Academ's Fury by Jim Butcher

Book 2 in the Codex Alera - which goes on (at this point) for six volumes - large volumes. That may be it, although Dresden has certainly gone on longer than that. Of course, as I pointed out in the post for the first book, Dresden is Urban Fantasy and Alera is High Fantasy. The clue that book six may be the end is that the title is First Lord's Fury, which implies that our hero eventually gets promoted to that level and the First Lord is the top dog in Alera, and since, based on the title of the book actually under discussion, the title reflects Tavi's status. In book one he is merely the handicapped orphan nephew of a steadholder and his sister and in book two he has achieved his heart's desire which is to attend the academy making him an academ - Aleran for student.

Perhaps some discussion of the magic of Alera is in order. Furies are elemental spirits which attach themselves to humans. Those who attach a water fury are healers and empaths, those with earth furies are builders and control growing things, those with air furies can fly and call on them for enhanced vision, those with fire furies are metalworkers, and so on. These are only the basic implications; it is a fairly involved system. One of the fundamentals is that strong furies tend to attach themselves to strong competent individuals, hence an inherent heirarchy.

Personally, I believe that Butcher calls these entities "furies" because it allows him to indulge his penchant for puns and irony. All of the Dresden titles are word plays, here all of his Alera titles can be read at face value or in knowledge of the local meaning of "fury." The irony arises because our hero, Tavi, who is clearly intelligent and resourceful, has no furies. Therefore, in the Aleran context he is handicapped. There are clear indications that there is more to Tavi than meets the eye, but nothing that has been explicitly defined as yet.

I actually finished this several days ago. I don't know why I didn't write it up. Lack of time, maybe? And I have the distinct impression that I read something else between these two. Maybe I just started a couple and ended up getting hooked on this. I was reading a Wilkie Collins - and a book by Daniel Pink - but I guess I didn't finish either one of them. Guess I'd better before I read book three - of course, I have already started the next book club book. Oh, well.