Shit, I utterly missed a Tolkien parallel in "The First Law".
No need to tell people Bayaz is an evil Gandalf, obviously. And an evil version of all the Gandalf copies in Tolkienesque fantasy, and of the pop culture 20th century Merlin, etc etc... Khalul, as the rival of Bayaz and the distant antagonist of the first trilogy, can stand-in as the Saruman equivalent somehow (but it is more of the "rival, evil wizard" type derived from Saruman). And I posted before about how the "third wizard" type present in Tolkienesque fantasy, derived from Radagast in the original LotR/Hobbit books, was split between Yulwei and Zacharus.
But I utterly failed to connect the dots when it came to the other and more obvious Saruman parallel in "The First Law"... Caurib. I missed her because I was focusing so much on the Magi themselves, but Caurib and her Golden Voice is literaly Saruman and his voice in the original book(s). The parallel gets even more obvious in the sequel trilogy, where Caurib's new, lower status after her defeat recalls Saruman's new life and identity after being defeated...















