Rating: WORTHY!
Here come six reviews of an entire series one after another!
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I really can’t get into fantasy stories with witches and wizards, and fairies and dragons, elves and dwarves, etc. That is to say, it has to be something particularly special and appealing before I’ll get into it, because most of that stuff turns me right off. So it was curious then that I got into Jim Butcher's series, and entirely uncurious that I don’t read his wizard series. What the difference is between the two in terms of why the one attracts me and the other repels, I can’t say! It pretty much boils down to: I may not know much about fantasy but I knows what I likes! I don't much like series, but this one was exceptional in more than one way.
I got reading this when a friend of my wife loaned her the first book in the series, and she asked me if I was interested. Of course, I leaped at the chance, but then I found out she was talking about reading the book, so I was a bit less enthused, but I was not so turned-off by the lesser offer that I couldn’t get into it, which was a bit of a surprise. The story was written well, which is always a big plus with me. Butcher is very skilled at what he does.
The problem with this series is that it wasn't finished when I began it, so once I caught up to what was last written, I had to wait for the next installment, which was, I think, the 5th book. Waiting is never a good thing with me! I lost my steam and got into reading other things and it wasn't until after the whole series had been published that my interest in it resurfaced. At that point we bought the entire series in hardback and once that had been procured, I embarked upon a mega-read of the entire thing.
It was at that point that I became addicted and pretty much turned into a Codex Alera evangelist! I don’t know what it was that brought this on, but it just caught me and that's when I fell deeply in love with Kitai (don’t worry, my wife never reads any of my stuff, so my marriage is safe!).
I can go back in there even now and re-read the Kitai scenes and love them just as much as I did originally - and probably more. That time in vol 1 when they first encounter each other and go through their challenge is outstanding to me, and I wrestle with this, but I think it’s only exceeded by the next time they encounter each other in vol 2 after a separation of a couple of years. That encounter in vol 2 is classic literature as far as I'm concerned. I want to hug Butcher and clap him on the back and shake his hand for writing that scene.
Anyway, enough of this sappy crap, let’s look at the individual volumes, but a few words of explanation for the series is in order before we do that. The story is that Butcher wrote this series when challenged by someone in his writing group to create a good story based on a really crappy premise. Butcher, so the tale goes, said he could meet such a challenge based on two crappy premises, and the premises with which he was inflicted were: Pokémon and the legend of the Roman Lost Legion!
He decided to set his story on another planet where some power of which we learn nothing allows for, or forces, races from different planets to arrive on the same planet. The Pokémon element is, of course, the furies (more on this anon). The Lost Legion is the Alerans, a human race with strong Roman legion influences.The planet on which Alera resides is also occupied, as we learn through the volumes, by a race of ice giants in the north, the Marat, a completely different species of humanoid life, in the south, and across the ocean two more races: the Canim - a race of sentient and aggressive wolf people, and the Vord, an aggressive, insectile and sentient race which is, as the name might suggest, like Star Trek's Borg: compelled towards assimilation and domination.
And so to vol 1. I saw at one point that Amazon was asking $400 for this book in hardback! Woah! Who says organic books are on their way out?! but Amazon consists of a bunch of USDA Grade A assholes, so enough said about that.
Vol 1 introduces us to the main characters of course, and there's a lot of chopping back and forth as we meet them all and start to learn who they are and why, and what they're up to. Normally I don’t like this approach and have been known to get confused by so many introductions so quickly (who me?!), but Butcher again excels at this and clearly sets out who's who and what's going on without writing reams of tedious or confusing exposition. I don’t know where he learned to write but I want to take that course!
The main character (ostensibly, because I'll have to disagree in a minute or two) is 14-year-old Tavi, which as usual I mispronounced. I started thinking it was Tah-vee, but evidently, as becomes clear over the course of the entire series, it’s really Tay-vee, because (and we don’t learn this until much later), it's short for Octavian. In a world where the citizens all have at least one 'fury', Tavi has none.
A fury is a connection with a natural power or spirit, which can manifest itself as a ghostly animal (hence the Pokémon element!). This connection allows those who have it to manipulate the 'elements'. Normally this is where I would check-out, because these elements are, as usual in this kind of story, earth, wind, and fire, along with water, metal, wood, and air. I stayed with this because Butcher again has a way of describing these powers and showing their use without it looking like some juvenile magic. On day, when out with his uncle Bernard, a tough giant of a man, Tavi encounters a Marat warrior and his uncle is injured. The latter arranges for himself to be carried back home to "Bernardholt" - a kind of homestead - using his earth fury.
