Review: Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera series

Can I write about the Codex Alera series and keep it out of the shadow of Jim Butcher’s signature Dresden Files books? It ought to be possible… but I’m not going to try.

(One caveat: Furies of Calderon and Academ’s Fury are the only Alera novels I’ve read so far. Yes, “so far”—if you’re standing in front of a bookshelf or a Click To Buy button right now, you can take those two words as my recommendation. Or you can read on for my spoiler-free musings of what makes the books work, and what they show about what makes medieval-type fantasy so different from urban fantasy.)

Many of Alera’s readers must be coming there wondering if it will have some of the Dresden magic (of the storytelling kind, of course). Or as we true Dresden-philes see it, whether any other concept could cram so much fun into so few pages. And honestly, for this series that isn’t the goal.

Butcher likes to say these books are written out of his original love for classic “swords-and-horses” fantasy. In that it’s spot on: sprawling empires and clashing armies, all hingeing on valiant village leaders or conflicted spies.

It’s an appealling world, too. Alera is visibly descended from a “lost Roman Legion,” so a legionnaire wields a gladius and the culture mixes some history with the storytelling. The magic’s straightforward but not dull: its “furies” (spirits) don’t only fling the obvious element around, they’re as prized for their indirect effects, from enhanced strength to empathy. Plus, by the second book there are threats with more sinister options than armies and assassins, so anything can happen.

Best of all, it is Jim Butcher, so the thick of a fight can be as exciting and twisty as anything ever written. And there’s no shortage of fights.

What a Dresden fan would notice most is the difference in characters and pace. Harry Dresden is one of the most colorful, history-laden characters around, and he swims in a sea of fascinating friends that are scrambling to stop multiple plots in all too few pages. Codex Alera gives us Tavi, a shepherd boy we first meet for endangering his herds (and the fate of nations) when a village girl asks him to bring him some flowers… we soon see his cleverness against impossible odds, but he’ll have to climb up a 700-page book or two to be as obviously interesting as some folks we know.

But then, it’s the measured pace of his climb that’s the essence of the series. This is meant to be 700-page fantasy, with multiple viewpoints, wide worldbuilding, and all the rest.

 

Epic vs Urban Fantasy?

In fact: I’d recommend comparing Codex Alera with the Dresden Files for anyone who wants to ponder the differences between medieval-based fantasy (or medieval life) and modern life and contemporary-setting fantasy. It’s all in that slow, multicharacter pace of how old-fashioned heroes move through the world.

Or as Tolkien readers would say, you can’t have a classic journey if it’s easy to Call The Eagles.

Urban fantasy keeps pace with the modern world. That means layers of the world’s texture can take form in half a page, and each battle that breaks out and each implication of the magic might ripple out with Internet speed to change hundreds of pieces of the world. It’s no coincidence that Harry Dresden is one of many UF heroes who spend a healthy chunk of time telling the reader just how the unearthly affects their “ordinary” earth in so many ways, and that a major writing question in the genre is whether magic keeps to the shadows or if the public is in some stage of discovering it.

But in Codex Alera, more than one plot point hinges on whether news can reach a fort in time, a whole dozen miles away. And that slowness is a key to fantasy like this: making us feel that each town and city has roots and buffer spaces that keep them from spilling into each other like our interconnected age does. A writer there has to take time to make each of those separate places real, without quick reference to the modern world, hence those fantasy tropes that help us get our bearings. The best fantasies of this kind either make us live those rhythms, or—and this is the Alera approach—use them to keep the story always close to the next crisis. Either way we readers need that local understanding, because the hero can only function by learning each place’s separate rhythms of village councils, mountain survival, and chains of command—and he needs to be downright lucky to be in the right place to get armies moving in time at all.

No airplanes, and only a few wind-spirits to ride. Call it “you’ll believe a man can’t fly.”

[bctt tweet=”#Epicfantasy needs slow journeys – you’ll believe a man *can’t* fly. #CodexAlera http://bit.ly/CodexAlera” username=””]

Codex Alera respects that steady pace, and it isn’t a series that’s meant to be devoured. It’s a smooth, enjoyable read along familiar territory with frequent lunges forward into thrills. Stick with it, and see what it delivers.