Furies of Calderon (Codex Alera, #1) in Building a SciFi/Fantasy Library

Mar 22, 2008 John rated it it was ok

2019: almost exactly 11 years after I first read this, I revisited it again, because there were no other audio books in the library system grabbing me. Although reading my review again, I still agree with it, if I was eating it today, I'd probably say 3 stars, either because listening to it at 2x makes the writing more tolerable or because raising children had eroded my critical faculties.

Original review:

I'm definitely a fan of the series that made Butcher's name in fantasy, his wizard-detecti 2019: almost exactly 11 years after I first read this, I revisited it again, because there were no other audio books in the library system grabbing me. Although reading my review again, I still agree with it, if I was eating it today, I'd probably say 3 stars, either because listening to it at 2x makes the writing more tolerable or because raising children had eroded my critical faculties.

Original review:

I'm definitely a fan of the series that made Butcher's name in fantasy, his wizard-detective Dresden Files series. At the end of the past several novels in that series, Butcher has included a note to the effect that Tolkien and epic fantasy have always been his first love in the genre, but that he wasn't quite able to write that style when he began his career. So, instead, he brought us the hard-boiled wise-ass Harry Dresden and his adventures as a wizard in modern-day Chicago. Now, though, he's written something more along the lines of an epic fantasy (if we want to get technical, it might best be called "heroic fantasy"), his Codex Alera series, which I heard him say in an interview is based on the premise of a lost Roman legion that finds itself in a fantasy milieu and, now thousands of years later, has created a sort of Roman empire in a magical world where humans can control "furies," elemental spirits of lesser or greater power, tied to earth, wind, water, fire, wood, or metal.

The story here centers around Amara, a newly-minted "Cursor" (a sort of courier of the realm who--unbeknownst to most--also serves as a sort of spy, diplomat, and covert agent) who, after being betrayed by her mentor, works to foil his plot and save the realm. The other main character of the story--who I gather to be the main character of the series, is Tavi, a young shepherd boy with no magical fury to control.

It's the sort of least-shall-be-greatest coming-of-age story so ubiquitous in the genre, and perhaps because of that, it feels a bit stale. The plot, except in a few details, seems fairly predictable. Butcher seems incapable of killing off a major character, despite what would otherwise appear to be awfully high stakes, so even though there are unresolved plot threads at the end (intentional, of course, because the series has to continue), we've had the sense throughout that we were headed toward a happy ending--and we sure have been. Oh sure, the bad guys are still out there, but all the good guys have been successful and duly rewarded, as we pretty well suspected they would be.

The writing itself seemed rather ho-hum in many ways, and though Butcher tried, he didn't quite capture the tone of the best of epic fantasy. Now, I'll be the first to admit that this isn't as easy as it sounds: when I've flirted with the idea of being a writer, I've always wanted to write epic fantasy, and none of my experiments sounded even this good, so I do have some sense of the difficulty, but as a reader I have high standards. This struggles to reach the heights of David Eddings, and that isn't all that high.

And yet... and yet...

It somehow managed to be a compelling page-turner. Even seeing clearly all these faults as I was reading, I couldn't put it down and I want to read the next book. Butcher tells a well-paced, exciting story and makes us care just enough about the characters and the story that we keep reading. Maybe part of my desire to read the second novel in the series stems from the great respect I have for his Dresden novel, giving me hope that he's only setting up such conventional stuff to flip it on its ear as we move forward. Maybe my respect for him gives me hope that he will write better epic fantasy the more he does it. Or maybe this first book has given me the faith that, even if the second book (and, I might as well be honest, all the following books, since I'll almost certainly read them) is no better than the first, it will still be an enjoyable read.

Not the best that epic fantasy has to offer, but an enjoyable read nonetheless. ...more

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