She died when Gaius blew up Alera Imperia, along with the defenders still fighting the vord and everyone who had refused to leave. She was at ground zero when the nuke went off, so to speak. Which is why Gaius never bothered exacting anything like justice or revenge--he knew he was going to kill her in about fifteen minutes anyway.
2. The whole Aldrick/Araris relationship - There was a valid reason for Miles to go off on Aldrick. I thought at the end of the book we would see something that would balloon between Aldrick, Araris, and Miles, but at the end of the story everything was honkeydory. To me that made no sense.
Not drawing a weapon and trying to murder someone at once because you're in the middle of an apocalypse counts as honkedory?
3. Magnus Reaction to Marcus - We know he was upset through Tavi saying he was upset, but hearing Magnus tell Tavi how he feels about Tavi sparing him would of been interesting. You felt the utter betrayal Magnus feels about Marcus during that scene, and then absolutely nothing afterwards.
It would have been fun, yeah. But difficult to fit in, given that Magnus was never a viewpoint character.
And Tavi had been so GOOD about listening to Magnus' advice up until then, too....
Here, the scene as it would have played out:
Magnus: I told you so.
Tavi: Yes, you're very paranoid.
Magnus: We kill him now, right?
Tavi: No. I have Plans For Him.
Magnus: But after that, we kill him. Right?
Tavi: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Magnus: *sigh, grumble, mutter*
4. Hashat and the signet daggers of the Crown legion - We learn in the first book that Hashat had 4 signet daggers of the crown legion which meant she was there when Septimus died. I would of liked to hear her account of the events.
I'm not sure where this came from. Hashat had several eagle-emblem cloak pins which she took from the bodies of Septimus' personal guard (whom she killed) at First Calderon. Signet daggers are a Citizen thing, not a Legion thing.
It would have been tough to have Hashat go back to that and still stay in character. Like most people who are truly dangerous, she doesn't spend much time talking about how dangerous she is or bragging about her exploits. And the story isn't really terribly complicated. She got to close on the Princeps and his singulares after they'd been fighting for a solid hour already and had already sustained multiple minor injuries and were beginning to slow and tire. She was on horseback and they weren't. Except for one of them, she was using non-metal weaponry, which posed a real problem for men who relied so heavily on their metalcrafting.
She shot a couple of them in the neck/face with arrows while riding by on her horse, killed one with a stone knife after her horse had knocked him down and stunned him, then took his sword and fought the last Aleran alive, one of the exhausted singulares, one-on-one, and killed him.
And then she ate big bites of all of their hearts, to honor them, and took the sword, baldric, and cloak pins as trophies.