Tavi is to follow, but of course, Tavi goes astray and encounters a cursor - an official messenger of the First Lord (effectively, the king) of Alera, Gaius Sixtus - right when a deadly wind storm, powered by wind furies, comes hurtling down off the mountains. He saves Amana's (the cursor's) life by hiding with her in the memorial to the dead son of Gaius Sixtus: the Princeps Septimus. Those who are a lot sharper than I was may see where this is going at this point!).
Eventually, Tavi gets the injured cursor home to Bernardholt where his aunt Isana, Bernard's sister, who has a water fury and is therefore a healer, fixes her up, and eventually she and Bernard (whom Isana also fixed up) fall in love. Meanwhile out and about on another occasion with an apparently simple-minded servant who has a story all of his own, Tavi and the servant are captured by the Marat, deadly foes of the Alerans, a people who should not be in the Calderon Valley. The warrior who captures him is of a different tribe from the one he initially saw with his uncle, and Tavi is not killed, but held prisoner.
This is where Tavi encounters the real protagonist of this series for the first time. Her name is Kitai. This is another thing for which I hate Jim Butcher immensely because the name is kick-ass! I wish I’d thought of it first. Kitai appears to be male and is very hostile to Tavi. So, of course, the two of them are sent upon a trial, the winner to decide both Tavi's fate and the question of whether this Marat tribe will side with the Alerans or with another and hostile Marat tribe which wishes to eject the Alerans from the valley.
The trial involves them stealing a species of mushroom which has healing properties, but which is in a deep crater harboring a Vord infestation. In the course of this theft, Tavi discovers, as Kitai raises her smock to keep it out of some water, that she's a girl. She denies this! She's a whelp, she insists, and it isn't until she comes of age and is assigned to a tribe that she will become a girl. She desperately wants the horse tribe, whereby she will bond with her horse and take on some of its qualities and it some of hers, resulting in a lifelong pairing as a warrior team.
Kitai is seriously injured by the Vord during the theft, and she urges Tavi to leave her, telling him hoarsely (which is funny because she wanted the horse tribe!) that his plan was a good one, and he must apologize to her father, on her behalf, for her failure. Tavi refuses to abandon her. He realizes that one of the two mushrooms he has stolen will heal her, and he pours some of its juice onto her wound, and makes her drink some too, and as he does so, suddenly, there is a frozen moment where they become completely and intimately aware of each other, and Kitai's eyes, which had been of mixed coloration, suddenly resolve to match Tavi's green eyes. Kitai has bonded with Tavi. Never has this happened before! I'm sorry, but I have to quote this!
Tavi dropped the knife, slid down the rope, and ran to Kitai He seized her and began dragging her back toward the ropes, grunting with effort but moving quickly, jerking her over the ground.
"Aleran," she whispered, opening her eyes Her expression was pained, weary.
"Aleran. Too late. Venom. My father. Tell him I was sorry."
Tavi stared down at her "No," he whispered. "Kitai, no We're almost out."
"It was a good plan," she said.
Her head lolled to one side, eyes rolling back.
"No," Tavi hissed, suddenly furious "No, crows take you! You can't!" He reached into his pouch, fumbling through it as tears started to blur his vision There must be something She couldn't just die She couldn't They were so close.
Something stuck sharply into his finger, and pain flashed through him again. The crows-eaten mushroom had jabbed him with its spines. The Blessing of Night.
Fever. Poison. Injury. Pain. Even age. It has power over them all. To our people, there is nothing of greater value.
Weeping, Tavi seized the mushroom and started tearing off the spines with his fingers, heedless of the pain. Shrieks rose all around him, came closer, though the still-blazing branch seemed to have confused some of the Keepers, to have temporarily slowed their advance.
Tavi reached down and slipped an arm beneath Kitai's head, half-hauling her up. He reached down to the wound over her thigh and crushed the mushroom in his hand.
Musty-scented, clear fluid leaked out from between his fingers and dribbled over the wound, mixing with blood and yellowish venom. Kitai's leg twitched as the fluid touched it, and the girl drew in a sudden breath.
Tavi lifted the rest of the mushroom to her lips and pressed it into her mouth. "Eat it," he urged her. "Eat it, you have to eat it.".
