Furies Of Calderon: The Codex Alera: Book One

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Isana even weaponizes this by giving Invidia hope of escape from the creature on her chest as a means of getting her to betray the Vord Queen. Woodcrafting: Manipulation of plants, including encouraging them to grow, or animating them directly, which also (as the name implies) applies to dead wood. It also grants the ability to create veils when enough plant matter is present, specifically with shadows. Most woodcrafters are archers, since control of both the arrows and bows gives them Improbable Aiming Skills. Ambiguously Bi: Played in jest during First Lord's Fury; When he, Kitai and Varg are all supremely impressed by Phyrigius Cyricus' impressive competence, Kitai jokingly remarks that she's now in love with Cyricus. Tavi's response to her? "I saw him first." Mandatory Motherhood: In Alera, female Citizens are required to have children, at least in part because furycrafting talent is hereditary and Alera constantly needs skilled furycrafters to keep their enemies at bay. A large part of Amara's angst in the series comes from her infertility (not helped by the fact that she also legitimately wants children of her own someday) which could potentially take away her Citizenship, but she and Bernard eventually invoke some Loophole Abuse through deciding to adopt the unrecognized bastard children of Aleran Citizens (i.e., Masha). Rags to Royalty: Starts as a poor, powerless shepherd. The series finishes with Tavi as the First Lord.

Here's one for the books: Jim Butcher is well-known for his "Dresden Files" series, created a fantastic fantasy series on a BET. Yep, a bet. Read on. Refuge in Audacity: Virtually every plan Tavi comes up with is hilariously audacious and crazy, overlapping nicely with his love for Crazy Enough to Work plans. Amusingly, by the later novels, his skill in this area has gotten to the point where most responses to his plans being discussed can be summed up as "By the Great Furies, he's doing something completely insane and over the top... But eh, it's Tavi, so we'll just go with it anyway."

Butcher took a lot of tropes and they are now my tropes. I lean on them so heavily that I count Codex Alera as mandatory reading, even though all of these tropes have been done before and quite possibly better, but for me, Codex Alera had the mixture I liked. And Furies of Calderon was the lure into the full world that I’d eventually consider a staple of the genre. Woodcrafters can use their powers to accelerate plant growth to bring in higher yields of crops for harvest along with being near-perfect hunters. Humans by Any Other Name: Why the Canim, Icemen, Marat, and Vord almost exclusively call them "Alerans," the actual Alerans use "Aleran" and "human" interchangeably, and it's made clear that there's no real difference between the two terms.

Flight: Skilled windcrafters can generate windstreams to support their bodies and allow them to soar through the air. Notably, it's mentioned that this talent requires a windcrafter to also learn how to create a shield of hardened air out in front of them so as to protect them from incoming objects like insects or arrows.Older Than They Look: Sufficiently skilled watercrafters seem to age at a slightly slower rate than other humans, to the point where Gaius Sextus (who is in his mid-to-late eighties by the time of Princeps' Fury) is described as looking like someone in their late forties or fifties aside from his snowy white hair.

Took a Level in Badass: She gets a lot more powerful after a little swim in the Leviathans' Run. Interestingly, it's not entirely clear why this is: maybe she got them from the swim in the ocean in a stressful situation, but then again maybe she had that power all along or Septimus left her some furies of his own when he died and she didn't realize it. In either case, any extraordinary use of her power in her homeland is more normal where she is familiar with the place, and because she's a nobody from the hinterlands, she just assumed she couldn't possibly be that powerful otherwise. Instead, it’s something I’ve already mentioned, Fidaleius. He’s a government assassin that has been loyal to the realm his entire life and has realised the high lord is dangerous to his people, and so as a strong, competent character makes his own decisions and is doing the work that the high lords and nobles can’t do themselves behind the scenes. He’s the facilitator for everything. He’s strong, he’s smart, he’s someone to be feared. In the entire book he is probably the character that knows the most. Not just of what he’s doing, but of the world in general. I just like this type of character and Fidalieus specifically is, in my opinion, really well written. Bernard was married, but his wife and two daughters passed away ten years prior to book 1 Furies of Calderon, due to the Blight. An unabridged audiobook edition of the novel was released by Penguin Audio on November 26, 2008. [9] It was followed by the release of an audio CD on December 1. [10]Heal It with Water: Healing magic is one of the watercrafting arts and one of the most commonly used for its Mundane Utility. It usually requires the patient to be immersed in a tub of water, but the more powerful practitioners don't need to do so. She is this to the Icemen when they sense she is truly honest about wanting peace, that peace might finally be achieved between their peoples.