Furies of Calderon

Codex Alera, Book 1

By: Jim Butcher

Narrated by: Kate Reading

Length: 19 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

In the realm of Alera, where people bond with the furies - elementals of earth, air, fire, water, and metal - 15-year-old Tavi struggles with his lack of furycrafting. But when his homeland erupts in chaos - when rebels war with loyalists and furies clash with furies - Tavi's simple courage will turn the tides of war.

©2005 Jim Butcher (P)2008 Penguin Audiobooks

Critic reviews

“Epic fantasy in the best way, inspired by Tolkien.” (New York Times best-selling author Simon R. Green

“A stay-up-all-night-’til-you-finish-it-book, Furies of Calderon is a marvelous read.” (Number-one New York Times best-selling author Patricia Briggs)

“Absorbing...Butcher does a thorough job of world building, to say nothing of developing his action scenes with an abundance of convincing detail.” (Publishers Weekly)

Performance lost one star for music.

Kate Reading is an excellent narrator. The more I hear of her work, the more I'm impressed.

That being said, I found the goofy musical interludes to be distracting and utterly unnecessary. They did not signify anything, and seemed to serve no purpose other than to break the listener out of the story.

The story itself is surprisingly engaging and entertaining. The elemental system is well developed yet not over explained, the human society familiar enough to be comfortable, yet laced with mystique.

This is a fun read.

Good book

I enjoyed listening to this book and Kate Reading did a fantastic job! The author did a good enough job to actually make me mad at him for the level of cold heartedness he put into his bad guys. The story was very good and made me sad at times, laugh at witty statements and get genuinely frustrated and angry at others, but there was just something lacking at times... The fights with alderic were never satisfying to me and always just left me frustrated... And that made me give 4 stars instead of 5 for the story.

Simply Marvelous!

An experiance that should not be missed. A masterful Epic with many twists and turns that keep you well engaged through the entire series!.

The Orator is amazing as well with a range of voice and emotion that will make the Epic come alive and dance.

Awesome

What did you love best about Furies of Calderon?

Reader did an excellent job at pulling into the story

What about Kate Reading’s performance did you like?

She varied the voices well and made it easy to distinguish the characters/

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Close to it..Took less than a week during the commute.

sound effects almost ruined this book for me

good story, but I hated the extra sound effects and was very jarring. the whole story would have been just fine with out the extra noise.

Great story, awful narration

I've read this book and love the author, but the narrator is terrible. Can't pronounce certain words and puts the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllables... it's extremely distracting.

annoying trumpets

annoying trumpets blowing your ears out RIP headphones users. story good though, voice actress is alright but bland tho could use some more presence.

Story and performance fantastic.

Love the story. Jim Butchers range of writing is always new.
Kate’s performance is amazing.
The horns throughout were often annoying as it distracted from the book and often hurt my ears.
Another good read.

Performance - Great; Editing - Slipshod

The recording had no faults in & of itself. However, the editor of the finalized recording literally rammed the paragraphs together.

All of the sentences end & begin with the appropos pause between sentences. The paragraph transitions sound like the reader was afraid to take a breath due to rushed recording. Since every paragraph transition is almost a run-on sentence it's hard to get used to. After a few pages or maybe a chapter, your mind can overlook the oddness.

I've read this entire series before, and the story is really good. I'm hoping the second recording is edited better...

First Jim Butcher book

Not bad. I thought the story could've been stronger. Narration was awesome. Weird trumpet sounds were annoying. Might read the next one.