A naive wrapper around Backbone router to make it understand route specificity (so route order doesn't matter)...

sorted-router-example.js

// Example usage of SortedRouter
var SortedRouter = require('./sortedrouter');
var router = new SortedRouter();

// Supports multiple URLs
router.route('', 'books', show('<h1>Books</h1>'));

router.route('books/new', show('<h1>New Book</h1>'));

router.route('books/:id', show('<h1>Show Book</h1>'));

router.route('author', show('<h1>Author</h1>'));

// Initialize the router
router.init();

// Just a helper function to show some HTML n stuff
function show(msg) {
  return function () {
    var argz = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments).join(', ');
    document.querySelector('main').innerHTML = msg + '<div>' + argz + '</div>';
  }
}

sorted-router.js

'use strict';

var Backbone = require('backbone');
var _ = require('underscore');

var SortedRouter = Backbone.Router.extend({
  sortedRoutes: {},
  
  // Overwrite the Backbone.Router.route method so we can 
  // register routes in the correct order.
  route: function () {
    var len = arguments.length - 1,
        callback = arguments[arguments.length - 1];
 
    for (var i = 0; i < len; ++i) {
      this.sortedRoutes[arguments[i]] = callback;
    }
  },
  
  init: function () {
    // A magic number to force a route to be lowest specificity
    // Number.MIN_VALUE didn't work...
    var lowestRoute = -1000000;
    var me = this;
 
    // Register all routes, sorted by specificity
    _.chain(_.pairs(this.sortedRoutes))
      .sortBy(function (route) {
        var url = route[0];
 
        if (url.indexOf('*') >= 0) {
          return lowestRoute;
        } else {
          return -url.split(':').length;
        }
      })
      .each(function (route) {
        Backbone.Router.prototype.route.apply(me, route);
      });
 
    // Start the backbone routing subsystem
    Backbone.history.start();
  }
});

module.exports = SortedRouter;