The Furies Cometh

Another week comes to a close and another book lies conquered on the bookshelf. This time, the book in question is Furies of Calderon: Book One of the Codex Alera by Jim Butcher. I mentioned the book’s existence in my last bookish post as a possibility for reading. Now, having read the thing, I can pass along my impressions if you’ll indulge me a bit.

First, a little introduction to the book for those unaware of what it’s about. The story takes place in the nation of Alera and, more specifically, in the Calderon Valley; go figure. The Aleran people are somewhat special. You see, they all have a connection with the furies: embodiments of the elements of nature. They can communicate and bond with these furies, gaining their aid in a number of ways. Say, if it’s dark and you happen to be good on with a fire fury, just ask it to start a fire for you and it will. Don’t want to scrub the floor and there’s a bucket of water nearby? Ask a water fury to clean it for you. Walking taking too long? Ask an earth fury to surf you along on a giant rock. This last is my favorite. There are a number of fury types, including: Water, Earth, Wood, Fire, Air, and Metal. They all have varying effects apart from the obvious “manipulate water”, “throw fireballs”, “fly”, etc. and it adds a nice flavor to things. For instance, fire furies can manipulate emotions such as fear and anger, while earth furies can be used in a similar fashion to inspire lust. Air furies can bend the air to create a practical magnifying glass while metal furies can increase someone’s pain tolerance.

The nature of the furies is left somewhat ambiguous, as if Butcher couldn’t really decide how they worked. Most of the characters call their furies by name: Rill, Brutus, Cirrus, etc. and seem to be the only ones that can use that particular fury. But it’s also stated that furies are basically everywhere and a few instances involve Alerans just talking to random furies and getting results. Of course, there’s a one-sentence line in there somewhere that says that all Alerans can commune with furies, though they typically specialize in one or two fury types, but still. I took this to mean: Alerans bond with a number of specific furies but they can command others around, they just might not listen. A number of times it is mentioned that certain characters are at a disadvantage because they do not know the local furies. To somewhat support this, there are wild furies that play interesting roles throughout the story. Garados is one. A gigantic fury that lives at the top of a nearby mountain, he generates wicked storms that pound through the valley while his “wife” wind fury rides the storms and causes problems.

One thing I’ll say is that it’s a rather creative magic system. The only problem is that Mr. Butcher seems to be uncertain as to how exactly it works and/or what its capabilities and limitations are. I’m not faulting him for this – it’s the first book and you have to start somewhere – I’m just saying that it’s somewhat noticeable. “I can’t fly those couple hundred yards, it’s too tiring” followed a few pages later by the summoning of a massive tornado. This is not an actual book event; I’m just trying to give you an example of the sort of thing that occurs from time to time. Maybe everyone’s just really modest and underestimates their abilities?

Something else to complain about while I’m thinking of it is the editing. It was… jarring, on occasion. Neglecting the occasional comma-instead-of-a-period thing that crops up in most all books, there were some major things that I would’ve taken out of the book long before it hit the publisher’s desk. An example: a character – a Marat – who speaks in broken Aleran introduces himself, giving his name and what not. Keep in mind that, up until this point, all Marat have spoken in a broken fashion. Two sentences later, the character introduces himself again, this time in a flowing, almost regal, way, giving his name once more. The Marat never speak in broken Aleran again. Barring one misunderstanding that was thrown in later for some comic relief, they don’t ever seem to struggle with a single Aleran word. Another example: a woman tells a man to follow after someone. A sentence later, she tells him to do the exact same thing, though in a slightly more polished way. Now, I’ll admit that I may have just been reading too carefully – or not carefully enough – and didn’t really understand why characters and descriptions were repeating themselves, but I’m pretty sure that at least a few were honest mistakes. And again, I’m fine with that; Jim Butcher has a ridiculously prodigious publishing schedule. I’m just saying that it occasionally took me out of the story.

