|
About half way into the first book. If this is the weakest book in the series, it looks like I'm in for all of them. Really enjoying the audiobook version.
|
#
?
May 3, 2015 18:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 00:56 |
|
|
The audiobooks get better too. Marsters had some annoying habits in the first one like smacking his lips and stuff. Kinda sperged me out but he broke them in the later books. As a sidenote the Furies of Calderon audibooks are good too. They are voiced by Kate Reading and she does a phenomenal job with changing her voice as the protagonist ages.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2015 18:51
|
|
|
Well summer knight was the first audio book produced.
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2015 19:41
|
|
|
I read Codex Alera when I was going through Dresden in university. It wasn't bad or anything, but I didn't think it was as strong as Dresden. Still, I guess this was what Butcher had always wanted to do as a writer ("swords and horses" fantasy, as I believe he described it in the back matter).
|
|
#
?
May 3, 2015 20:58
|
|
|
Wheat Loaf posted:I read Codex Alera when I was going through Dresden in university. It wasn't bad or anything, but I didn't think it was as strong as Dresden. Still, I guess this was what Butcher had always wanted to do as a writer ("swords and horses" fantasy, as I believe he described it in the back matter). The entirety of Codex Alera was written on a bet to prove that someone good at writing could make gold with any random lovely concept (in this case, two were picked; the lost roman legion, and pokemon) - so given that premise, I think he did a reasonable job. I certainly enjoyed the first few, but I was a bit less interested in everything after they more-or-less made up with the Canim and started wholesale into fighting the
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 08:28
|
|
|
I have issues with Codex Alera, mostly relating to characterization. One of Butcher's techniques, used in Dresden Files as well, is mashing together two character archetypes from different genres in a single character. Sometimes this works and gives us characters like Harry Dresden, but in Codex Alera it tends to go badly and yield characters like Kitai, the tsundere noble savage. I do like the setting, though, aside from the Marat.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 09:33
|
|
|
That, along with the constantly recycled villains is pretty much my problem with it too. It's not bad by any means, it just doesn't hold interest very well (and Kitai is awful). Butcher is much better at doing twists on existing mythologies and folk tales than making up his own (barbarian hordes, check. Beastmen, check. Giant bugs, check.). Even the whole fury magic thing feels weak and half-assed.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 09:43
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:That, along with the constantly recycled villains is pretty much my problem with it too. It's not bad by any means, it just doesn't hold interest very well (and Kitai is awful). Butcher is much better at doing twists on existing mythologies and folk tales than making up his own (barbarian hordes, check. Beastmen, check. Giant bugs, check.). Even the whole fury magic thing feels weak and half-assed. I like the whole 'everyone has innate magic and it's used for anything and everything including mundane everyday tasks' idea with the furies, and how lacking this basic ability makes it hard to function, though he doesn't do too much interesting with it outside of some fun battles. I honestly think he could have done a more interesting story if he never got his furies, or just stuck with the crippled internal-only version he had for a while, instead of becoming a demigod. Most of the best stuff was when he was powerless or mostly powerless
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 10:26
|
|
|
Overall I like Alera. Probably because I'm a sucker for all things Roman but it's got issues. The first book in Codex Alera was kinda OK though the tone was kind of all over the place. A coming of age story with magic pokemens and oh look sexual slavery. The next two or three were quite good with the third I being by far the best. It just started going downhill from there though. I agree with Wolpen. The moment Tavi started using furies was the moment the series turned for the worse. The more power his furies had the worse it got culminating in a big wet turd of a final book. Also the Vord or whatever the bugs were weren't a very interesting villain. The series would've been better if it had been more about twisted internal political backstabbery instead. Still I'd like to see Butcher return to the Alera series at some point. I liked the world alright.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 13:07
|
|
|
thespaceinvader posted:The entirety of Codex Alera was written on a bet to prove that someone good at writing could make gold with any random lovely concept (in this case, two were picked; the lost roman legion, and pokemon) - so given that premise, I think he did a reasonable job. I certainly enjoyed the first few, but I was a bit less interested in everything after they more-or-less made up with the Canim and started wholesale into fighting the And as long as I'm listing petty gripes, there's something weird about how everybody lives in a slave society yet the good guys all instinctively know that Slavery Is Wrong and only those pre-ordained as The Bad Ones would ever dream of being involved in it. Which is almost as weird as Amara having a job as basically an FBI agent yet taking multiple books to realize that maybe even politicians she likes are willing to do morally questionable things. That is a very weird, very specific sort of innocence. Drakyn fucked around with this message at 15:26 on May 4, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 15:19
|
|
|
Alera was a lot of fun. I also agree with the posters above about Tavi's later book developments. The second, third and fourth books are the best ones.Drakyn posted:Amara having a job as basically an FBI agent yet taking multiple books to realize that maybe even politicians she likes are willing to do morally questionable things. That is a very weird, very specific sort of innocence. Blasphemeral fucked around with this message at 15:40 on May 4, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 15:36
|
|
|
Blasphemeral posted:Alera was a lot of fun. I also agree with the posters above about Tavi's later book developments. The second, third and fourth books are the best ones.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 15:49
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:OH YEAH NEW READERS DO NOT CLICK THESE HUGE SPOILERS. Unlike Dresden, Nightingale has been on the front lines of a full-blown war - with all the "steel in the air" that brings to bear. I think he's much better prepared for something like a single, albeit high-powered, bullet - even if it is unexpected.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 21:11
|
|
|
PreacherTom posted:I think he's much better prepared for something like a single, albeit high-powered, bullet - even if it is unexpected. Didn't do such a good job on that front in the first book. 
