Furies of Calderon

I really like this book... but I wanted to love it. But, to explain further, that would give away some spoilers... so here is the obligatory...

:::SPOILER ALERT:::


I started the Codex Alera series because I was curious about its origins. The legendary bet posed to Butcher by another writer... can you write a story based on two cheesy concepts, that being Pokemon and the Lost Roman Legion. And in my estimation, I think Butcher failed the bet. Now don't get me wrong. The story is great. Butcher manages to create a magic system that rivals the best in any epic fantasy. The magic is based on these creatures, called Furies... the supposed Pokemon part of the bet. But they do not resemble Pokemon in anyway, they are much cooler... they are the magic of the Codex Alera.
Now, the Lost Roman Legion aspect is pretty interesting, but I will reserve my nit-picky issues with this aspect until I've read the whole series.
My biggest disappoint with this series is the World Building. Butcher writes a great story, and builds a really cool world. But he misses a lot of potential in his world building. One of the biggest things that I feel he dropped the ball with is the technological advancement. Here we have a society based on ancient Rome. The Aleran Society has existed for several thousand years, has learned how to harness the magic of this world, yet they are still pretty much stuck back at the level of ancient Rome. I can imagine some really great advancements these lost Romans from Earth could have come up with, especially now that they have magic. But, as a friend of mine and I discussed, this seems to be a fault of many great epic fantasy books.
Overall, the story is good. It starts off a little slow, but it certainly picks up. However, Butcher does something I've not seen in other books. He tells a part of the story from one POV and then resolves it from that characters POV, and then goes back and tells the same story from a different POV. The reason why this style of storytelling really sticks out to me is because these POV scenes go on for many chapters and you almost forget about the other characters. To me it feels a bit jarring.