Let’s see, what else? The back of the book – and most all advertisements for the series in general – tout Tavi (the only person in all of Alera without a fury of his own) as the main character. I’ll give a nod to that; the boy does some rather important stuff. However, he may get a point-of-view for half of the book. The rest is from the point of view of his aunt, a Cursor (a cross between a mailman and a spy), and the bad guy. It does seem that he plays an increasingly important role throughout the series, so I’ll let that one slide for now. Tavi’s uncle, Bernard, is possibly my favorite character, I think. He’s an earth- and woodcrafter and he’s ridiculously powerful. It’s easily my favorite fury-combination with earth probably being my favorite fury type in general. It seems the most useful, next maybe being air or water, depending on what you needed to do. I see some potential in woodcrafting – if you were in the woods or around wood, anyway – and metal is obviously useful to a warrior. That just leaves fire…

Typically when it comes to elemental magic, I like fire. This is usually because it’s one of the few elements easily used as a weapon and, as such, gets a fair bit of coverage. However, Butcher downplays that stereotype quite a bit. The problem with fire in Alera is this: furies live in the elements; they can’t create them where they don’t exist. For instance, if an earthcrafter is lifted up off the ground, they can’t talk to their fury and, therefore, can’t do much of anything. If a watercrafter is thrown into, say, a hot smokehouse, there’s no moisture for her to talk to her fury with. Now, there’s one or two caveats to this (a powerful firecrafter is seen possibly conjuring a fireball from nothing, I’m not sure) but for the most part this limits the firecrafter greatly. You see, while there’s typically a fair amount of earth, air, and water around at any given time, fire isn’t exactly lying about in piles. As such, firecrafters have to carry the stuff with them in pots. Yeah, it’s about as impractical as it sounds. Now, it appears that if you get close to a powerful firecrafter when there’s actually some fire around you’re going to die painfully (at one point, three firecrafters working in tandem kill hundreds with little effort), but they’re also at the greatest disadvantage just in their day-to-day activities. It’s a really good balance and I applaud Butcher for it; possibly the most powerful crafters are also the weakest. I find the dichotomy intriguing.

Wind furies actually seem to be the most underpowered when it comes to overall usefulness. Now, you only really see it used to great effect by one character so maybe it’s more useful than it appears, but its main use seems to be generating wind. Now that wind has a number of applications, but they’re mainly overt things like knocking people away or flying. No levitating objects or Force-pulling stuff here. They also don’t seem to have the emotional connections or the bodily connections the other fury-types display. It can make the users move faster, though, so maybe that compensates a bit. I don’t know. Metal actually seems to be the favored fury type in a soldier. The only people you see with connection to a metal fury are ridiculously awesome swordsmen. And when I say ridiculously awesome, I mean that they can easily hold a city gate against invasion all by themselves. And its fury counterpart and weakness is wood; a weakness that seems a little hard to exploit. Wood’s pretty cool, if the person using it knows what they’re doing. Apparently one of its main uses is allowed the crafter to fire massive bows, the likes of which they normally wouldn’t be able to draw. A good woodcrafter can also cause the haft of your axe to snake around and take a swing at your head, which is cool. Pair that with, say, a large Steadholder who also communes with a powerful earth fury named Brutus and you have yourself a nifty character. Named Bernard. But anyway…

The book cover sports a quote that says “…inspired by Tolkien”, though I’m not really sure what this means. Maybe they just meant, “Tolkien wrote epic fantasy, and so does Jim Butcher”. That’s all I can come up with, anyway, as he doesn’t really borrow much from the Tolkien collection of now-fantasy clichés. This may be a good time to note that the book isn’t really written in the same style as Butcher’s other successful series, The Dresden Files. For one, it’s written in the third person limited perspective and has a feel more like that of a typical epic fantasy novel. Butcher is obviously a talented author; I just feel that he occasionally labors beneath this style. But again, this is only the first book in the series – and his first really successful attempt at the genre in general – so I’ll cut him some slack there.

This thing is getting a little winded, so I’ll draw things to a close. In short, I liked this book – flaws and all. Jim Butcher has crafted an interesting world and I feel confident that, as the series continues, it’s only going to get better as he grows more familiar and comfortable with it. Currently, the series is up to Book 5, with Book 6 coming this December, so I’m looking forward to moving deeper into the heart of Alera. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good fantasy romp, as well as to anyone getting tired of your run-of-the-mill magic systems, medieval worlds, and fantasy creatures. So go buy, check-out, or borrow Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher, as I wholly recommend it. I mean, any book that has killer ostriches has my stamp of approval.

Addendum: do you remember when we were forced to write book reports back in grade school? Now I do it of my own volition and with a lot more effort than I ever did before. As I hit the last fifty pages of the book or so, I recall thinking that I couldn’t wait to write a small review on this. What’s happening to me?!