I've been reading some urban fantasy, starting with @Sigurd's recommendations.

Peter Grant was pretty good. There's a lot of focus on actually being police and on London, both of which set it apart from most other urban fantasy. Plotting is fine, characters are good (some moreso than others), and in general the only thing that annoys me is that Peter is rarely allowed to really be a badass. He figures the mysteries out fine, but when it comes to magic I'd have liked to see some more power from Peter by now. He doesn't seem that more powerful than normals, especially compared to other practitioners, who can blow up tanks and trees and whatnot. Still, easy 4/5.

Alex Verus was okay. Less of a fan than I was of Grant, to be honest, for the simple reason that the Light Council is an unbelievable bag of dicks. It's like every book, things have to get worse and worse; by this point he's far, far worse off than Dresden was at a comparable point in time. The divination is very neat, though. It gets points for that alone. 3.5/5

Nathanial Garret is shit, wouldn't recommend. It 's got shite like secretly being an assassin trained (in China!) by Merlin, having super secret blood magic marks or some shit, and being at least a thousand years old. The first book, Crimes against Magic, is mostly either flirting/banging women or engaging in action scenes; characters are forgettable and say/do what they need to make the plot make a bit of sense. Got halfway and realized I didn't want to keep reading. 2/5

Moving onto Low Town next.

 

@BTT, how many of the Peter Grant books have you read? It takes a while, but he does start getting some properly badass moments as it goes on.

 

Every main book, from Rivers of London to The Hanging Tree. None of the side novels.

He does get some cool moments, I don't mean to state or imply that he doesn't. It's just that Nightingale gets to show off more and more; Peter has his moments - like the whole ambulance bit - but as a practitioner of magic IIRC he seemed a bit underwhelming.

 

Oh, that's definitely fair, Nightingale is the prime badass thus far, despite Grant's in-universe reputation for causing chaos.

 

@BTT, glad you liked some of the recs. I agree that Peter Grant isn't much of a heavyweight compared to other wizards even within his universe, let alone outside of it. The Peter Grant books always felt to me that they were about a cop who happened to have magic powers instead of a wizard who happens to be a cop.

And yes, the Light Council in Alex Verus is infuriating.

 

Does Urban Fantasy have to be modern or just take place in a non-ancient environment. Cause, if so, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is freaking BRILLIANT.

 

Have you seen the TV series? If so, how is it?

I might give this a spin as I'm looking for a new novel to read. Thanks for reminding me.

 

The TV show is pretty awesome and fairly true to the book. It being a visual medium also helps deal with some of the slower parts of the story, where Clarke meanders a bit. I would recommend the TV show to anyone who enjoys fantasy stories, urban or not.

 

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This is what I've been reading recently - the Daniel Faust series by Craig Schaefer. There's currently 8 main books, as well as one shorter book (1.5).

It's got all the usual hallmarks of Dresdenite Urban Fantasy, by which I mean secret society of magic-users, nonhuman creatures walking the earth, and focus on a particular city - in this case, Las Vegas. The protagonist (Daniel Faust) has a dark past like usual, there's People wanting to do Bad Magic Shit, and he gets involved.

The focus, however, is on the even seedier underbellies of those worlds - less fae, more demons; less detectives, more gangsters.

The Good:

• Craig Schaefer is a writer in the model of Brandon Sanderson - he somehow shits out entire books between the soup and the potatoes. There's at least a book a year, and usually more than that.
• In contrast to Dresden and Alex Verus, there's (so far) no official organization of magicians that's inexplicably out for the protagonist's blood.
• It's the only UF I've read so far which manages to nail that same frenetic pace Dresden has. They're excellent pageturners, which leads them to feel incredibly short.
• Daniel was/is a gangster. He mentions having worked people over with crowbars, murders dudes in cold blood, and when there's mentions of people being tortured in hell he's kind of okay with that.
• Instead of a detective story, the books become more about doing heists. The first book is kind of rocky in this department, but that changes. Daniel and his friends start running cons, have a hacker on speed dial, etc.

