Cursor’s Fury: Sloppy plot, uninspired prose, exciting story

Cursor’s Fury by Jim Butcher

After having dealt with the Vord horde in Academ’s Fury, there are new worries in Cursor’s Fury, the third novel in Jim Butcher’s CODEX ALERA saga. The rebel uprising has gained strength and the aging and heirless First Lord of Alera is in danger of being overthrown. Those who are loyal, including Tavi and his friends and relatives, are targets. While Bernard, Amara, and Isana make some dubious alliances to try to counter the rebels, Tavi, who is now a Cursor, has been sent as a spy to a newly formed army legion. Clearly Tavi is being protected (ah, but for what purpose?) because nobody expects this remote legion to see any action…. but everybody is wrong and Tavi ends up commanding an ill-prepared military force.

As usual, this installment of CODEX ALERA is full of action and intrigue. A lot of the plot is pretty implausible — especially the parts dealing with Tavi’s military exploits — and to enjoy this book you really have to suspend disbelief. Young Tavi is the only person in Alera without any sort of magic assistance and he has no military experience, yet he’s brave, a brilliant tactician, and a great leader. (It helps that the enemy is pretty stupid.)

The most implausible part, though, which I mentioned in my review of Academ’s Fury, is how all the good guys are able to reason out and be sure of what the bad guys’ motives and plans are with very little evidence. The good guys make their plans based on a series of incredibly insightful leaps of logic which are backed up by hunches rather than data. This would never work in real life. Unfortunately, this happens so often that it makes much of the plot unbelievable.

And while I’m in complaint mode, let me finally say something which I’ve been tempted to say in many reviews in the past but have until now restrained myself from:

You don’t need the word “bodily” in sentences like these which are found in Cursor’s Fury:

• … and threw himself bodily into the armored body of the Cane…
• Her first instinct was to hurl herself bodily at Lady Aquitaine…
• … one of them slammed bodily into the solid trunk of a particularly tall oak.

It’s redundant and ugly. There I said it. It seems petty, which is why I’ve held my tongue until now, but it happens so often in this series that I’m compelled to speak up. Authors, please excise the word “bodily” from your text. Your writing will be better for it. (And while we’re at it, let’s remove “solid” and “particularly” from that last sentence.)

Back to the story. If you are willing to excuse a sloppy plot and uninspired prose if the story is exciting, you’ll probably enjoy Cursor’s Fury. Despite my complaints, I find that I want to know what happens to Tavi. I’m finally starting to care about Tavi, Max and Fade (I don’t like any of the women in the story) but it shouldn’t have taken three books to get me to this point. Butcher keeps giving us little hints that Tavi is more than he seems (not like we didn’t know that to begin with) and I want to know what happens to him. Butcher also throws in a not-completely-unexpected twist at the end which will make most readers want to read on.

I’ll admit that part of my willingness to read the next book, Captain’s Fury, is due to my ability to borrow the audiobook from my library. The audio version is nicely narrated by Kate Reading but I wish Penguin Audio hadn’t added the startling trumpet blasts at the end of each chapter.