Avenging Angels

Jim Butcher has often told the story of how he started writing the Codex Alera novels: it was an internet “discussion” about tropes versus authors. Can a good story be made out of anything, no matter the trope? Butcher’s argument was yes. It ended in a dare–could Butcher take a trope and make it work? Butcher’s reply was, “Give me two tropes, I dare you.” He was given “Lost Roman Legion” and “Pokemon.” Then it became a massive epic fantasy series.

Superficially, there are certain moments where one wonders if Chuck Dixon was given a similar challenge, only with time travel tropes.

Obviously, to start with, the time machine has to be tested, and something goes wrong.

For the next mission, obviously they have to find buried treasure … by seeing where it was buried in the first place.

The third trope was an online discussion started a decade ago: could a marine division take on the Roman empire?

In this case, Dixon has modified that question, and added “another trope.”

First, can five SpecOps operators take on two Roman legions…?

And what do you do with a certain Jewish Carpenter from Nazareth?
Yes, you read that right: This time, our Time Traveling SpecOps heroes are going to go toe-to-toe with the legions of the Roman Empire in order to save Jesus Christ from being assassinated.

After the treasure hunting expedition of Blood Red Tide, our time-traveling heroes are well loaded with money. Everything is smooth going…

Until a message from the near future sends back a dire warning: Sir Nigel, the backer of the time tunnel developed by Morris and Caroline Tauber, has started to use time travel to shape reality to his own wants and desires. It wants to remake the past and control the future. Nigel’s first move: send an envoy back in time to wipe out the teenagers in a small down in Galilee in 16AD. The town is Nazareth. The target is Jesus Christ. If He dies, then everything they know, the very world, is going to change beyond their wildest nightmares.

And now, they’re on a mission from God… yes, Dixon did cite the Blues Brothers.

This time, our Rangers have to square off against the Roman Empire. Joined this time by an IDF shooter who should probably be played by Gal Gadot (I should point out this book came out in 2012, so before Wonder Woman), they have to fight off two legions of the world’s finest fighting force.

At the same time (pun not intended), Caroline Tauber has given birth to a son. But instead of kicking back on maternity leave, assassins from the future have come for her son. Their ally from the future has taken it upon himself to hide her in time … in Paris, 1871, a city under siege by Germany.

If you’re wondering if this story might be slow at any point … no. Just no. Every plotline and chapter is filled with tension. It’s a great thriller… just with time travel elements. And every time you think you know how this story is going to go, you’re wrong. Trust me on that. There’s no guessing on this one. As noted above, just because it has a time travel trope or two doesn’t mean it’s predictable.

There is also plenty of blowback from the previous mission: how does one dispose of the treasure from a Greek pirate ship? The myriad relationship threads continue in a well-constructed arc. And then, there’s an extension on a new friend they made in Blood Red Tide.

There are also enough cameo appearances by historical figures to make this cranky historian smile.

I said in my review of Blood Red Tide that this series feels very much like one continuous novel spread out over several books. Each volume can easily be read as singles or as part of the whole. Looking at it from the point of view of the whole, the characters balance out very nicely. Cannibal Gold was a team novel. Blood Red Tide focused on Dwayne and Caroline going back in time. And now, this book focuses again more on the rest of the team, and Caroline, as all of them are hunted throughout time and space. Some are hunted by the legions of Rome, and one is stalked by temporal hunters.

All of these characters have distinct personality. Jimbo, the Pima Tribesman who is tempted by the simplicity of “back then.” Chaz, a more religious member of the team, who in this case, as the best line in the book (“Jesus saved me and I’m returning the favor.”) Lee Harrison is an ice-cold shooter who might have found someone who can melt him a little. There’s “Bat” our IDF addition to the team (As Chaz puts it, “You’re going to have to convert to Jews for Jesus.”) who is a charming addition. Then there’s Boats… who should probably just be classified as the berserker.

We also learn a little more about our villain, his desires and motivations. Whatever his endgame is, it isn’t pleasant. Keep in mind, book three is halfway through the series. Sir Nigel hasn’t had the screen time of your average Marvel villain. But I am already looking forward to seeing this bastard get what’s coming to him.

This is interesting, because here, Chuck Dixon doesn’t build one world. He doesn’t even build three. He builds FOUR worlds at the same time: Ancient Rome, 1870s France, dealing with our own world, and a vision of an apocalyptic future coming soon to a timeline near you.

And the damn thing is that Chuck Dixon makes it all look so effortless as he balances all of them.

In each time period, Dixon executes the world building flawlessly. He captures the time period down to some of the smallest details, without grinding the story to a halt. If you ever wanted to get a sense of history, this might be the series to start people off on. He even manages to capture the language of each time period within the narration… no, he doesn’t use a lot of Latin, but you get the sense that this could easily be translated into Latin.

The forth world could be summed up, in part, by CS Lewis: That Jesus Christ was either the Son of God, or a madman. Why? Because His message was nothing close to the ideas of the day. Or any secular thought process today. Remove Jesus from the equation, the ideas never enter into the realm of human thought. And from there, it creates a seriously different world. (As a historian, I will quibble that the narrative implies that Christianity’s existence led to the fall of the roman empire, a theory that Gibbons postulated in Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. In Gibbons case, he was motivated by religious bigotry. In Chuck’s case … it probably led into a more cohesive narrative). We have a religion of science and secularism, where people are cogs in a machine of the state. There is no history, no nation, only “the state.” It’s the Roman “Republic,” only with all of the worst aspects of the industrial revolution.

The end result here is a dystopia that lacks all of the homey charm of 1984, or Mordor without the local character.

NOTE ON THE WORLD BUILDING: In this one, Chuck Dixon adds an afterword with historical notes. Read them if only for the comments, such as “If I got anything about Roman legions wrong, blame Tacitus, I think he has a Facebook page.”

Any fan of action or adventure novels will love this one. This has all the action and adventure of a John Ringo or a Larry Correia, with the narrative insight of David Weber (without the word count), and all the speed of a Mitch Rapp novel

This review opened with the creation of Jim Butcher’s Alera, which proved that it doesn’t matter how tired tropes are if the author is an absolute literary badass. Chuck Dixon proves that here as well. The worldbuilding is effortlessly executed, and downright amazing. Chuck Dixon does it not once, but FOUR TIMES, with each setting with its own unique feel and narration. The action is tense and fast-paced

Avenging Angels is fun, tightly written, and may be the best of the series thus far. The books only get better as they go along.