Book Review:  2   Treasure Boxes

This is a new and interesting concept in Fantasy.  The series is about a country called Alera on the world of Carna, where there are elemental beings who can control metal, air, water, earth or fire, they are called Furies.  Some of these beings are wild and can do harm, but when they are wild they do not seem to have a lot of intelligence.  There are also several peoples who live there. They all have different physical looks and abilities.

There are the Calderons who the story centers around, and who resemble us physically, and almost everyone has the ability to bond  with Furies. They can both with anywhere from 1 to 5 Furies from the age of adolescence on with varying degrees of strength.  The nobility tend to have access to the most Furies with the greatest strength, and as this ability tends to be hereditary, that probably explains why.

The Marats, who are similar to us, but different in looks in that they are extremely pale, light skinned and different in that they have an ability to bond mentally and emotionally with other creatures.

The Carin are humanoid but with wolf characteristics both physically and socially.  They have access to a different form of magic that they acquire through the death blood of either their enemies or their own people.

The Iceman are savage, apelike creatures who can communicate with each other without speaking and they seem to have control over the weather.

The final peoples are the Vord, who are enemies to everyone.  They are not humanoid, but rather more insectoid. They operate under the mental command of queens, have the ability to read minds, can burrow into a dead body and re-animate it while adding great strength and no fear. They can also move extremely fast. The queen has the ability to hatch out many different sized and shaped Vord, she also has the ability to create new forms of Vord to better able them to fight their enemies.

The stories center around Tavi a young sheep herding apprentice. From the Calderon valley of Alera and his family. There are 6 books in the series, where Tavi is the protagonist, showing his growth as a person as well as his many adventures fighting the various peoples on his world.  I found the series to be interesting and intriguing.

Book 1: Furies of Calderon, Book 2: Academ’s Fury, Book 3:Cursor’s Fury, Book 4: Captain’s Fury, Book 5: Princep’s Fury, Book 6: First Lord’s Fury