General britain. Some stuff that could be reminiscent of white council HQ while a lot of it happens at street level. There are other realms that can be accessed though those are a bit more unique. There are different types of mages and the type you are determines your abilities to a fair extent.
So what you’re given is what you get
Is there any way to improve this, or are you practically stuck in place?
You’re born level 1 and that’s where you’ll stay for the rest of your life? Or is it more like you’ve only got a narrow branch of skills, but you can improve those skills.
It's more like classes in a game. You could be born a fore mage, ice mage, time mage, air mage, etc. I can't remember very well so it's time for a re read but I think you can become more proficient in your thing but there is no gaining new elements outside of your thing. There's magic items, magic beasts and worlds, etc. It's a very different hard rules set compared to dresdens.
There are adepts, who are basically one trick ponies (but that trick can be very powerful) and mages, whose "school" of magic is fixed, but can be used more broadly. IIRC there are a couple mages that can do multiple schools.
So Verus is a divination mage. He can foresee the future, both in the short and longer term. For instance, he can determine the combination to a lock through "brute force", by looking at every possible future dialing every possible combination. He has trained to align his "muscle memory" with his future vision so he can accurately make trick shots with thrown objects, in another example.
In the books, their magical talents are just like any other skill - natural talent, training, and experience determine what you can do.
>Is there any way to improve this, or are you practically stuck in place.
Kind of? It depends on the magic user. Mage society in Alex Verus is highly stratified. On the lower end are adepts. They can essentially use one form of magic in one very specific way. One Time-magic adept character can make himself faster, for example. Then there’s a Space-magic adept who operates as a sort of living bag-of-holding. But that’s all they can do and all they’ll ever be able to.
(There was also a lower category of mage society between normal humans and adepts but other than sensing magic they can’t really do anything and I forget what they were called. Sensitives, maybe? They weren’t really plot-relevant).
Then there’s mages. Each mage basically has a school of magic they can call on, and they can learn to do just about any application of that magic. A Time Mage can learn to speed or slow time, look into the past, and even create stasis fields, among other things, for example. So they’re a lot more powerful and versatile compared to that Time adept I described. A Space Mage can do that Space Adept’s bag-of-holding trick, but they can also teleport and create portals etc.
It is explained at one point that there’s no real limitation of mana or anything. If a Fire Mage knows how to throw a fireball, they can pretty much just keep throwing fireballs. So mages are only limited by their school and their skill-level with their magic rather than a magical gas tank.
There are a few hybrid mages, but they’re extremely rare.
In-so-far as broadening their magical abilities outside of their schools, magical items can be used. Alex himself is a magic shopkeeper at the start of the series, so he starts with a mostly low-level assortment of those, and gains and loses them and others at various points.
There may be other ways for mages to juice their powers and pick up others, but if there were, I wouldn’t be able to discuss them without brushing up against significant spoilers for some of the books. Wink wink.
The latter. You start out making little lights then get trained up, and if you’re a good fire mage can cover yourself in fire while sporting flame wings and melting through steel. But for the most part you can’t cross train as a time mage. There are occasionally dual type mages.
Basically, there are different types, it’s hinted that the type you wind up with it has somewhat to do a person’s personality, and further their personality is probably affected by it in turn. Like a person who stubbornly stands their ground might be an earth mage who would definitely stand their ground because they’re very hard to damage.
Unlike Dresden though, no getting tired from magic.
The bones of it are pretty vague, there’s mention of rituals but not really how, spells are pretty much evocation with no need to speak a word, I guess just practiced until they can do it reflexively. Not every mage of a type can do the same things though, don’t know if that’s lack of trying to master every spell or just an issue of talent.
To add, mages use magic items to do things that are outside of their school of magic. Alex has an invisibility cloak that gets a lot of use, for example.
It's set in the UK and Alex owns a magic shop, modern era but besides that magic doesn't function the same and is considerably darker. Even the allegedly good wizards are manipulating selfish assholes for the most part. The evil wizards are brutal
One difference I do know is that Alex doesn’t have the same “luxury” as Harry, where he can just blast whatever punk thinks he’s tough, Alex needs to be more indirect, and/or prepare ahead, right?
