Furies of Calderon
For a thousand years, the people of Alera have united against the aggressive and threatening races that inhabit the world, using their unique bond with the furies - elementals 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 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. " Caught in a storm of deadly wind furies, Tavi saves the life of a runaway slave named Amara. But she is actually a spy for Gaius Sextus, sent to the Valley to gather intelligence on traitors to the Crown, who may be in league with the barbaric Marat horde. And when the Valley erupts in chaos - when rebels war with loyalists and furies clash with furies - Amara will find Tavi's courage and resourcefulness to be a power greater than any fury - one that could turn the tides of war.
Stats for nerds
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2009–2016years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Here is a partial list of the books I read this year. These are all books that stood out to me which I enjoyed:
Fiction Books:
* Leviathan Wakes, Caliban's War, Abaddon's Gate, Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey
* Homeworld, Out of the Black (books 3 & 4 in the Odyssey One series) by Evan Currie
* Furies of Calderon, Academ’s Fury (1 & 2 of the Codex Alera series) by Jim Butcher
* The Aeronaut’s Windlass also by Jim Butcher
* The Queen of Zamba by L. Sprague de Camp
* Giant of World's End by Lin Carter
* Batgirl of Burnside (graphic novel)
Non-fiction Books:
* Here is Your War by Ernie Pyle - the 1st of his books chronicling American soldiers in World War 2
* Vagrant Viking by Peter Freuchen - auto-biography of the Danish explorer/Nazi resistance fighter/writer/film-maker
* Voices of 1776 by Richard Wheeler - the Revolutionary war in the words of people who were there.
The non-fiction books surprised me because I really enjoyed all of them and I usually only read fiction or technical books. The Odyssey One books by Evan Currie also stood out to me because I found the first one for a low price on Kindle and I was blown away by the story.
- I love Harry Potter, but somebody needs to explain to me how e.g. the Weasleys experience material privation by Muggle standards with regards to things like not being able to afford clothes when both Weasley parents and, for most of the series, most of their children are all capable of conjuring valuable things (including clothes) from the ether. Or how Harry is rich like a king due to his inheritance despite his parents having no detectable business or reason for excessive wealth (well, aside from their prodigious abilities at conjuring valuable things from the ether). Or how Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic, both of which are shown as having truly prodigious amounts of wealth expended in their construction and upkeep, are sustained via contributions from a parallel economy where the level of economic sophistication has not exceeded "a one-room store attended by an artisan", except for (apparently) multinational corporations, branding campaigns, and market sophistication in... quidditch broomsticks.
Economics is a real spoilsport for fantasy literature. I was once taught a single sentence which now nags at me in every book I read: "Describe how this army is fed." For example, the carnivorous Canim in the Furies of Calderon series fielded an army of some 60,000 apex predators in a sparsely populated agricultural region for a period of over two years. Their purchasing agent should require about as many sources of meat as all the McDonalds nationwide, but the economy as depicted couldn't possibly support that.
