Furies of Calderon

Title: Furies of Calderon

Series: Codex of Alera - book 1

Author: Jim Butcher

Rating: 4 stars

Genre: High fantasy

Number of Pages: 650

Publication Date: 2005

Publisher: Ace

Summary: For thousands of years, the people of Alera have united against the aggressive and threatening races that inhabit the world, using their unique bond with furies - elements of earth, air, fire, water, and metal. But now Gaius Sextus, First Lord of Alera, grows old and lacks an heir. Ambitious High Lords plot and maneuver to place their Houses in positions of power, and a war of succession looms on the horizon.

Far from the city politics in the Calderon Valley, the boy Tavi struggles with his lack of furycrafting. At fifteen, 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, he will discover that his destiny is much greater than he could ever imagine.

When I was first recommended the Furies of Calderon, the first book from the Codex Alera series, I was expecting a kind of average plot line and characters. Instead I got the opposite.

The thing I'm most fussy about when it comes to fantasy books, is the world building. If a book fails to create a world I love within a couple of chapters I usually spend the rest of the book kind of wishing it would hurry up and end. And to be honest I did start off feeling this way. However, a few more chapters than what I would usually consider an acceptable amount of time to wow me, I was wowed. The more of this book I read, the more complex and impressive the world became. The thought and imagination that has gone into creating a world of such depth and detail is amazing.

Furies of Calderon follows the story of the people of Alera, were here people share bonds with furies, elemental forces which allow people to control fire, earth, wood, metal, air or water. Then there is Tavi a fifteen year old boy who doesn't share a bond with a fury, something which is unheard of. While trapped out in a storm, Tavi comes across Amara, a servent of the crown. Amara is on a special quest, to prevent the First Lord from being pushed off his throne and discover who the traitor is that sides with Alera's greatest enemy, the Marat.

The characters in this story full into the same category of incredibleness (if that's not a word, it is now) as the world building. While I felt that some of the character's lacked a few points on the physical descriptions, as in what they actually are meant to look like, Butcher more than made up for this with the personalities that he created within each of the characters. What's even better is that I am about 100% sure that this first book hasn't even begun to scratch the surface of who these characters really are.

While this book isn't the biggest book I have read, it is beginning to get up there in length (650 pages) and does require a bit of commitment. Not to mention that this book does belong to a six book series of books roughly the same length.

I give this book a solid 4 stars and one day I hope to find the time to pick up the rest of the series. I just have to make it through a few other books on my mammoth tbr pile first.