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 21:41
|
|
|
Alera is okay, but that's all. Other posters have hit on some of the things, but I think the big problem is that Butcher is trying to be 100% serious, and his strength is being able to inject humor into scenes like he does with Dresden. He goes for the epic fantasy style political maneuvering and so on, and it's just plain boring. There are entire point of view characters that do nothing interesting in the entire series, existing to show political crap, and they're a huge slog to get through. I mean, does Isana do anything interesting at all, ever, or even anything that really has any effect on the plot? I also hate the Zerg Vord - it's a clear rip off, down to the creep, and a bad one at that. The lead up was interesting - people were disappearing, etc., and you as the reader knew what was going on, but the characters didn't, so that was really interesting, but the reveal and implementation after that discovery period was terrible. The series has its moments, but overall it's just really flawed. I think he might be able to come back some day and do a better job, but overall, Alera is just okay.
|
|
#
?
May 4, 2015 21:59
|
|
|
I actually liked the politics stuff, it was way more interesting than the zerg. Politics/spy stuff/military stuff with the powerless underdog everyone underestimates due to his powerlessness is more interesting than living god exploding millions of bugs.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 00:03
|
|
|
If i remember correctly from Butcher's interview, the entire idea of Alera was to use old "overused" ideas and present them in a new fresh way. It was born out of argument of "originality" vs "presentation". So he did re-use a lot of ideas like pokemon/roman legion/hive-mind-monsters. But overall its a great story that clearly shows that presentation and storytelling is often as important as having new original idea, if not more.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 06:08
|
|
|
I liked codex alera except for the dragon Ball z style power creep in the later books.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 06:46
|
|
|
Wheat Loaf posted:Didn't do such a good job on that front in the first book. I really, really want to read about how Nightingale single-handedly held the retreat from Ettersburg and kept it from being even more brutal of a slaughter than it was.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 16:10
|
|
|
Wade Wilson posted:I really, really want to read about how Nightingale single-handedly held the retreat from Ettersburg and kept it from being even more brutal of a slaughter than it was. Blasting apart Tiger tanks with magic spells and poo poo. 
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 16:13
|
|
|
Wheat Loaf posted:Blasting apart Tiger tanks with magic spells and poo poo. Aaronovitch, Ben (2015-01-06). Foxglove Summer: A Rivers of London Novel (PC Peter Grant Book 5) (p. 116). DAW. Kindle Edition. posted:“You should have seen him at Ettersberg,” he said softly. “It was like standing before the walls of Troy. Aías d’amphì Menoitiádei sákos eurù kalúpsas hestékei hós tís te léon perì hoîsi tékessin, but Ajax covered the son of Menoitios with his broad shield and stood fast , like a lion over its children.”
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 16:21
|
|
|
Wheat Loaf posted:Blasting apart Tiger tanks with magic spells and poo poo. 
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 17:31
|
|
|
Drakyn posted:Which is almost as weird as Amara having a job as basically an FBI agent yet taking multiple books to realize that maybe even politicians she likes are willing to do morally questionable things. That is a very weird, very specific sort of innocence. Tavi coming into his furies does weaken the series, however. Especially with the final boss fight essentially being something from Dragonball Z. The series peaks at Cursor's Fury (book 3). Mars4523 fucked around with this message at 18:04 on May 5, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 18:00
|
|
|
It'd also help if Tavi's name was somewhat less transparent. I think I connected the dots in the first book, he reveals it explicitly in like, fourth? Anyway, my favorite Alera book was the one about the conflict with the dogmen, can't remember if it was 2 or 4.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 18:22
|
|
|
anilEhilated posted:It'd also help if Tavi's name was somewhat less transparent. I think I connected the dots in the first book, he reveals it explicitly in like, fourth? The one where the furies are used to make a gigantic death laser out of sunlight.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 18:31
|
|
|
Mars4523 posted:Amara "graduates" into a full Cursor in the first book. She is very young and idealistic. You might have a point if she had already been around the block a few times and was a little jaded, but not here. I'll admit fully that I'm not coming at this from a remotely forgiving point of view, mind you. For a fair amount of readers the moment the series went majorly downhill was when the main character got superpowers; for me it was when it turned out he and his teacher were secretly collaborating to train all the other students better because he was Just That Good.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 18:46
|
|
|
Basically Codex Alera is an enjoyable but heavily flawed work that probably should have been cut from six books to four.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 18:53
|
|
|
Can I look at this without spoiling the book? 