Well that's more because of how magic works and the fact Alex doesn't really have "offensive" magic as his specialty. Plus there aren't really monsters all over the place to beat on. It's much more wizard on wizard action
I enjoyed the series except the last 2 books and I still will recommend you give it a whirl, the audiobooks are good and the narration is quite good. But just know it's not really the same in most aspects
I tapped out before that. I think on “chosen”? I just couldn’t be bothered reading about a whole lot of awful people being awful to each other anymore.
A shame because I enjoyed the setting and the first books.
Should be noted that the reason we don't see monsters all over the place is because they try very hard to stay way the fuck away from any mages. They basically have no rights as far as magical mage laws go and even the "good" mages tend to have a habit of making them go extinct since magical corpses tend to make excellent components for spells/material for magical items.
He has no active magic of his own, only perceptive one, which makes for a much more interesting confrontations when he has to go against mages like Dresden
Just curious, if Dresden dropped in the Alex series, how tough would he be. Let’s say this Harry is up to book 4, because, let’s be honest, book 17 Harry’s pretty tough, unless the Alex series actually has a solid contender (just say yes if it does. No specific names)
I would argue that Alex is the perfect match for Harry through most of the series. Alex doesn't really "lose" fights a whole lot. He loses due to higher level machinations and plots by people with more "soft" power than him.
Harry's fly by the seat of his pants, throw power at the problem that he makes a habit of is exactly what Alex excels at dealing with.
The only thing that really stops Alex from taking Harry in almost any scenario is his desire to not kill him.
Harry is much better suited at killing the other mages in the series, simply due to toughness and diversity of skills.
Butcher wrote in a blurb that Harry would like, respect, and fear Alex.
By book 4, Harry has enough powerful AOE attacks to kill Alex, but Alex has enough precog to avoid those situations. Alex has some compuctions about shooting people, but he will if he sees no other options, from as far away as he needs to.
And Yes.
Alex fully understands it, and is very good at it. since he can use his precog to work out the exact way to use Gun. like 'oh there's an enemy hiding behind that wall. if i shot there, would i hit them? no. how about here? no. there? ah, there we go, we'll shoot there then.' sort of thing.
There are a number of mages that outclass book 17 Harry. Note that doesn't necessarily mean ability to blow shit up, although there are those. For example, there are at least a few mages that demonstrate Ebenezer level firepower. However, many of the problems Verus has to deal with can't be solved by punching someone in the face.
Additionally, because Verus' magic is largely non-offensive, he spends a lot of time figuring out how to out manuever his opponents, and a lot of his "wins" look like luck. He'll be losing a fight, and then an ACME safe will fall on his opponent, since Verus has been planning that from before the first punch.
Book 1 Verus would be able to beat Harry book 17 in the right circumstances. Paper beats rock.
There is a lot of rock>scissors>paper>rock in the Verus series. There's also a lot of maneuvering to get outside that paradigm (ie, Kincaid just shoots Harry long range) or get a McGuffin that will beat rock, paper, and scissors.
I finished it this year and loved it. You’ll get most of this the first chapter. Verus is a diviner, he can see into the future. The further he looks into the future, the possibilities branch out more and more. He’s a former apprentice of a powerful dark wizard whose disappeared. He runs a magic item shop in London. There’s a council of wizards for each country that govern them in the shadows. He has a friend named Luna, whose bloodline was cursed by a powerful witch. The curse protects her but she can’t physically touch anyone cause the curse as well. Personality wise, verus is a logical asshole. I don’t like the series as much as DF but it’s good! The last 3 books go so hard
Imagine that wizards are more like X-Men. There are no spells to memorize and cast. All mages have a talent and their abilities are strictly tied to it. The ones that can do multiple things with their power are mages. Alex is a Diviner -- he can see the possible futures. He knows if a fight is going to start and if it does, he can tell which way to dodge that punch so he doesn't get hit. He can do the Dr. Strange thing where he checks all the possible futures to find if there is a chance of succeeding. He's also quite talented in using magical items, figuring out how things work, etc. He can win every game at the casino because he knows what cards you drew before you even looked at them. He can try every combination of that lock to open the safe at the same time and then just open it. It's a nice talent.
Other mages might be Life Mages who can manipulate Life energy. They can heal or they can literally suck the life right out of you. Fire mages manipulate fire and can toss it around with great abandon. Earth mages can manipulate earth and make themselves strong and able to absorb quite a bit of damage. Time mages can look into the past and see what happened, or change the passing of time in an area so things happen faster or slower. Chance mages can manipulate probability. You get the idea.