Kitai's mouth twitched once, and then began to chew, automatically. She swallowed the mushroom and blinked her eyes slowly open, focusing them on Tavi.
Time stopped.
Tavi found himself staring down at the girl, suddenly aware of her, entirely aware of her in a way he never had been aware of anyone before. He could feel the texture of her skin beneath his hand and felt the abrupt compulsion to lay his fingers over her chest, to feel the beat of her heart beneath it, slowly gaining in strength. He could feel the surge of blood in her veins, the fear and regret and confusion that filled her thoughts. Those cleared as her eyes focused on him, widened, and Tavi realized that she had felt his own presence in the same way.
Not moving her eyes from his, Kitai reached out a hand and touched his chest in response, fingers pressed close to feel the beating of his heart.
It took Tavi a frozen, endless moment to separate the beating of his own heart, the rush of blood in his own ears, from hers. They beat together, perfectly in time. Even as he realized it, his own heartbeat began to speed, and so did hers, bringing a flush of heat to his face, one answered in her own expression. He stared at the wonder in her eyes and saw that it could only be a reflection of that in his own.
The scent of her, fresh and wild, curled up around him, through him like something alive. The shape of her eyes, her cheeks, her mouth. In that single moment, he saw in her the promise of the beauty that would come in time, the strength that had still to grow, the courage and reckless resourcefulness that matched his own and flamed wild and true in her.
The intensity of it made his eyes blur, and he blinked them, tried to clear the tears from them, only to realize that Kitai was blinking as well, her eyes filling with tears, going liquid and blurry.
When Tavi had blinked the tears away, his eyes returned to hers-only to find not opalescent swirls of subtle, shifting color, but wide pools of deep, emerald green.
Eyes as green as his own.
"Oh no" Kitai whispered, her voice stunned, weak. "Oh no" She opened her mouth, started to sit up-then shuddered once and slumped in his arms, abruptly overwhelmed with exhaustion.
The frozen moment ended.
Tavi lifted his dazed head to see the first of the Keepers edging past the blazing blanket and branch. Tavi hauled himself to his feet, lifting Kitai, and stumbled toward the ropes. He stepped into the loop at the base of one, then reached over to the other, and wrapped it around his waist, around her legs, tying her to him. Even before he was finished, Doroga had started hauling the rope up the face of the cliff. The other rope came in as well, where Hashat must have been pulling it along to keep it tight.
Tavi held on to the rope, and to Kitai, not really sure which one he held tighter. He closed his eyes, overwhelmed, and did not open them again until he and Kitai sat at the top of the cliff, in the cold, fresh, clean snow. When he opened his eyes again, he sat with his back against a stone and idly noted the fresh earth beside him, where Doroga had uprooted the boulder and hurled it down.
A moment later, he realized that Kitai lay against his side, beneath one of his arms, warm and limp, half-conscious. He tightened his arm on her, gently, confused-but certain that he wanted her to sleep, to rest, and to be right where she was.
(Furies of the Calderon by Jim Butcher pp 306 - 308)
When they finally get out of the crater, Kitai's aunt, of the horse tribe, demands of Kitai's father, Doroga, that he do something about this, but he is adamant that the bond has been made and cannot be changed. Moreover, he's beholden to Tavi for saving his daughter's life. While Kitai realizes what this means, Tavi is clueless (as we discover he often is during this series). He thinks no more of it.
Unfortunately, Kitai doesn’t appear any further in vol 1, which means that the story goes downhill somewhat from there! But Butcher is just teasing us for her triumphant return in vol 2.
The rest of the story consists of assorted subterfuges and misleading plays by a guy called Fidelias, who used to be a trusted cursor, but who is now a rebel against the First Lord. The climax of vol 1 is an assault by Atsurak, a bloodthirsty leader of a Marat tribe, upon a fortification which is supposed to be protecting the Calderon Valley. Lead by Bernard and Amara, and with the aid of Dorog, Kitai's father, who is even more massively built than Bernard, the garrison successfully holds off the attack.
In gratitude, the First Lord declares Bernard and his new love Amara to be the new Count and Countess of the garrison, and Isana is granted the right of steadholder in Bernard's place - the first woman in Aleran history ever to be a steadholder and gain her citizenship of Alera in her own right. Tavi is granted a scholarship to the academy, despite his having no fury powers.
And therein lies vol 2!
