I strongly advise getting this book

What other book might you compare Furies of Calderon to, and why?

This had elements of Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time, Stormlight Archive and a few other genre leading titles but with Butcher's unique twist.

It combines political manoeuvrings with magic, monsters and adventure.

Which scene did you most enjoy?

I quite enjoyed the wax forest...

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

I refuse to answer this question as the word 'be' is used too many times.

Any additional comments?

This is a wonderful story about a Romanesque kingdom, it's subjects and their powers. To be honest the start of the book was a little frustrating as it jumps straight in using specific language and terms which mean nothing to the reader until further on in the story but after a little while this doesn't matter. All you really need to know is that everybody has the ability to manipulate one or more of the six furys which are entities residing in the elements.

I am reading the third book now and much like The Wheel of Time, the characters are already starting to feel like old friends.

For those Dresden fans this book is certainly worth reading but don't expect any similarities with the Dresden Files, apart from the very occasional dollops of sarcasm that is.

All in all I can't recommend this book enough. To fans of epic fantasy it's a must.

11 people found this helpful

Badly edited - Bits of audiobook missing

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

Improve the editing.
Occasionally Kate's sentences have been edited so they run into each other (absolutely no gap between them). Occasionally whole sentences (or in one case an entire page) appear to have been dropped

Which character – as performed by Kate Reading – was your favourite?

Kate's presentation of Doroga is brilliant

What character would you cut from Furies of Calderon?

All the characters are pretty integral to the plot, so it would be hard to cut a character. I used to think Aric was a throw away character, but cutting him from the first book would impact heavily on the second (Academ's Fury).
If a character really had to be dropped perhaps Steadholder Warner and his sons could be dropped?

Any additional comments?

Fix the audio recording. Its a great book. It deserves a great recording.

9 people found this helpful

Highly enjoyable

I've have done almost no work since downloading this audio book as I could not stop listening. Highly enjoyable and very well read with characterisation of the dialogue. If you enjoy fantasy I definitely recommend this audio book.

9 people found this helpful

badly edited but good story

the recording seems like its cut badly in places and seems like it skips but you can figure it out. great first book in the series though, I am looking forward to the rest. I see some similarities between GoT and WoT but it's different enough to keep you interested

8 people found this helpful

Enthralling

Very good listen, definitely stopped me working at times! Looking forward to the rest of the series!

5 people found this helpful

Terrible

1/5
I was told to give this series a chance but 7 chapters in and I couldn’t read anymore. I’ve been advised it takes until chapter 11 to be worthwhile... the characters are 2D, the story slow and the worldbuilding is poorly explained.

4 people found this helpful

I'll review the entire series (6 books)

I finished the series and I can say for certain that simply reviewing the first book wouldn't tell you much. It would be misleading.

Despite the sub-par narration, I found the story quite enjoyable. The main conflict only shows itself during book 2.

Book 1 is a bit of a prologue. Its conflict and resolution are good enough, but they don't hint at the epic conflict that is to come. You're also dumped into the middle of everything and are expected to swim. Persevere.

Two of the main characters (Tavi and Kitai) were pleasant to follow. The others were too ethical for their own good. Amara especially was a chore. She is the sort to follow her heart no matter what. And she gets a lot of pages. She's the main thing I disliked about the book.

As far as coming-of-age stories go, this one was well-structured and well-planned. The main protagonist is the underdog who needs to use his brain to prevail because for some reason he's the only human to not have elemental superpowers, "furies". He can't even light a "fury lamp" without help. Basically a cripple. And the world has dangers of many sorts: physical, political, and supernatural even to the already supernatural humans. There be assassins, conquerors, family secrets, friends, respected enemies, games of chess in the middle of the battlefield, friendly spies, and foes orders of magnitude more dangerous than the entire army.

Half of the story focuses on Tavi's progress through life (with time skips between books) and the other half focuses on his friends and relatives and other important characters.

The names are a bit confusing. Alera is a continent in the world of Carna, together with Canea - the continent of wolf humanoids who can be pretty scary. Don't confuse the two. Varg is an honourable wolf enemy and the Vord are scarier than the wolf people. None of this is in book 1 because that's just a prologue.

The enemies were diverse, added to the story, and made it feel more real. What surprised me was that even the main villain, the Big Bad turned out to be quite likable, in a weird way. The story gives her enough attention to make sure the reader has no doubts what she wants and why she wants it.

I won't go into more detail because I don't want to spoil the thing before you read it. It's not a perfect story, it has a lot of fighting, but it has situational humour and enough self awareness to make me grow attached to it.

The beginning was written in the style of "stuff happens to the main characters", but later on the cast became agents of their own fates. I wish that happened sooner, but the world was too big to introduce every factor from the start. You'll have to deal with the fact that the world has too many moving parts for you to play the prediction game. Random events will happen.

The narration was often rubbish from subjective and objective points of view. I bet that nobody from the studio has ever listened to it back to back before publishing it. I got used to it, but a couple of times I had to go to the ebook to read the parts that were skipped/glitched. Nothing major and only a few sentences. On the subjective side, Kate Reading's intonation is often... off. Either I got used to it or it got better in the later books, but she's got a weird style that sometimes contradicts the intonation suggested by the book. Oh well. She has a talent to make everyone sound petulant. She never shouts when the characters are supposed to shout. I could go on.

4 people found this helpful

good

the editing was a bit ubrupt in place but it's a wonderful story read well.

4 people found this helpful

Great listen

I often judge a book by how quickly I rush off to download the next in the series. On that scale, this one is a 5/5. (Book #2 was downloaded within an hour of finishing #1).

I've enjoyed Jim Butcher's Dresden and Cinder Spires books - this is nothing like either of those. Think Wheel of Time meets Stormlight (perhaps due to the narrator being Kate Reading?) It's a new world with a well crafted magic system - epic fantasy. Loved it!

Lots of decent characters, nothing too predictable (even if it does have all the usual ingredients), and it moves along at a cracking pace.

The editing is not perfect - some sentences feel spliced together - but it didn't create any gaping holes in the plot and it didn't detract from the story too much.

What's also great is that there appear to be multiple books in the series. I'm already happily halfway into book #2, and the pace hasn't let up yet....

8 people found this helpful

Read this book years ago amazing what you miss

I love the Dresden books and when these books became available I bought the series and read them. They are so different and yet so well written.

When listening to the above book (it is a few years after I read the series) it is amazing what you miss. Compared with Jim Butcher's last book The Aeronauts Windlass (which I hated), the characters are believable and you feel an attachment to them even the villains.

In respect of the narrator I found two small problems in a couple places she seem to mix up the voices of the characters. Plus a couple of places the recording was jerky (bad recording).

But she has a pleasant voice that I virtually finished the book over two days .

Cannot wait for book two.

9 people found this helpful