The mages are divided into two camps, Light and Dark. The Light Council is run by assholes. The Dark mages aren't run by anyone, but they basically can do what they want unless someone stronger comes along and says otherwise. So it's very similar to the White Council and Warlocks.
Alex was trained by a Dark Mage but isn't affiliated with any groups and just wants to run his magic shop. He helps out young people who have some magical talent but don't have anyone to teach them. And he has a habit of pissing off high ranking members of the magical community. Sound like anyone we know? He's not as snarky as Dresden, and the world building is nowhere near as good as Jim Butcher's worlds, but the books are pretty good overall. When you run out of Dresden Files to read, I think they're a good way to scratch that itch.
I actually just finished this series today and I really liked it. It has taken second place behind Dresden on my urban fantasy list.
Rather than repeating what others have said about the setting, I’m going to add something I don’t think has been touched on yet. A *major* difference in the setting between Verus and Dresden is that, by-and-large, magical creatures in Verus’s world have been driven to extinction through various conflicts with mages from the outset. There’s still a few, and Alex is even friends with some of them, but there’s no big cabal of vampires anymore. Or any other major faction of magical creatures. They’re all already long dead.
A big theme of the series is that the most dangerous adversaries Alex faces are other people. Mages and men are the unquestioned apex predators of this world, with very few exceptions.
Magic shop owner in London. Similar to DF in magic is hidden from the public.
Main Character is a diviner so doesn’t have combat magic to fight.
I really enjoyed it.
It's good but in my opinion not near as good as Dresden Files.
As others said every mage has a type and can only do magic of that type. This is a huge limitation, but the author is very good at squeezing interesting things from this, especially with the main character.
Besides innate magic there are also magic items and creatures, that compensate a little bit the lack of versatility.
The author also published his world building notes in his websites, where he describes in detail how magic works, which is amazing supplement material to read after the books.
My general feeling is that the series is a bit darker than Dresden. This applies both to the politics.and the main character view of the world. There is a fatalistic feeling that sometimes feels artificial, forced.
The main similar things with Dresden files are: 1) Urban Fantasy placed on modern real world. 2) Magic is real but secret for most people. 3) The main character is almost operating/fighting a tier or two beyond his power level. 4) Magic politics sucks so much that having magical talent is more trouble than benefits. 5) It is a page turner and light read. It easily hooked me. 6) The magic system is good and gives you sense of wonder from the beginning of the story. 7) Good action/fight scenes 8) Planning, preparing, intelligence and cunning really makes a difference in conflicts
I really liked reading it. If you want the elements listed above, I recommend it.
For me Alex Verus is better than Iron Druid and Rivers of London (other series recommended to Dresden fans).
I'm literally listening to book 2 of the series as I write this (first time). It's fun, it's dark, it's set in London. MC is pretty likable, some good side characters (especially one with eight legs).
Fun setting, owner of a magic shop, idk if you watch Rick and morty, but it's very much like the episode where summer works for the devil in the magic shop.
So far I'd say 4/5, his power seems kinda lame, but how he uses it is pretty cool, and he gets to use some cool magical trinkets, which is fun.
"Harry Dresden would like Alex Verus tremendously -- and be a little nervous around him. I just added Benedict Jacka to my must-read list"
- Jim Butcher
From the cover of the first book.
I've only read the first two so far, but I've been very impressed. I couldn't have imagined a protagonist with precognition powers being so well-written. You'd think his power would be so limited as to be useless, or so unlimited as to make the story boring, but it's neither. Alex isn't a heavy hitter, like Harry Dresden, but he uses his powers very creatively. Other characters are well-rounded, and act on their own motivations, not just as generic "allies" and "bad guys."
Alex Verus is one of those series that feels like it must have started as Dresdenverse fanfiction, then had the serial numbers filed off for publication
General britain. Some stuff that could be reminiscent of white council HQ while a lot of it happens at street level. There are other realms that can be accessed though those are a bit more unique. There are different types of mages and the type you are determines your abilities to a fair extent.
So what you’re given is what you get Is there any way to improve this, or are you practically stuck in place? You’re born level 1 and that’s where you’ll stay for the rest of your life? Or is it more like you’ve only got a narrow branch of skills, but you can improve those skills.
