Ranking Modern/Urban Fantasy

[ShannonA]

Modern, urban fantasy has been one of my kicks for the last few years, and I've read through a number of the series (though not all by far). Here's my general rankings of what I've read:

1. The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher. A wizard detective in Chicago. By far the best of the lot. Dresden does great characters and fun action scenes. His stories hold together, and the plot always feels coherent and fair. There's also some arc stuff that gets more interesting as it goes on, and the characters themselves continue to develop and mature. I recently read White Night, the ninth book, and I still continue to love the series. It took me one book for the series to catch on, but from book #2 it was a favorite.

2. The Early Anita Blake, by Laurel K. Hamilton. In her early books, Anita Blake was a necromancer and an expert who sometimes helped the police. There was some romance to the stories, but it wasn't overwhelming. The police procedural felt dead-on, but the mysteries themselves sometimes fell flat. Nonetheless, the stories were interesting and the mythos entertaining. I arbitrarily declare Obsidian Butterfly as the last of the early books. It's a sort of standalone, and thus is away from most of the problems of the later books, but the series was actually getting bad before Obsidian Butterfly, as I'll get to.

3. Women of the Otherworld, by Kelley Armstrong. This is a series of books which don't all center on the same protagonists, but which are all connected through characters in common. The first two, which are the only two that I've read, are about werewolves, while I believe we get to witches beyond this. As with Anita Blake, and pretty much everything here except Dresden, there's a fair amount of romance. These books drop down into my "good" category (from "great"), though I hear the later books are better. Nonetheless they offer another interesting look at the supernatural in the modern world, and I enjoyed in the second book that we started to see that open up to a wider world.

4. Weather Warden, by Rachel Caine. I think the most innovative of the current series. The protagonist is a weather magician in a world of djinn and a hostile earth. Has great action, good plotting, and is really different from anything else. The only real downside is that everything keeps building book after book with no chance for a breather so at some point you almost say, "Enough". But I'll still read the next book.

5. Kitty and the Midnight Hour, Carrie Vaughn. If there's a series name for this, I don't know it. This is the first book, and the only one I've read. A werewolf named Kitty has a talk show. The first book was interesting, but a little light on both plot and detail of the world. I never could suss out how "out" the supernatural really is. I'll probably read the next book to see where it goes, but it'll move up or down when I do.

6. The Southern Vampire, by Charlaine Harris. She's a waitress and a psychic. He's a vampire. They're so wrong together, but so right. Or something like that. I read through the first three or four books of this, enjoyed them when I did, but have stopped reading new books.

7. The Late Anita Blake, by some zombie writing as Laurel K. Hamilton. Sex, sex, sex. Then some more sex. Then some sex. Two pages of plot. Some more sex. Now, I'm perfectly fond of smut, but it gets boring when there's no plot to go with it. I can't believe this atrocity continues to sell.

--


I didn't mention things not in series, such as Neil Gaiman's and Peter Beagle's works. They'd probably go the top of the list. But series are something else totally.

Thoughts on these, or other modern fantasy series that I didn't mention? How about your own rankings?

[litlfrog]

Hmm, good topic. I particularly like the Charlaine Harris books because they're set in a fictional place that might as well be my hometown. :) Here's some additions to your list.

The War for the Oaks, by Emma Bull. It seems a little cliched now, but that's because this book did it so early--struggling rock musician, warring factions of faerie, modern American city, tinge of eroticism.

The Last Hot Time, by John M. Ford. Like most of Ford's books it's not easy to find, but well worth the effort. Elves return to Earth, horrified at what humanity's done to the place, and take out a big chunk of Chicago. The city is now a highly magical, post-apocalyptic gangland. The story is a great coming-of-age/first love story about a newcomer who becomes a street doc to an elvish crimelord.

Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville. This, along with its two sequels, are my pick for the best science fiction/fantasy of the last ten years. Mieville turns this big, Dickensian, filthy, steampunk city into a thing of hideous beauty.

Moonheart, by Charles de Lint. Like Bull, de Lint is one of the authors who helped define "urban fantasy," and his entries are still some of the best.

