Guys, look! I'm reading so much lately!
Not that I have time for it or anything. Finals are coming up at breakneck speed. I basically only finished this book because it was due today and it had like three holds on it so I couldn't extend the due date. So I plowed through it today between classes and somehow managed to finish it.
...Only to pick up another book--the first in the Heroes of Olympus series. I had it on hold, so I had to pick it up this weekend or I'd lose it to someone else on the hold list.
Somehow I keep forgetting that no really I'm leaving BYU in three weeks. I have another book on hold (Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson) but I'm like 13th on the hold list. I won't get it until like next year, and I'll be nowhere near BYU then. I'm gonna go cancel that hold right now.
(Two minutes later)
The point is, I have no time to read, but I'm doing it anyways, so I might as well give a review of this awesome book that was both a sacrifice and a privilege to read.
Without further ado, here's a synopsis of Furies of Calderon (via Goodreads):
In the realm of Alera, where people bond with the furies--elementals of earth, air, fire, water and metal--fifteen-year-old Tavi struggles with his lack of furycrafting. But when his homeland erupts in chaos--when rebels war with loyalists and furies clash with furies--Tavi's simple courage will turn the tides of war.
And here's my review of it:
First of all, Tavi (the kid who the synopsis makes sound like he'll be the "Chosen One" of the series) actually isn't really a huge focal point of the book. I mean yeah he's obviously the main character, but there were six other main characters who had just as large of roles in the plot as Tavi did. So don't read that synopsis and think, "Oh sheesh, this is just like Star Wars and Harry Potter all over again."
No. It's not.
It's not a book geared towards 15-year-olds. It's definitely adult-oriented. Rather than a coming-of-age story, it's more like a crazy-awesome mix between Avatar: The Last Airbender (because they can control elements), Pokemon (because the elemental furies take forms and fight each other sometimes), Lord of the Rings (because it's a fantastical setting with battles and such), and something else I can't put my finger on... Mission: Impossible? Avengers? I dunno, the characters are just awesome at what they do.
The magic system is amazing, of course. I would expect nothing less from Jim Butcher. I'm actually impressed with how separate and different it is from the magic of The Dresden Files.
Basically, there are these elemental spirits called furies that people befriend as they grow up. It's like a rite of passage--everyone has at least one fury that helps them out (except for Tavi, poor kid). The furies give people power over their specific element, as well as other skills. For example, watercrafters have water powers (obvi), but they can also feel other peoples' emotions, heal, and change their physical appearance. And people aren't limited to only one fury, either, nor are all furies equal in strength, so everyone's abilities are different.
It makes for lots of awesome fight scenes. Jim Butcher is a master of action writing that's not just impressive, it's cool. It makes you want to see it on a big screen, blow-by-blow exactly how he wrote it.
One of my other favorite things about Jim Butcher's writing is that his books only take place over a few days at most. He's a master of taking his characters and telling them, "Your whole way of life is about to be destroyed in the next 48 hours. Figure it out. Go." It's amazing what he can fit into such a small space of time, but it makes the conflict more real and panic-inducing, and it makes the action that much more fast-paced and urgent.
What really gets me is that he manages real character development that doesn't take months or years to establish. These characters start one way, then 48 hours later they've gone through so much that they're permanently changed. It's crazy, and I love it.
Another thing about his writing is he makes character conflict believable. Yeah, there are always some characters who are just absolute evil, and there are those who are unshakably good, but then there are characters in between who do bad things for genuinely good reasons, or vice versa.
The one character who I was sure was 100% evil, who I was sure I was going to hate and want dead, turned out to actually be very sympathetic and tragic. Refreshingly, even one of the good guys recognizes this and helps her (I'm so tired of TV drama characters who are like, "Well, I understand you better, but for the sake of the plot I'm going to still treat you like dirt and hate you for all time").
The only weird thing about reading this book was that it seemed to me that it hadn't been thoroughly edited. I'm not even talking about minor typos or punctuation, I mean there were serious substantive editing problems. I've never noticed that in any other book I've ever read before, but in this one it was glaringly obvious. One character's name alternated between "Aquitaine" and "Aquitanus". Sometimes it was like the dialogue had been accidentally rearranged. I can't remember what exactly the dialogue said, but it was along these lines:
Character A: No, we need to go over it.
(New Paragraph)
Character B: We need to go around.
(New Paragraph)
Character B: I don't care what you think. We need to go around.
And then there were times where I think maybe autocorrect just botched things, but it made the narrative confusing. Another example, watered down but more accurate in context than the last example:
Gram: Firecrafting won't work.
Amara: What if we tried something else? Firecrafting.
Gram: (Thinks about it). Fear... Yeah let's do that.
Wait...did you just say "let's try something besides firecrafting--let's try firecrafting instead?" That makes no sense... Did you mean to say fearcrafting?
I kind of wish now that I'd gone through with a pencil and marked all these things I found as I read. Not that it would have ever gotten back to the publishers or whatever, I just hope that I'm not the only one who noticed these mistakes. Hopefully the next edition of the book will fix these things.
I don't know. Maybe it's just because I'm actually making editing my career now, so I'm hypersensitive about these things.
Editing mistakes aside, this was an amazing book. It had much cleaner language than The Dresden Files, but still contained some sexual content so I can't with good conscience recommend it to younger readers, necessarily, but he's never so graphic that I would rate this R or X or whatever. This is a great book. Please read it.
(And a side note about the Dresden Files: I could singlehandedly gain Jim Butcher dozens more fans of his Dresden Files series if he would just leave out the innuendo so I could actually say to people like my parents, "Hey, read this!" Alas, I cannot. They're missing out on so much awesomeness just because there's that one scene in every one of his books that makes me cringe. I'm still determined to just buy my own copies and white out the bad parts, though. They're too good to just dismiss altogether. This isn't just crass, rude, gorey storytelling meant to shock and awe--with Jim Butcher, good always triumphs over evil, women are valued, ethics and standards are contemplated and encouraged, and the story is just breathtakingly engaging. He's just, sadly, not LDS, so his standards of sexual purity is typical of the average American's standards. So, while I can't openly endorse The Dresden Files, I'll just end by saying that they're really really REALLY good.)
No comments:
Post a Comment