Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion hub of the series...

The Codex Alera by Jim Butcher

Please comment of each individual novel in it's own topic in Codex Alera discussion folder (Links to each novel's topic in the Table of Content below.) You can use this topic for general discussions of the series as a whole.

Since this works a little differently from an anthology read, as we'll read one book a month from the series, please clearly tag any spoilers if you read some books in advance. Each month I will post a new individual thread.


CONTENT

Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher
Academ's Fury by Jim Butcher
Cursor's Fury by Jim Butcher
Captain's Fury by Jim Butcher
Princep's Fury by Jim Butcher
First Lord's Fury by Jim Butcher

I've been wanting to read this ever since I read how it came about.

The challenger bet that Butcher could not write a good story based on a lame idea, and he countered that he could do it using two lame ideas of the challenger's choosing. The lame ideas given were "Lost Roman Legion", and "Pokémon".

The Legion is obvious, for those not familiar with Pokemon they are kind of spirits within rocks and trees and things, like the Japanese Kami, and hence, the Furies came to be.

I read this about 5 years ago in paperback & enjoyed it. I'll start it in audio once I'm finished with my current book Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives.

Having a hard time tracking down my copy, but hope to do so in time to get in on this. It has been on my TBR for ages.

Into the second half of the series now!

Second to last book is ready to go

And we're now at the sixth and final book!

I'll be a little late starting since I was slower reading another book than I expected but I'll jump in soon enough.

I'm a big fan of the genre, but I'm not a fan of this particular series.

I've read all six novels last year. I don't remember the kid-protagonist at all, I don't remember the girl-sidekick's name. Or the name of the villain. I know there was an evil-roman since it was roman theme and that half of the series is mega-alternate-lifeform problem, but it was all completely forgettable to me.

It's something unique to the series. It's been even longer since Vin from Mistborn and I remember her. Or Jorge from Prince of Thorns. Or Logan the Bloody-Nine from kingkiller chronicles. Or Kip/Gavin from the Blind Prism stuff.

Codex Alera just came off as someone trying to make formulaic paint-by-numbers fantasy with 5/10 results to me. If it was a challenge, I'd have called it a failed challenge personally.

He started with two extremely simple concepts, not lame ideas, roman legion = A military (there's ZERO difficulty to incorporate a military in a fantasy series. They're in basically half of all fantasy by default) and the second "lame idea" (yeah right) that he had to include was Magical Creatures (again, in basically half of all fantasy, ZERO difficulty.)

He took two of the most common genre devices that are already combined in hundreds of other books and pumped out a just-average filler series. Not an even slightly impressive feat to be perfectly frank.

When I hear someone recommend it and instead of talking about it having well-written characters or it having a good plot progression or satisfying end or something, instead it's just "guy wrote this book for a bet" as the selling point, red flags go up for me.

I'm not arguing it's a disaster. It isn't horrible, it's just definitely not at all "turning a bad idea into gold", it's simply "turning a completely ordinary fantasy novel idea into a completely ordinary fantasy novel."