[Anaka]

Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. Woman whose greatest skill in life is making baked goods to die for gets captured and is to be fed to a vampire, only it turns out that her nickname, "Sunshine," is a bit more apt than she knew. Really good urban fantasy goodness ensues.

Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman. I mean, come on now. This has to be there.

Coraline, by Neil Gaiman. Possibly the best one of all.

Children of the Night, by Mercedes Lackey. Her Diana Tregarde novels were few and far between, but I was very fond of them. They had tons of Lackey goodness without overreaching into twee.

[The Fiendish Dr. Samsara]

Gee, I wish I'd seen this a couple of days ago, before I posted a thread asking for this info at rpg.net. No, wait: I got good answers there, it's just that they were almost exactly what Shanoon posted.

I don't know this genre much, but I have to say that I seem to be in the minority regarding The Dresden Files. I find them fine paperbacks, but nothing special. And Butcher ddoesn't seem to have the slightest clue what Chicago is like. At all. The city ought obe an important character, but it isn't becuase it is so colourless in the books.

But they are highly readable.

I have question re Charles deLint: I have always avoided him. Not really intentionally, but I somewhere got the idea that he was a little...twee, I guess. Is that fair?

[Anaka]

If you know Chicago and love Chicago, then Butcher's Chicago will never be enough for you as he doesn't live there and never has. Consequently, his Chicago is secondhand. He largely gets the names and the directions right, but it's more like Chicago as filmed in Vancouver. His human ( and human-like) characters are top-notch, though.

[Rolzup]

The Last Hot Time, by John M. Ford. Like most of Ford's books it's not easy to find, but well worth the effort. Elves return to Earth, horrified at what humanity's done to the place, and take out a big chunk of Chicago. The city is now a highly magical, post-apocalyptic gangland. The story is a great coming-of-age/first love story about a newcomer who becomes a street doc to an elvish crimelord.

Probably worth mentioning that this was apparently originally written for the Bordertown series of shared-world books. There's four volumes of short stories, and I think that there's a pair of novels...one by Emma Bull, and one by Will Shetterly. Good stuff, I thought.

[Jack]

If you know Chicago and love Chicago, then Butcher's Chicago will never be enough for you as he doesn't live there and never has. Consequently, his Chicago is secondhand. He largely gets the names and the directions right, but it's more like Chicago as filmed in Vancouver. His human ( and human-like) characters are top-notch, though.

Agreed. He knows Chicago like a guy who has visited there enough to understand it basically. But he still makes odd mistakes, etc...

But his characters and cast are awesome, so I'll forgive him. :)

[Jack]

Let's see, stuff that hasn't been mentioned:

Un Lun Dun by Mieville

The Menagerie Series by Golden And Sniegoski

American Gods, Anansi Boys, Neverwhere, etc... by Gaiman

[The Fiendish Dr. Samsara]

He largely gets the names and the directions right, but it's more like Chicago as filmed in Vancouver.


Nicely put. Although I seem to recall that he accidentally puts the city on the wrong side of Lake Michigan in Storm Front. I don't mean it as niggly bitching: I think that the city needs to be an important character for the stories.

But I'm drifting the thread.

[ShannonA]

I often forget that Butcher's book is set in Chicago, and that's probably a fair enough fair to approach it.

[Jack]

Nicely put. Although I seem to recall that he accidentally puts the city on the wrong side of Lake Michigan in Storm Front. I don't mean it as niggly bitching: I think that the city needs to be an important character for the stories.

But I'm drifting the thread.

I missed that. I did catch a few "nobody from Chicago would describe that in that way" bits.

At one point he refers to driving along "a lake shore drive" outside the city.

I hate to speak for everyone in town but in this case I'm gonna...Nobody, but nobody from Chicago is gonna say that. Why? Because one of the main drags is called "Lake Shore Drive." So instead they would say "I took a road along the lake" or "I drove up this road that ran along the lake" or whatever. You don't say a lake shore drive unless you're talking about Lake Shore Drive.

That said, totally great books and I love em.

