Codex Alera: Furies Of Calderon

Audiobook Review

Being a big fan of The Dresden Files series, a classicist and fantasy nerd I was quite looking forward to the Roman Empire-esque series by Jim Butcher. I mean with all those things about me, how could I not love it?! 

Well, unfortunately, I couldn't. 

"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."

Sounds good enough, right? Some nice elemental magic with intrigue, war and your very home at stake! Even with all that, I never really felt like anything was properly at risk, maybe it's because I never connected all that well with the characters. 

Part of this lack of connection could potentially have been the audiobook reading, coupled with some of the characters within the book purely being there to provide a minute obstacle to wherever the plot needed to go. 

For example, there were a couple of soldiers stopping a couple of main characters from getting past them when they very dearly needed to. These soldiers were just unnecessarily rude, arrogant and ignorant. The point was to show that they were 'green' soldiers and not very disciplined at that.  But surely there are better ways to show that than refusing to let the leader of a town through the gates and making leering sexual comments at the girl with him? Perhaps if they were unsure of the procedures or unwilling to let strangers into the fort? 

These two weren't the only characters who I felt unreasonably infuriated by, and there were simply no redeeming features for those characters who were so. It seemed to me that they were in there purely to illicit reaction and show that the view of the soldiers and city-boys, that most of the protagonists were country bumpkins, was foolish. But then alongside that this contrast became a fallacy of itself, there were few people who were competent who didn't come from the wild outskirts. 

The story itself seems like it was sound, but then also got away from itself for a while and I found myself drifting away from why this was supposed to be a huge proble. 

This coupled itself with the fact that I found that I was guessing plot twists or just predicting where the story was going ahead of time, which left me feeling more like I was just going through the motions rather than sitting on the edge of my seat and waiting. So I also felt like I knew how they were going to solve the problems that were presented in it. "Oh, that huge big ol' problem X? Well obviously this character is going to do Y which means X won't be a problem." (And that's what happened) Again, this happened at the end of the book as well and I was just sat waiting for the timer to run out on what you knew was going to happen. 

I really am not sure if I'd like it any more if I had read it rather than listened to it, but there we are. A decent enough distraction, I think, but should probably be billed as YA fiction at the very least. I know that a lot of people have enjoyed this book greatly and the first couple of chapters are available on Jim Butcher's website, so do take a look and see if they're your thing. 

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The Dangerous Game of Leap-Shark

Welcome back scribblers, scratchers and word processor tappers!

Today, I want to talk about jumping over sharks. This isn’t going to be a post about encouraging you to jump over sharks mind you, it’s more about knowing your story’s limitations, what you can do and what your audience expect of you.

But what do I mean? And why am I talking about sharks!?

Well, the term ‘jumping the shark’ generally means to do something so audacious and out there that it can only signal a decline. Originally this was referred to only with regards to television but it has since been expanded to encompass a wide range of topics and media.

Okay, so that still doesn’t really explain why I’m talking about sharks. The term ‘jumping the shark’ was coined by John Hein and it refers to an episode of Happy Days in which Fonzie, as a test of his courage, literally jumps over a shark whilst using water skis. For Happy Days this supposedly marked a gradual decline in the show’s creativity and inevitably led to the cancellation of the show.

Yeah I just jumped a shark, so what?

One of the things that I love about The Dresden Files series is that you really feel like Harry Dresden is pushed to his absolute limits. You (both the reader and Harry) find out what Harry is willing to do to protect those he loved and do what he can to save them.
Now, I will avoid spoilers, but at the end of Changes I really wasn’t sure where Jim Butcher was going to go with it. The ending was an absolute explosion of emotional, physical and magical excitement and trauma. And maybe it was that, but I really felt like the next instalment Ghost Story would have been better suited for a short story. I started reading it but found it very difficult to get into the story, or re-engage with the characters. To be honest, I skipped a large part of the middle and didn’t feel like I’d missed much.

So why am I bringing this up?

Well I read something recently that made me think of this. Unfortunately it was The Dresden Files. As much as I do enjoy the books, I recently read (I say read for The Dresden Files I listen to the audiobooks as read by James Marsters) Ghost Story and I was quite disappointed.

What I think was the problem is that Ghost Story was more about the other characters within the Dresden-verse. That’s not so much a problem but I don’t think that it merited its own novel for it.

Having said all of that, I’m a sucker for a series so I thought I’d pick up the next book Cold Days just to see if it was indeed a ‘jump the shark’ situation, or if that book was just miss instead of a hit.

It was a slow start, but a better one. And then, after a good few chapters, Butcher really stepped up the game. The storyline is back to being something Dresden isn’t sure if he can handle, but knows if he doesn’t the consequences will be dire. Cold Days definitely puts to rest the worry that Butcher’s books would face a slow and gradual decline as the series went on. Not only does he lay these fears to rest, but as far as I’m concerned he has definitely introduced enough plot points at this juncture to justify the continuing series, and there are also other elements that Butcher has brought forward from the history of the series that demonstrate a thorough overarching plan that has been in place for a long time.

I don’t think that Ghost Story was a badly written book, I just think that the story itself and how it was presented was not as interesting to me as it could have been. As I said, what I love about The Dresden Files is the tension that comes from Harry Dresden’s character and how far he’s willing to go. But in Ghost Story it was more about the supporting cast, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just not my thing.

So what I would say to you, dear readers, is the following: Be careful where you’re taking your story. It might be that something you think will be a really interesting direction might put off some of your readers.

Be careful of jumping the shark, just because something’s awesome doesn’t necessarily mean you should do it. Just because jumping over a shark looks cool it might not leave you any room to develop your characters or story further, it might not even be a relevant thing to have happen!

I’m not saying you shouldn’t be ambitious in your writing and the scope of your story, just make sure when it’s awesome, it’s awesome for the right reasons! And don’t  be put off keeping up with The Dresden Files! I still think they are a thoroughly fantastic read, and to have one book in the series that didn’t quite stack up out of a total of fourteen is no mean feat! But if you don’t like Ghost Story, I would recommend picking it up at Cold Days because it definitely gets better and so much bigger (in such a good way).

I hope that makes as much sense as it can without me revealing anything about the plot! Beware spectacle for spectacle's sake!

Well that’s all for now fellow scribblers! I wish you all well, and until next time: Good hunting!

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