Everyone's reading New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series, terrific urban fantasy novels about the only wizard in the Chicago phone book. But you may not be aware of Jim Butcher's equally entertaining epic fantasy series. In the Codex Alera, Jim Butcher write swords-and-horses fantasy with as much aplomb as he does the adventures of Harry Dresden.

You know those epic fantasy novels that recycle the same plot you've read a bazillion times where the young goatherd discovers he's really the Most Powerful Sorcerer Evah and must go on a quest to find the Magical Kumquat of Destiny before the Darkest Lord of Absolute Darkness snatches it to make the Award-Winning Preserves of Doom?

This is not one of them.

In the Codex Alera, the main character, Tavi of Calderon, does start out as a shepherd (I give you that). But the land of Alera is a place where magic permeates everyday existence, as the people use their bond with the furies—elementals of earth, air, fire, water, wood, and metal—to do everything from lighting lamps to fighting off enemies. And Tavi is one of the exceedingly rare people who have no furies. He's always had to do things the long way, without magic, and this has helped him to develop the intelligence and courage to handle whatever comes at him.

Over the course of the series, Tavi has made it out of the Calderon Valley to the capitol city to the borders of Alera, and in Captain's Fury, he's now serving as captain of the First Aleran Legion. After two years of bitter conflict with hordes of invading Canim warriors, Tavi realizes that a peril far greater than the Canim exists—the mysterious threat that drove the Canim to flee their homeland and invade Alera in the first place. And in order to face this danger, Tavi must attempt the previously unthinkable: alliance with the Canim. . .

Captain's Fury is available now in hardcover, and if for whatever crazy reason you haven't tried this series yet, go now and check out the first book, Furies of Calderon, in paperback.