Jim Butcher is best known for The Dresden Files, a noirish urban fantasy series. Academ’s Fury is the second book in his straight, high fantasy series, The Codex Alera, which is set in a world at the tech­no­log­i­cal level of the Roman Empire. Many of the characters have Roman names and I expect that we’ll learn in a future book that they are somehow de­scen­dants of marooned Romans. This is not Earth: there are several alien races. More im­por­tant­ly, every human can call upon one or more furies, elemental beings with varying levels of control over air, fire, water, wood, and metal.

Every human except one: Tavi, the teenaged hero, who cannot call upon any furies whatsoever. He is now a student at the elite Academy in the capital of the Realm. The story switches between Tavi, his aunt Isana, and her brother Bernard’s lover, Amara: all of whom come to realize that their world is under attack by a hitherto unknown alien race, the Vord.

This is an en­ter­tain­ing, fast-paced novel with plenty of swords and not a little sorcery, which contrives to leave almost every chapter hanging from a cliff.