[The Fiendish Dr. Samsara]

My memory is that in that exact section he describes going along a lake shore drive and turning left to get to a lake house.

But enough of poor Butcher's geographic difficulties. :D

[One Horse town]

Just in case i haven't endorsed Graham Joyce enough, anything by Graham Joyce!

His books are certainly modern fantasy, but not the in your face type of the books mentioned so far. Indigo is about a research scientist finding some arcane nature to the colour indigo; it's basically the invisible colour and so utilising it should....Dreamside is basically Flatliners, except the scientists create their own dreamscap to escape from the world and things start to go wrong...The Tooth Fairy examines the relationship between a young boy growing up and the fairy that visits him that may or may not be real. As he grows up the fairy does too, becoming more, erm temperamental and sensual. Things go wrong and he grows up...I've yet to read Smoking Poppy which is meant to be a cool book and they're a few others too.

In a similar vein there's Tim Powers stuff. Of his books, my favourites are The Stress of Her Regard (a village a couple of miles from me where Shelley was born is in it) is about the great poets Shelley, Keats and Byrons brush with a supernatural entity that feeds on self-destructive energies. Last Call which fuses poker goodness with the supernatural underworld that has come to characterise Powers work.

[Old Scratch]

I'm kind of surprised nobody has mentioned Tim Pratt. I haven't read much of his stuff, just his short story collection little gods and he's definitely a modern fantasy writer, although his fiction meanders into a slightly saccharine emotional longing for my tastes.

I'd also like to emphasize Tim Powers who was just mentioned. It seems shocking that he's almost absent from the discussion. I'd clearly situate him in modern fantasy, he's got a short story collection Strange Itineraries which is full of modern fantasy, and his novels Declare (a spy novel, one of my favorites), Last Call (the first and only book of this particular series that I would recommend), and Three Days to Never are all notable books and worth reading. My favorite book of his, Anubis Gates, probably doesn't qualify as modern fantasy but is worth the read as well.

Mieville's King Rat is urban fantasy, more so than PSS and his collection of stories, Looking For Jake is full of modern fantasy and horror goodness.

There's Charles Stross, although he's perhaps more in the Lovecraftian horror and sci-firealm, so I'm not sure I'd include him here...

I'd also like to sort of really really really bend the definition of modern fantasy and include some of the magical realist authors and those that inspired them, like Borges (example: The Book of Sand) and Gabriel Garcia Marquez whose writing focuses on S. America but has some truly amazing modern fantasy written, and here I'm thinking of "Water Like Light" from Strange Pilgrims.

EDIT: How could I forget? Would you consider the Russian Nightwatch trilogy Urban/Modern Fantasy? It's got strong horror elements I suppose, and I haven't read the series but I've ordered them, but they strike me as plausibly fitting in this category. Has anyone read them, and how do they compare to the movie(s)?

[ShannonA]

I'd all but forgotten about Powers, because I haven't read any of his books in a while, but when I was regularly reading his books, I was very found of them.

[Old Scratch]

I'd all but forgotten about Powers, because I haven't read any of his books in a while, but when I was regularly reading his books, I was very found of them.

His latest book, Three Days to Never is alright. It's one of his mid-tier books. Not as good as Anubis, Declare, or Last Call, but better than the rest. It also has a couple of really novel ideas in it, it's worth reading for them, even if the sum isn't greater than that of its parts.

[mpswaim]

Here's a couple of lighter series;

The Keeper Trilogy by Tanya Huff about a pair of girls who fight evil. (Technically, they protect the balance of good and evil, but for some reason, that never involves helping evil stop good.) The stories are pretty much independent, but they do follow a chronological order. (For example, a guy who's an angel during most of the second book is a cat in the third.)

Undead and Unxxx by MaryJanice Davidson - The main character gets hit by a car, and wakes up to find herself queen of the vampires. Primarily, this means that most of the limitations that vampires have don't apply to her. (She sleeps during the day, but that's about it.) There's an interesting dynamic in the first couple of books, where she doesn't really "get" what it means to be a vampire, and most of the rest of the vampires refuse to believe that she's their queen. (These books are in the romance section, by the way.)

