 |
 |
Urban fantasy reflects things eerily familiar, with a twist: a real-world setting with magic, like wizards in the big city. Sometimes these are places we'd like to live. Sometimes they're places we're glad we don't. But they are always entertaining, with a huge does of "what if?" tossed into the mix.
One of our favorite books, about a Minneapolis rock singer who just wants to be in a great band. Then, in one night, she splits with her boyfriend, her band breaks up, and she gets recruited by a phouka to be the centerpiece of a war between immortals. With a mortal on the battlefield, even immortal blood can be shed. But that's just the beginning. Because Eddi McCandry still wants a kickass band!
Highly recommend. Won the Locus Award for best first novel.
The first of the Harry Dresden novels, introducing Harry, the only wizard in the Chicago phonebook. He's the epitome of the hard-boiled gumshoe with an attitude. A talking skull for a sidekick gives this series an additional twist. This series sort of sets the standard for magical detective stories and gritty, jaded urban fantasy.
The others in the series are:
Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, Book 2)
Grave Peril (The Dresden Files, Book 3)
Summer Knight (The Dresden Files, Book 4)
Death Masks (The Dresden Files, Book 5)
Blood Rites (The Dresden Files, Book 6)
Dead Beat (The Dresden Files, Book 7)
Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files, Book 8)
White Night (The Dresden Files, Book 9)
Small Favor (The Dresden Files, Book 10)
Turn Coat: A Novel of the Dresden Files
Changes (Dresden Files, Book 12)
The TV series made from these novels died much too soon, but you can still get all of the episodes:
The Dresden Files - The Complete First Season
Psyche's Prophecy
A psychologist with the second sight reads the auras of her patients, gaining a little extra insight into their problems. But her experiments in developing her ability to see into the future lead her straight into trouble when several of her patients tell her about the same cataclysmic dream. Her search for answers is complicated by a violent patient with a grudge against her and her need to cope with a society in the advanced stages of decay, no longer able to reliability deliver anything from food to power.
First in a new series that puts a genuine princess of Faery at home in L.A. Merry Gentry is escaping the Unseelie court ruled by her increasingly nutso aunt, who is desperate for an heir and orders Merry to get pregnant. Merry's cousin is not thrilled with this plan, however, nor is most of the court. Her lovers/bodyguards have their work cut out for them, both in satisfying Merry's lust and in keeping her alive. As always with Hamilton's work, the series is highly erotic and self-centered. The sex does become less gratuitous as the series progresses, however.
A Caress of Twilight
Seduced by Moonlight
A Stroke of Midnight
Mistral's Kiss
A Lick of Frost
Swallowing Darkness: A Novel
Divine Misdemeanors
The first in a very long line of Anita Blake novels, this one introduces Hamilton's vampire-hunting heroine, who is coerced into discovering who is killing vampires, which is against the law unless the vamp really needs killing.
Hamilton's books are not for everyone. They usually include graphic sex and have a very strong Mary Sue quality, but they are generally entertaining and highly readable.
Love them or hate them, the Twilight series of books is here to stay, sparking a feeding frenzy among the YA crowd. Sexy vampires are all the rage, but the common reaction among older folks is. . . "Sparkly vampires? Huh?" Perhaps it's a case of you had to be there.
The saga continues in:
Set in a sprawling cityscape filled with multiple species of humans, aliens, demons, and everything in between, this book is a treasure trove of imagination. Complex, gritty, and a little bit weird, it explores broad questions on its journey to restore wings to a mutilated birdman, even as a stolen grub from a secret government experiment hatches into something monstrous that threatens the whole city.
This first novel from a promising young author starts out with a bang and
never slows down. Sarah Beaufall, a blacksmith, medieval re-enactor, and prop
master for a B movie, grumbles when a ham-handed actor damages her favorite
blade. That's before a friendly dwarf on the movie crew offers to help her
repair her sword and she finds out her blade is really the fabled sword Gram out
of Norse mythology. All Sarah wants to do is straighten out her love life;
instead she finds a shape-shifting dragon and the Corpse Gnawer after Gram--and
her. Fast, fun, and set in modern-day Seattle, this is a good foray into urban
fantasy and the start of a promised series.
A truly excellent read about an angry angel who walks away from Heaven, imagining himself perfectly as human--except that he forgets to ditch his wings. This naturally makes him all the rage in L.A., where he quickly establishes himself as the next hot thing on the rock scene. But envy and offended fundamentalists quickly follow success, and our angel is forced to re-examine everything about his new life.
Springer is an underrated writer whose early work in "pure" fantasy was lovely, if somewhat unpolished. This is one of her best works.