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 20:45
|
|
|
Wheat Loaf posted:Can I look at this without spoiling the book? I would think so. It's a minor spoiler about the backstory of a supporting character.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 21:04
|
|
|
Wheat Loaf posted:Can I look at this without spoiling the book? It's talking about the same incident that you mentioned in a previous post, it's just from the point of view of another character who was at that particular incident. If you already know about 'the biggest thing Nightingale ever killed', it is not a spoiler.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 21:11
|
|
|
Drakyn posted:That is still incredibly naive given who her teacher was and what the entire scope and role of her job is; like a butcher's apprentice who freaks out when confronted with their first live cow because HOLY CRAP NOBODY TOLD ME WE KILL THESE THINGS! If you've spent years training to be a secret agent and spy underneath possibly the most worn-down and cynical man alive it's sort of incredible that you haven't at least marginally realized that sometimes your job is not nice by the time the graduation bell rings.
|
|
#
?
May 5, 2015 21:34
|
|
|
General Emergency posted:The audiobooks get better too. Marsters had some annoying habits in the first one like smacking his lips and stuff. Kinda sperged me out but he broke them in the later books. Man I know I am in the minority but I completely disagree. I really, really liked the "background" noises in the first 4 audiobooks. I don't like it in most audiobooks, but since this one is specifically written as Dresden telling the story of what happened, I found the entire presentation of the way he spoke, including deep breaths, smacking lips, and all the rest to enhance the story telling. Marsters didn't do these things randomly - he always did them in a way that someone would do naturally while telling these stories to someone. Most of the non-speech noises were centered around "difficult to tell" sections of the book where he would hesitate to continue and stuff. I loved it! But the audiobook reviews definitely show that not everyone did. And to be more correct it's not that Marsters changed anything in later books. Books 1-4 were produced by Buzzy Multimedia, but then it switched to Penguin Audio from Book 5 onward. Penguin does their editing differently to eliminate the noises you're talking about. Until I got used to it, I hated that the production feels more "sterile" - all of the silences are digitally noise gated instead of natural not-quite-silence from a microphone. I guess another way to say it is that the original production felt more like Dresden recording his own records of the events, and the new version feels like a produced audiobook. When it switched production houses a bunch of the voices also switched, which was jarring and annoying when listening to Book 5. Now I'm used to the new voices of course. OverloadUT fucked around with this message at 18:54 on May 7, 2015 |
|
#
?
May 7, 2015 18:35
|
|
|
Here's my new theory about Mac as I reread Cold Days: Mac is our lord and savior Jesus
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 03:50
|
|
|
Literally The Worst posted:Here's my new theory about Mac as I reread Cold Days: Mac is our lord and savior Jesus That actually makes a little bit of sense.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 03:53
|
|
|
Jesus is a bartender with a shotgun. America
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 04:04
|
|
|
Literally The Worst posted:Jesus is a bartender with a shotgun. America Checks out.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 04:29
|
|
|
Literally The Worst posted:Jesus is a bartender with a shotgun. America
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 06:46
|
|
|
g0del posted:Still less ridiculous than Jesus in the Iron Druid books. I don't plan to read Iron Druid, please spoil me.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 10:41
|
|
|
Emy posted:I don't plan to read Iron Druid, please spoil me. All of the not-protagonist characters are actually well done, not sure where that guy is coming from. There's a moment where Jesus shows up as a black guy and says something about how nice it is to be remembered somewhat close to how he actually looked by someone living in the area. Deities in Iron Druid are restricted by how people believe in them. Not a new idea, Iron Druid just takes it to a more direct conclusion than American Gods did (& it's a fairly important plot point in The Morrigan's subplot).
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 11:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 00:56 |
|
|
Literally The Worst posted:Jesus is a bartender with a shotgun. America He doesn't brew his beer, he just waves his hand over a bathtub with water once in a while.
|
|
#
?
May 9, 2015 17:18
|
|