[ShannonA]

3. Women of the Otherworld, by Kelley Armstrong. This is a series of books which don't all center on the same protagonists, but which are all connected through characters in common. The first two, which are the only two that I've read, are about werewolves, while I believe we get to witches beyond this. As with Anita Blake, and pretty much everything here except Dresden, there's a fair amount of romance. These books drop down into my "good" category (from "great"), though I hear the later books are better. Nonetheless they offer another interesting look at the supernatural in the modern world, and I enjoyed in the second book that we started to see that open up to a wider world.


I finished reading the third of these books, Dime Store Magic last night, and I got to say they continue to trend upward. I like the second protagonist Paige, much more than the first one, mainly because it escaped from all the dominance games of the werewolf pack. But, I also think the plotting was generally tighter.

In reading the authors web site, I learned that she purposefully opened up a wider world with book #2 because she didn't want to get stuck writing a werewolf series for ever.

[The Fiendish Dr. Samsara]

Would Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising sequence qualify as Modern Fantasy? I'd think so, although not Urban Fantasy. The second book (The Dark is Rising proper) is one of my favourite novels ever. I reread it most Christmases and always love it.

[gothwalk]

I have question re Charles deLint: I have always avoided him. Not really intentionally, but I somewhere got the idea that he was a little...twee, I guess. Is that fair?

A collection of vague concepts tagged "de Lint" in my mind follows:

I've read most of de Lint's books. They're good books, and worth reading

But... they all get blurred in my mind into a series of kindly ex-gamines who were abused as children and now help people. I have difficulty telling some of his characters apart, and, being honest, I don't think he writes women all that well.

I preferred his two Tamson House books to those set in his fictional city of Newford, which is so vague as to be uncertain whether it's in Canada or the US.

Mulengro - while I didn't like it myself - is an excellent book, and Moonheart is also a good read.

[gothwalk]

Robert Holdstock's books, particularly Mythago Wood and its various follow-ons, are something I'd recommend very highly indeed.

[Joebot]

[QUOTE=gothwalk;886

But... they all get blurred in my mind into a series of kindly ex-gamines who were abused as children and now help people. I have difficulty telling some of his characters apart, and, being honest, I don't think he writes women all that well.

QUOTE]

Man, did you nail that right on the head. I discovered deLint a few years ago, and really liked him at first. I read some of his novels, a couple of short story collections ... then just fizzled out. The guy is a good writer, but geez, does his stuff get repetitive.

I like what I see as deLints' overall theme, about people trying to find some magic or wonder in their everyday lives. It's just that he's beaten that theme to death over the span of 20+ books and countless short stories. Write about something else!!

As for other urban fantasy authors, Gaiman is probably my favorite.

I'm wondering though ... does the definition of "urban fantasy" solely mean "fantasy set in a real world, urban environment?"

Or would it also include fantasy novels set in fictional cities? China Mieville would be a good example, or Tad Williams' "War of the Flowers." I was just curious. I don't want to get caught up in a big debate about genre naming conventions.

[Praxias]

Hmm. Nobody's mentioned Kim Harrison's series or the Nightside books by Simon Green. And while not modern, Green's Hawk and Fisher novels are urban. Sorta. Fantasy cops in Ye Olde Corrupt Fantasy City.


Praxias

[ShannonA]

Hmm. Nobody's mentioned Kim Harrison's series or the Nightside books by Simon Green. And while not modern, Green's Hawk and Fisher novels are urban. Sorta. Fantasy cops in Ye Olde Corrupt Fantasy City.


I read the first Green and it didn't impress me, though I'm going to give it one more book's try. The Harrison books certainly have pretty covers and good names. A friend has lent me the second through fifth; I just requested the first from the library a day or two ago.

[Decado]

I am reading Kim Harrison's Dead Witch Walking right now. I am about halfway through and I think I will pick up the next one in the series.

Decado

[Eric Tolle]

Yay- I get to be the first one to mention Tim Powers! The Fault Lines series- "Last Call", "Expiration Date" and "Earthquake Weather"- is a masterpiece of the urban fantasy genre.

