Furies of Calderon
The Codex Alera, Book 1
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Furies of Calderon
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Narrated by:
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Kate Reading
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By:
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Jim Butcher
Summary
For 1000 years, the people of Alera have united against the aggressive races that inhabit the world, using their unique bond with the furies - elementals of earth, air, fire, water and metal. But now, Gaius Sextus, First Lord of Alera, grows old and lacks an heir. Ambitious Lords manoeuvre to place their Houses in positions of power, and a war of succession looms on the horizon.
Far from city politics in the Calderon Valley, young Tavi struggles with his lack of fury crafting. At 15, he has no wind fury to help him fly, no fire fury to light his lamps. Yet as the Alerans' most savage enemy - the Marat - return to the Valley, his world will change.
Caught in a storm of deadly wind furies, Tavi saves the life of a runaway slave. But Amara is actually a spy, seeking intelligence on possible Marat traitors to the Crown. And when the Valley erupts into chaos - when rebels war with loyalists and furies clash with furies - Amara will find Tavi invaluable. His talents will outweigh any fury-born power - and could even turn the tides of war.
©2016 Jim Butcher (P)2016 Hachette Audio UKContinue the series
Despite the sub-par narration, I found the story quite enjoyable. The main conflict only shows itself during book 2.
Book 1 is a bit of a prologue. Its conflict and resolution are good enough, but they don't hint at the epic conflict that is to come. You're also dumped into the middle of everything and are expected to swim. Persevere.
Two of the main characters (Tavi and Kitai) were pleasant to follow. The others were too ethical for their own good. Amara especially was a chore. She is the sort to follow her heart no matter what. And she gets a lot of pages. She's the main thing I disliked about the book.
As far as coming-of-age stories go, this one was well-structured and well-planned. The main protagonist is the underdog who needs to use his brain to prevail because for some reason he's the only human to not have elemental superpowers, "furies". He can't even light a "fury lamp" without help. Basically a cripple. And the world has dangers of many sorts: physical, political, and supernatural even to the already supernatural humans. There be assassins, conquerors, family secrets, friends, respected enemies, games of chess in the middle of the battlefield, friendly spies, and foes orders of magnitude more dangerous than the entire army.
Half of the story focuses on Tavi's progress through life (with time skips between books) and the other half focuses on his friends and relatives and other important characters.
The names are a bit confusing. Alera is a continent in the world of Carna, together with Canea - the continent of wolf humanoids who can be pretty scary. Don't confuse the two. Varg is an honourable wolf enemy and the Vord are scarier than the wolf people. None of this is in book 1 because that's just a prologue.
The enemies were diverse, added to the story, and made it feel more real. What surprised me was that even the main villain, the Big Bad turned out to be quite likable, in a weird way. The story gives her enough attention to make sure the reader has no doubts what she wants and why she wants it.
I won't go into more detail because I don't want to spoil the thing before you read it. It's not a perfect story, it has a lot of fighting, but it has situational humour and enough self awareness to make me grow attached to it.
The beginning was written in the style of "stuff happens to the main characters", but later on the cast became agents of their own fates. I wish that happened sooner, but the world was too big to introduce every factor from the start. You'll have to deal with the fact that the world has too many moving parts for you to play the prediction game. Random events will happen.
The narration was often rubbish from subjective and objective points of view. I bet that nobody from the studio has ever listened to it back to back before publishing it. I got used to it, but a couple of times I had to go to the ebook to read the parts that were skipped/glitched. Nothing major and only a few sentences. On the subjective side, Kate Reading's intonation is often... off. Either I got used to it or it got better in the later books, but she's got a weird style that sometimes contradicts the intonation suggested by the book. Oh well. She has a talent to make everyone sound petulant. She never shouts when the characters are supposed to shout. I could go on.
I'll review the entire series (6 books)
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good
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If you could sum up Furies of Calderon in three words, what would they be?
Magic monsters mayhemWhat was one of the most memorable moments of Furies of Calderon?
Kitchen steam eventAny additional comments?
played this book end to end over 2 days had geart weekend, but then I find out I will need to wait another month for the next book and it wiil next year before I can buy book 6. Why not just release the whole series at the same time. The last "paper" book was release 2009Furies of Calderon geart book well readed
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Jim Butcher seems as though he wants to write a very looooooong series of these books. Don't get me wrong. It's a good book with a decent story line and engaging characters who you can care about, that's why I gave it four stars. However, Without spoiling the plot, you could probably read book 2 of the series (and I do hope he does a book 2) first without missing too many major developments.
Would definitely recommend this book to fans of both Jim butcher and Kate Reading
Good performance, good book
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captivateing
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