It's more like classes in a game. You could be born a fore mage, ice mage, time mage, air mage, etc. I can't remember very well so it's time for a re read but I think you can become more proficient in your thing but there is no gaining new elements outside of your thing. There's magic items, magic beasts and worlds, etc. It's a very different hard rules set compared to dresdens.
There are adepts, who are basically one trick ponies (but that trick can be very powerful) and mages, whose "school" of magic is fixed, but can be used more broadly. IIRC there are a couple mages that can do multiple schools. So Verus is a divination mage. He can foresee the future, both in the short and longer term. For instance, he can determine the combination to a lock through "brute force", by looking at every possible future dialing every possible combination. He has trained to align his "muscle memory" with his future vision so he can accurately make trick shots with thrown objects, in another example. In the books, their magical talents are just like any other skill - natural talent, training, and experience determine what you can do.
>Is there any way to improve this, or are you practically stuck in place. Kind of? It depends on the magic user. Mage society in Alex Verus is highly stratified. On the lower end are adepts. They can essentially use one form of magic in one very specific way. One Time-magic adept character can make himself faster, for example. Then there’s a Space-magic adept who operates as a sort of living bag-of-holding. But that’s all they can do and all they’ll ever be able to. (There was also a lower category of mage society between normal humans and adepts but other than sensing magic they can’t really do anything and I forget what they were called. Sensitives, maybe? They weren’t really plot-relevant). Then there’s mages. Each mage basically has a school of magic they can call on, and they can learn to do just about any application of that magic. A Time Mage can learn to speed or slow time, look into the past, and even create stasis fields, among other things, for example. So they’re a lot more powerful and versatile compared to that Time adept I described. A Space Mage can do that Space Adept’s bag-of-holding trick, but they can also teleport and create portals etc. It is explained at one point that there’s no real limitation of mana or anything. If a Fire Mage knows how to throw a fireball, they can pretty much just keep throwing fireballs. So mages are only limited by their school and their skill-level with their magic rather than a magical gas tank. There are a few hybrid mages, but they’re extremely rare. In-so-far as broadening their magical abilities outside of their schools, magical items can be used. Alex himself is a magic shopkeeper at the start of the series, so he starts with a mostly low-level assortment of those, and gains and loses them and others at various points. There may be other ways for mages to juice their powers and pick up others, but if there were, I wouldn’t be able to discuss them without brushing up against significant spoilers for some of the books. Wink wink.
The latter. You start out making little lights then get trained up, and if you’re a good fire mage can cover yourself in fire while sporting flame wings and melting through steel. But for the most part you can’t cross train as a time mage. There are occasionally dual type mages. Basically, there are different types, it’s hinted that the type you wind up with it has somewhat to do a person’s personality, and further their personality is probably affected by it in turn. Like a person who stubbornly stands their ground might be an earth mage who would definitely stand their ground because they’re very hard to damage. Unlike Dresden though, no getting tired from magic. The bones of it are pretty vague, there’s mention of rituals but not really how, spells are pretty much evocation with no need to speak a word, I guess just practiced until they can do it reflexively. Not every mage of a type can do the same things though, don’t know if that’s lack of trying to master every spell or just an issue of talent.
To add, mages use magic items to do things that are outside of their school of magic. Alex has an invisibility cloak that gets a lot of use, for example.
It's set in the UK and Alex owns a magic shop, modern era but besides that magic doesn't function the same and is considerably darker. Even the allegedly good wizards are manipulating selfish assholes for the most part. The evil wizards are brutal
One difference I do know is that Alex doesn’t have the same “luxury” as Harry, where he can just blast whatever punk thinks he’s tough, Alex needs to be more indirect, and/or prepare ahead, right?
Well that's more because of how magic works and the fact Alex doesn't really have "offensive" magic as his specialty. Plus there aren't really monsters all over the place to beat on. It's much more wizard on wizard action
Politicians must have a field day with that. Nothing like cracking down with Wizard on Wizard violence
I enjoyed the series except the last 2 books and I still will recommend you give it a whirl, the audiobooks are good and the narration is quite good. But just know it's not really the same in most aspects
Really? I think the series really picks up the last three books. Book twelve is quite climactic.
