Furies of Calderon
(The Codex Alera series, Book 1)
Jim Butcher
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy
****
DESCRIPTION: The men and women of Alera, lone civilized nation in a world of savages and monsters, survive through their furycraft, their ability to bond with elemental
spirits (furies) and bend them to their will. Most come into their power as they mature, but Tavi, at fifteen, still has no furies of his own, and if he hasn't woken his gifts
by now he never will. City-dwellers can get by well enough without furies, but in the Calderon Valley, the rough frontier between Alera and the lands of the bestial Marat tribes,
having no fury is like having no legs. If he can earn the money to go to the Academy at the capital, perhaps he could make something of himself, but to do so he needs to earn
his Steadholder uncle Bernard's respect... and he loses that when he loses the sheep he was supposed to be tending. While searching for the lost ram and his ewes, Tavi stumbles
across something far more dangerous, a fate that would test even the strongest furycrafter in Alera.
Amara is a Cursor, a messagebearer and elite spy and agent for the High Lord of Alera, on her graduation exercises with her teacher Fidelius. Sent to investigate rumors of a
rebel army on the move, Amara finds something much more drastic than a simple band of mercenaries or a disgruntled merchant: a plot with roots deep in Alera's increasingly
fragile political landscape that will shake the nation to its core. When her teacher reveals his true loyalties, she alone stands between the nation of Men and utter doom...
a struggle that begins in the wild frontier valley of Calderon.
REVIEW: "Inspired by Tolkien!" roar the reviewers on the cover. "How?" questions this reader. Little if anything about this book put me in mind of Middle Earth, but since that wasn't the main reason I bought it, I'm merely puzzled rather than dismayed. The strongest inspiration for Butcher's Alera is the Roman Empire; its troops organize in legions with Romanesque square-planned forts, its names are distinctly classical, and even the architecture speaks of elder-day Rome. I suspect that future books reveal Alera's ancestors as Romans from our own world, somehow transported to this hostile place with both familiar (horses, crows, sheep) and unfamiliar (poisonous reptilian slithes, great prehistoric flightless birds called herdbanes) lifeforms aboud. The furies form an intriguing basis for Alera's magic, setting the world nicely apart from many fantasy universes, well played in their strengths and limitations. I also liked what we saw of the Marat, the animal-clan tribespeople whose loyalties may make or break the rebellion attempt. Butcher does a decent job creating a somewhat different world here and populating it with believable, if not necessarily startlingly original, characters. The plot took a little while to absorb me, and it had some lulls that threw my attention, but on the whole it moved ahead decently. The great battle at the end ties up a bit too neatly, as it nearly defies logic preserving key characters for future installments. I almost wonder if Butcher originally didn't plan to write more Alera books, or at least intended to fully wrap up the rebellion plot here, and only teased a few ends loose at the last minute. On the whole I enjoyed it. If I see the next books at a reasonable price, I might follow the series a bit further. But I still fail to see the similarity to Tolkien...
You might also enjoy:
The Alexander Cold trilogy (Isabel Allende, YA Fiction - An American teen learns that adventure and mysticism aren't all dead when he finds his power animal in the Amazon)
The Fire Rose and The Serpent's Shadow (Mercedes Lackey, Fiction - In an alternate turn-of-the-century world, a hidden society of masters control elemental beings for their magic)
The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman, YA? Fiction - In an alternate world, everyone has a daemon, a living extension of their soul)
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