I picked this book up on the strength of Jim Butcher's interview on The Dragon Page: Cover to Cover show #260. Of course, Butcher is famous for The Dresden Files, an urban fantasy/mystery series in which the protagonist sleuth is a freelance wizard. It is popular enough to have been turned into a television series by the same name. I'm not a huge fan of urban fantasy; almost every time I've tried to pick one up, I've never finished the book. Also, the TV series didn't wow me at all. So I was definitely intrigued when Evo Terra practically gushed about the Codex Alera, Butcher's epic fantasy series. I wanted to give the guy a chance.
Mr. Butcher stated that the Codex Alera series came about from a challenge of a friend. They had been discussing the concept of taking bad ideas and making them into good novels through presentation and writing. This individual challenged Butcher to write a good novel from a bad idea. Butcher upped the ante and asked for two bad ideas, and these were the results:
-- Lost Roman Legion
-- Pokemon
Taking these two ideas, Butcher crafted _Furies of Calderon._ Which is unfortunately a pretty bad book. There are two areas in which this book is particularly unsavory: plotting and writing style.
**PLOTTING**
The plot of _Furies of Calderon_ is pretty cliche ridden. There is the boy: a young character with mysterious origins living on a small farmstead. This particular boy, Tavi, cannot use any of the elemental forces (the Pokemon influence) that fill his homeland. He wants to go to the capital city to study at university so he can make a name for himself as a scholar. Cue John Williams score and wonder who this boy's parents are.
The other overly familiar plot points are rife. There is the female spy who uncovers the plot to overthrow the monarch. That's probably one of the most common plots of any fantasy novel. There is a "Judas" character. There is a group of invading savages. There's a dark, scary forest full of overgrown spiders. Tavi is able to point out flaws in the savages' legal system. The female spy is quite conveniently also nobility, even though it had never been mentioned until just the "right" moment. It continues ad nauseam.
**WRITING**
The writing style that Butcher uses here is pretty tedious. A lot the time, it is overly wordy. A lot of information is included parenthetically and can be repetitive. A great example of this appears on page 480:
"She lifted her arm, gasping, and blocked the Marat's forearm with her own, halting the blade a scant inch from her throat."
And then just one sentence later:
"Isana twisted, gasping, calling for Rill once again, hoping that the first Marat would remain incapacitated when she called Rill from him."
Both of these sentences are clunky. They could be streamlined easily. As it is, the reader has quite a bit to wade through. The parenthetical verbs especially could be cut. Much more interesting words than "gasping" could be used to provide action. Stricter editing would have been really beneficial.
There's also some confusion about whether or not a certain character is a Citizen. On page 33, Tavi reminds his Uncle Bernard that he could have challenged for full Citizenship. On page 220, another character says that Bernard can't kill a Citizen on that Citizen's property. Bernard replies that he can on his own land, which implies some sort of Citizenship status. On page 363, yet another character reminds Bernard that he isn't a Citizen off of his own property. It would be so much easier to understand, at least in my opinion, if Butcher had made clear how the Citizenship system worked in this world.
In conclusion, this book completely fails in what it was trying to accomplish. The ideas were hokey, the delivery was schlocky, and the story just doesn't deliver anything remarkable or original. There's a lot out there that is better on every count, and I intend to read that instead.
Mr. Butcher stated that the Codex Alera series came about from a challenge of a friend. They had been discussing the concept of taking bad ideas and making them into good novels through presentation and writing. This individual challenged Butcher to write a good novel from a bad idea. Butcher upped the ante and asked for two bad ideas, and these were the results:
-- Lost Roman Legion
-- Pokemon
Taking these two ideas, Butcher crafted _Furies of Calderon._ Which is unfortunately a pretty bad book. There are two areas in which this book is particularly unsavory: plotting and writing style.
**PLOTTING**
The plot of _Furies of Calderon_ is pretty cliche ridden. There is the boy: a young character with mysterious origins living on a small farmstead. This particular boy, Tavi, cannot use any of the elemental forces (the Pokemon influence) that fill his homeland. He wants to go to the capital city to study at university so he can make a name for himself as a scholar. Cue John Williams score and wonder who this boy's parents are.
The other overly familiar plot points are rife. There is the female spy who uncovers the plot to overthrow the monarch. That's probably one of the most common plots of any fantasy novel. There is a "Judas" character. There is a group of invading savages. There's a dark, scary forest full of overgrown spiders. Tavi is able to point out flaws in the savages' legal system. The female spy is quite conveniently also nobility, even though it had never been mentioned until just the "right" moment. It continues ad nauseam.
**WRITING**
The writing style that Butcher uses here is pretty tedious. A lot the time, it is overly wordy. A lot of information is included parenthetically and can be repetitive. A great example of this appears on page 480:
"She lifted her arm, gasping, and blocked the Marat's forearm with her own, halting the blade a scant inch from her throat."
And then just one sentence later:
"Isana twisted, gasping, calling for Rill once again, hoping that the first Marat would remain incapacitated when she called Rill from him."
Both of these sentences are clunky. They could be streamlined easily. As it is, the reader has quite a bit to wade through. The parenthetical verbs especially could be cut. Much more interesting words than "gasping" could be used to provide action. Stricter editing would have been really beneficial.
There's also some confusion about whether or not a certain character is a Citizen. On page 33, Tavi reminds his Uncle Bernard that he could have challenged for full Citizenship. On page 220, another character says that Bernard can't kill a Citizen on that Citizen's property. Bernard replies that he can on his own land, which implies some sort of Citizenship status. On page 363, yet another character reminds Bernard that he isn't a Citizen off of his own property. It would be so much easier to understand, at least in my opinion, if Butcher had made clear how the Citizenship system worked in this world.
In conclusion, this book completely fails in what it was trying to accomplish. The ideas were hokey, the delivery was schlocky, and the story just doesn't deliver anything remarkable or original. There's a lot out there that is better on every count, and I intend to read that instead.
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