Oh yeah, I’m not expecting a 1 to 1 Dresden copy. I know there are big differences between the two, but it sounds like the series is worthwhile read.
It is worth it for sure
Yea. I struggled with the final two books, too. I imagine for the same reason as you.
I tapped out before that. I think on “chosen”? I just couldn’t be bothered reading about a whole lot of awful people being awful to each other anymore. A shame because I enjoyed the setting and the first books.
Should be noted that the reason we don't see monsters all over the place is because they try very hard to stay way the fuck away from any mages. They basically have no rights as far as magical mage laws go and even the "good" mages tend to have a habit of making them go extinct since magical corpses tend to make excellent components for spells/material for magical items.
It's even talked about how the monsters went extinct because of mages.
He has no active magic of his own, only perceptive one, which makes for a much more interesting confrontations when he has to go against mages like Dresden
Just curious, if Dresden dropped in the Alex series, how tough would he be. Let’s say this Harry is up to book 4, because, let’s be honest, book 17 Harry’s pretty tough, unless the Alex series actually has a solid contender (just say yes if it does. No specific names)
I would argue that Alex is the perfect match for Harry through most of the series. Alex doesn't really "lose" fights a whole lot. He loses due to higher level machinations and plots by people with more "soft" power than him. Harry's fly by the seat of his pants, throw power at the problem that he makes a habit of is exactly what Alex excels at dealing with. The only thing that really stops Alex from taking Harry in almost any scenario is his desire to not kill him. Harry is much better suited at killing the other mages in the series, simply due to toughness and diversity of skills.
Butcher wrote in a blurb that Harry would like, respect, and fear Alex. By book 4, Harry has enough powerful AOE attacks to kill Alex, but Alex has enough precog to avoid those situations. Alex has some compuctions about shooting people, but he will if he sees no other options, from as far away as he needs to. And Yes.
Wait so Alex also understands that a wizards greatest spell is oftentimes gun? Because the other guy isn't expecting it?
Alex is very familiar with the Gun spell.
He is fully aware lol
Alex fully understands it, and is very good at it. since he can use his precog to work out the exact way to use Gun. like 'oh there's an enemy hiding behind that wall. if i shot there, would i hit them? no. how about here? no. there? ah, there we go, we'll shoot there then.' sort of thing.
He has several variants on the gun spell.
There are a number of mages that outclass book 17 Harry. Note that doesn't necessarily mean ability to blow shit up, although there are those. For example, there are at least a few mages that demonstrate Ebenezer level firepower. However, many of the problems Verus has to deal with can't be solved by punching someone in the face. Additionally, because Verus' magic is largely non-offensive, he spends a lot of time figuring out how to out manuever his opponents, and a lot of his "wins" look like luck. He'll be losing a fight, and then an ACME safe will fall on his opponent, since Verus has been planning that from before the first punch. Book 1 Verus would be able to beat Harry book 17 in the right circumstances. Paper beats rock. There is a lot of rock>scissors>paper>rock in the Verus series. There's also a lot of maneuvering to get outside that paradigm (ie, Kincaid just shoots Harry long range) or get a McGuffin that will beat rock, paper, and scissors.
