Furies of Calderon kicks off the Codex Alera series which is an excellent 6 book series written by Jim Butcher. The series follows the life of Tavi, a young boy with no fury-crafting skills, in a world where everyone has access to elemental furies and their magical abilities. The fantasy world of Alera is very interesting and the magic system hooks you in quickly by creating a diverse set of circumstances. Furies are elemental beings (Air, Earth, Fire, Metal, Water or Wood) capable of helping the person who summons them in various ways from small everyday tasks through fighting in combat. As examples, earth furies help lift heavy loads and wind furies help their summoner travel faster. Alerans start to manifest their personal furies as children and by the time they are teenagers they are capable of summoning one or more furies to aid them at will. A person's place in society is often dictated by the strength of their furies.

And then there is Tavi. Tavi is hard pressed to get by compared to the rest of the world because he lacks fury-crafting skills. This handicap puts him at a disadvantage and places him on the bottom of society. For him, and his family, his lack of fury-crafting is quite embarrassing but it also forces him to learn to use skills that others neglect due to their reliance on fury-crafting. Tavi must rely on his own physical and mental prowess to succeed in life because he can't just summon an elemental force to help him overcome any challenge he faces.

The 6 book series follows Tavi's life and the role he plays in keeping the kingdom of Alera whole against various threats from within and without. The First Lord is aging and a civil war is brewing as a power-struggle forms over the succession. There are also threats to Alera on multiple borders that are ready to take advantage of the unstable situation and the overall situation puts the kingdom on the verge of collapse. This makes for a compelling story arc and Jim Butcher does a great job across all 6 books in the series. Once I started on the first book it quickly became obvious that I was going "all in" and six books later I was still as satisfied as when I first began the journey. I can definitely recommend this series to anyone who is a fan of Epic Fantasy.

Jim Butcher is better known as the author of the Dresden Files series and the path he took to writing this series is an interesting one. During an online writer's workshop Jim Butcher was challenged by someone to write a series based on a lame idea. Butcher countered that he could write a good series based on any two lame ideas and he was given the following two ideas by the challenger: Lost Roman Legion and Pokemon. Thus the Codex Alera series was born.

For audiobook fans, Kate Reading is the narrator and she does an excellent job. She is a veteran fantasy reader who does male and female voices well and she does a great job with this series. The series contains 6 books: Furies of Calderon, Academ's Fury, Cursor's Fury, Captain's Fury, Princeps' Fury, and First Lord's Fury.