Codex of Souls Books in Order

The Codex of Souls series is Mark Teppo's dark contemporary fantasy sequence about L. Michael Markham, a wounded occultist navigating a modern world where old magical traditions are real, dangerous, and rarely simple. The books use Seattle and Paris as living settings rather than generic backdrops, filling them with secret histories, strained loyalties, and the consequences of past choices.

Markham is not a cheerful chosen hero. He is a capable, guarded man whose history is tangled up with magic, loss, and the woman he has spent years trying to find. His most striking tool is the Chorus, a chain of human souls that he can wield as a weapon of will. It is powerful, unsettling, and a clear sign that magic in this series always comes with a cost.

The first book, Lightbreaker, brings Markham back to Seattle in search of Katarina, the woman who once tore his soul from his body. Instead, he finds a body-hopping spirit, a hidden cabal of magicians, and a plot connected to his own past. The story moves through the city's darker corners as Markham works alongside a police detective and follows a threat that could grow far beyond one missing person.

Heartland takes the conflict to Paris. The magical order that once cast Markham out is breaking down, and the trouble he encountered in the Pacific Northwest has helped worsen the split. Markham must deal with fragile alliances, institutional rivalries, and the possibility that someone else is arranging events from farther up the board.

These books use occult ideas drawn from Western esoteric traditions, Hermetic thought, alchemy, religious history, and shamanic practice. That gives the magic a different feel from a typical vampire-or-werewolf urban fantasy. The supernatural is woven into beliefs, symbols, hidden schools, and the messy human need to control what cannot really be controlled.

The mood is noirish, intense, and often morally uneasy.

Start with Lightbreaker. It establishes Markham, the Chorus, Katarina, and the magical rules that shape the rest of the series. Continue to Heartland for a broader conflict and a closer look at the old order behind Markham's troubles. Readers who enjoy magic mixed with investigation, philosophical questions, and dangerous city settings will find the series at its best when read in sequence.