[bertipa]

Please don't forget the classics:

Fritz Leiber's "Conjure Wife" and "Our lady of darkness"

And Lankhmar is not modern but sure is urban.

[Dr. Moonthunder]

Has anyone mentioned Stephen Brust yet? He co-wrote Gypsy, I think with Megan Lindholm, whom most of us know better as Robin Hobb. I read it just as I was burning out on "folk-music fantasy" and didn't fare well with it.

Lindholm's Wizard of the Pigeons, however, is wonderful. Brust recommended this almost forcefully at a con, and one listens when the recommender isn't barking mad (see Brin, David).

Hmm. Nobody's mentioned Kim Harrison's series

As Shannon mentioned, they have pretty covers and cool names. They are, like the narrator herself, a tease. (I would put a robust Anglo-Saxon word for a rooster in front of "tease," a term I think is warranted but might offend.)

The protagonist, Rachel, has the single most annoying narrative voice I've encountered in years. She uses language to titillate, and at the end of the first novel the new male love interest gets--gasp!--a kiss. I'm not looking for pornography, but she's selling the sizzle (several references to her appearance using words like "slutty" and "hooker" in the first few pages) when there's no steak.

Pun not intended.

This is a book about vampires, witches, demons, nasty faeries, and the occult cops who work with or against them in a part of Cleveland now known as The Hollows. As such, it has a very cool background and not a bad story. But that narrator... it's like having Yoko Ono giving a running commentary in one ear while you're listening to the Beatles. This would make a very cool gaming background, but I just can't. Read. Any more. Rachel.

My god! How could I forget the Borribles (http://www.theborribles.co.uk/borrible.htm)!

[Seroster]

I read the first Green and it didn't impress me, though I'm going to give it one more book's try. The Harrison books certainly have pretty covers and good names. A friend has lent me the second through fifth; I just requested the first from the library a day or two ago.

Personally, I think Glen Cook's "Garrett" novels are much, much better. Rather than taking the police/mystery and fantasy combination, they're hardboiled detective & fantasy. The first novel goes out of Tunfaire (the main city) but otherwise they're centred there.

[Chantry]

As Shannon mentioned, they have pretty covers and cool names. They are, like the narrator herself, a tease. (I would put a robust Anglo-Saxon word for a rooster in front of "tease," a term I think is warranted but might offend.)


They're getting better (or hotter, I should say). Unlike authors who shan't be named but whose initials are LAURELL K. HAMILTON, Harrison understands how to add sex gradually and build up the tension between the characters.

Though I would like to see the whole Ivy/Rachel dynamic bear some more fruit.

I was an original from-book-one first-printing Anita Blake fan, not a bandwagoner after they turned into softcore porn, so I come by my distaste for what LKH did to the story honestly.

[Decado]

I just finished the last Dresden Files novel :( and think I will go back and read the rest of Harrison's books. I am in the same boat with Anita Blake. I started the series and loved them then they dove head long into badly written porn and I could not read any further. I think the earlier books were as enjoyable as the Dresden Files but the latter are crap.

Decado

[2Danimator]

My favorite author of the Urban/Modern fantasy has to be Nina Kiriki Hoffman. I have read all of her works, and each one is amazing. Her prose is so fluid and ethereal. My favorite book by her is "A Fistfull of Sky". Possibly one of the greatest books I have ever read. She writes about family, magic and all of the insanity and hardships that ensue. I recommend all of her works. (I love her!!)

Holly Black's series "Tithe: a Modern Faerie Tale", "Valiant: a Modern Tale of Faerie", and her latest in the series "Ironside: a Modern Faery's Tale" are young adult novel's that crossover seemlessly to adult. A compelling read that leaves you wanting more.

[gryftir]

Hmm... I believe there was a Mercedes Lackely and somebody else series. The else tended to vary. The Serrated Edge or something, though apparently it's part of a larger "elves on the road" universe, according to wikipedia.

Magical elves who race cars and help abused kids. There are always abused kids with magical powers, if memory serves. The other series may be different though.