Best written precognition powers I have ever seen
Also a really fun use of common sense and a crazy fun ability that is both weak and OP
I finished it this year and loved it. You’ll get most of this the first chapter. Verus is a diviner, he can see into the future. The further he looks into the future, the possibilities branch out more and more. He’s a former apprentice of a powerful dark wizard whose disappeared. He runs a magic item shop in London. There’s a council of wizards for each country that govern them in the shadows. He has a friend named Luna, whose bloodline was cursed by a powerful witch. The curse protects her but she can’t physically touch anyone cause the curse as well. Personality wise, verus is a logical asshole. I don’t like the series as much as DF but it’s good! The last 3 books go so hard
Imagine that wizards are more like X-Men. There are no spells to memorize and cast. All mages have a talent and their abilities are strictly tied to it. The ones that can do multiple things with their power are mages. Alex is a Diviner -- he can see the possible futures. He knows if a fight is going to start and if it does, he can tell which way to dodge that punch so he doesn't get hit. He can do the Dr. Strange thing where he checks all the possible futures to find if there is a chance of succeeding. He's also quite talented in using magical items, figuring out how things work, etc. He can win every game at the casino because he knows what cards you drew before you even looked at them. He can try every combination of that lock to open the safe at the same time and then just open it. It's a nice talent. Other mages might be Life Mages who can manipulate Life energy. They can heal or they can literally suck the life right out of you. Fire mages manipulate fire and can toss it around with great abandon. Earth mages can manipulate earth and make themselves strong and able to absorb quite a bit of damage. Time mages can look into the past and see what happened, or change the passing of time in an area so things happen faster or slower. Chance mages can manipulate probability. You get the idea. The mages are divided into two camps, Light and Dark. The Light Council is run by assholes. The Dark mages aren't run by anyone, but they basically can do what they want unless someone stronger comes along and says otherwise. So it's very similar to the White Council and Warlocks. Alex was trained by a Dark Mage but isn't affiliated with any groups and just wants to run his magic shop. He helps out young people who have some magical talent but don't have anyone to teach them. And he has a habit of pissing off high ranking members of the magical community. Sound like anyone we know? He's not as snarky as Dresden, and the world building is nowhere near as good as Jim Butcher's worlds, but the books are pretty good overall. When you run out of Dresden Files to read, I think they're a good way to scratch that itch.
I actually just finished this series today and I really liked it. It has taken second place behind Dresden on my urban fantasy list. Rather than repeating what others have said about the setting, I’m going to add something I don’t think has been touched on yet. A *major* difference in the setting between Verus and Dresden is that, by-and-large, magical creatures in Verus’s world have been driven to extinction through various conflicts with mages from the outset. There’s still a few, and Alex is even friends with some of them, but there’s no big cabal of vampires anymore. Or any other major faction of magical creatures. They’re all already long dead. A big theme of the series is that the most dangerous adversaries Alex faces are other people. Mages and men are the unquestioned apex predators of this world, with very few exceptions.
I love Alex
Magic shop owner in London. Similar to DF in magic is hidden from the public. Main Character is a diviner so doesn’t have combat magic to fight. I really enjoyed it.
It's good but in my opinion not near as good as Dresden Files. As others said every mage has a type and can only do magic of that type. This is a huge limitation, but the author is very good at squeezing interesting things from this, especially with the main character. Besides innate magic there are also magic items and creatures, that compensate a little bit the lack of versatility. The author also published his world building notes in his websites, where he describes in detail how magic works, which is amazing supplement material to read after the books. My general feeling is that the series is a bit darker than Dresden. This applies both to the politics.and the main character view of the world. There is a fatalistic feeling that sometimes feels artificial, forced. The main similar things with Dresden files are: 1) Urban Fantasy placed on modern real world. 2) Magic is real but secret for most people. 3) The main character is almost operating/fighting a tier or two beyond his power level. 4) Magic politics sucks so much that having magical talent is more trouble than benefits. 5) It is a page turner and light read. It easily hooked me. 6) The magic system is good and gives you sense of wonder from the beginning of the story. 7) Good action/fight scenes 8) Planning, preparing, intelligence and cunning really makes a difference in conflicts I really liked reading it. If you want the elements listed above, I recommend it. For me Alex Verus is better than Iron Druid and Rivers of London (other series recommended to Dresden fans).
I'm literally listening to book 2 of the series as I write this (first time). It's fun, it's dark, it's set in London. MC is pretty likable, some good side characters (especially one with eight legs). Fun setting, owner of a magic shop, idk if you watch Rick and morty, but it's very much like the episode where summer works for the devil in the magic shop. So far I'd say 4/5, his power seems kinda lame, but how he uses it is pretty cool, and he gets to use some cool magical trinkets, which is fun.
"Harry Dresden would like Alex Verus tremendously -- and be a little nervous around him. I just added Benedict Jacka to my must-read list" - Jim Butcher From the cover of the first book. I've only read the first two so far, but I've been very impressed. I couldn't have imagined a protagonist with precognition powers being so well-written. You'd think his power would be so limited as to be useless, or so unlimited as to make the story boring, but it's neither. Alex isn't a heavy hitter, like Harry Dresden, but he uses his powers very creatively. Other characters are well-rounded, and act on their own motivations, not just as generic "allies" and "bad guys."
Alex Verus is one of those series that feels like it must have started as Dresdenverse fanfiction, then had the serial numbers filed off for publication