The Bad:

• They're too short.
• The same author also writes a bunch of other books, set in the same universe or thereabouts. He has a recommended reading order up on his site, even. I haven't bothered following it and so far I've had no trouble, but the idea of needing to read the other series is a pitfall I'd rather the author avoid.
• The protagonist has a main squeeze, and she's a succubus. Their incredibly fast relationship development strains credulity more than a little.

The Weird:

• The succubus waifu thing results in quite a bit of BDSM and (figurative!) emasculation. She's richer than him, more powerful than him, and better connected than him. There's at least one situation in every book where she orders something for Daniel without consulting him first, which wasn't that odd at first but has definitely gotten a little strange.

I'd definitely recommend them as basic, fun popcorn fantasy. In that context they're easy 4/5s.

 

I really wish more authors would go the route of Sandman Slim. That series was certainly something read , that's for certain.

 

At very edge of Urban Fantasy, I'd recommend Unsong. The story takes place in "our" world with major supernatural changes introduced from 1969 (Archangel Uriel tries to fix a crack in the world's structure caused by the attempt at a moon landing) and major parts of the narrative are set in 2017, where the world has changed to accommodate the situation. At first, it seems that the world is relatively modern, but the overall image of the world is slowly filled in, and it's very much a different place than you'd expect. Hence, the further the narrative expands on the changes, the further from a recognizable world we get and thus my hesitance to assign an Urban Fantasy label.

As for the mentioned Lukyanenko's works, Lukyanenko writes decent urban fantasy. I've listened to two audio books of the Watch series and they're very good, but I can't vouch for translations. (I can understand most of spoken Russian, but can't read for shit).

Lukyanenko's Rough Draft and Final Draft are two books I remember enjoying very much. It's set in our world, where a select few chosen people are given special powers that come with a very strict restrictive radius for their continued existence. What might not fit the urban fantasy angle is the fact the main character's powers center upon managing traffic between our world at at least four parallel worlds. I've read only the Lithuanian translation a while back, so can't speak for the English versions.


p.s. Does Good Omens qualify as Urban Fantasy? If so, it's good, but you probably knew it already.

 

I grabbed Stiletto from an airport bookshop and found myself really enjoying it. The basic outline is that the British government has a secret police force of people with bizarre magical talents. It's a sequel, and I understand the first book deals with the setup of the group. The one I read deals with a band of Dutch Dr. Frankensteins who lost a war to the British and have been in hiding ever since. Typing it all out the book sounds kind of bizarre, but I really enjoyed it and this thread is showing how barren the genre truly is.

 

I'm delighted to see mentions of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell here, as it's one of my favourite books ever. I re-read it every now and again just for comfort reading purposes. The author has written a new book called Piranesi, but it's not set in the same universe as Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. There's also a short story collection called The Ladies Of Grace Adieu which is simply short stories set in the Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell universe.

Lately I've gotten into the Peter Grant books as well, and found them rather good, more to my tastes than the Dresden Files books.

If you want some good YA urban fantasy, I recommend Holly Black's A Modern Faerie Tale series. The first one, Tithe, is very clearly her first book, but still enjoyable imo. It does feature a lot of typical YA stuff: teenage protagonists, teen angst, etc. The setting is basically current-day America, except for that fairies are real and some of them take changelings and otherwise interact with humans.
Holly Black has also written a trilogy called The Folk of the Air, which is set in the same universe as Tithe etc but a fully independent story about a young woman whose parents are murdered by a fairy. Said fairy then takes responsibility for her and her sisters, seeing as they weren't meant to be collateral damage in the original murder of their parents, and they get to live as humans in fairyland, seeing it from the inside. The Folk of the Air books seem to be a bit more aimed at a younger audience than the Tithe books, some more teen angst etc, but still solid books if you enjoy YA and fairies.

 

I genuinely struggled to get through the book. It had some very good points, but there were large sections that I found incredibly dull as well.