My co-conspirators and their lists of 25 Urban Fantasy Books:
Liz Bourke
Justin Landon
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.
What is urban fantasy? A lot of people get stuck on this question as if it's difficult. In particular, there are often valiant attempts to separate out the "old school Charles De Lint" type of urban fantasy with the "new sexy" type of urban fantasy. Usually the people who try to make this distinction are in favour of De Lint, and not in favour of angry ladies with leather trousers on book covers.
I believe though that these are all part of the same thing. Sure, when many people say "urban fantasy" these days they tend to think about those angry ladies in leather trousers, having lots of sex with monstrous men, and kicking butt.
There's even an alternative take on the sub-genre, paranormal romance, which allows readers who like their monstrous hot men and angry ladies in leather trousers fiction to have happy endings to go over there and enjoy it without getting any vampire smut in the way of the sub genre that men occasionally like to read or write.
Luckily, no one puts vampire smut in the corner. Not forever, anyway
Yes, there are gender issues with how people talk about urban fantasy. Not least of which is the way that the 'newfangled smexy' version of the genre is often discussed entirely in the context of the covers, by people who have never read the books themselves, but are quite sure that the ones by Charles De Lint are better. (this is another thing that urban fantasy has in common with romance)
Women write a lot of urban fantasy. Urban fantasy tends to be more relaxed about sexual content than a lot of otherworld fantasy, possibly because of the large numbers of women writing and reading it, but also possibly because it's set in our reality and no one's cod-medieval morals are getting in the way. It also has a massive presence in the YA field, with some of the most fascinating and inventive examples of modern urban fantasy to be found on the shelf aimed at a teenage audience - where it can be thoroughly ignored by the same critics who get all judgy about angry trousers.
Ahem. But let's get back to what urban fantasy actually is. Alternative history with magic. That's it. That's why the Charles De Lint books and the Charlaine Harris books and the elves on motorcycles and the Norse gods in suburbia and the sexy angry leather trousers kicking butt are all part of the same thing.
Sometimes, urban fantasy utilises tropes from other genres - especially from the paranormal end of the horror genre, and also from crime. Even the format of the books tends towards the series rather than serial, closer to crime than fantasy. But some urban fantasy doesn't have crime plots OR horror tropes. Some of it is about the collision of the magical with the mundane, in a world that looks a lot like ours, but has a few key differences.
Alt history. With magic.
Here are 25 examples of the good stuff that I like about this complex and wildly full-of-possibilities genre. My list does not happen to have any novels on it by Charlaine Harris or Charles De Lint. There may be a few book covers with angry trousers.
[For more of Tansy ranting about angry trousers, check out ]
25 URBAN FANTASIES
1. THE ALMIGHTY JOHNSONS (2011-2013)
I probably should have left this one until the end of the list because chronologically it's one of the most recent urban fantasies I want to talk about but I can't wait because OMG this show.
I'm halfway through watching the third season right now and completely in love with it. The premise is that the Norse gods fled to New Zealand years ago and keep being reborn into new human bodies, often within the same families, with limited powers. If Odin ever returns and finds his eternal wife the Frigg, then the gods will be restored to former glories
This story has everything - domestic kitchen sink drama about families and share houses, sex and magic, witty dialogue, suffering angsty heroes and laid-back Antipodean awesomeness. It's suburban fantasy at its finest, and defines the urban fantasy genre for me like no other story ever has.
2. NEVERWHERE, NEIL GAIMAN (BBC RADIO 2013)
Before, I've appreciated the premise of this story more than its execution - I didn't mind the TV series but never saw all of it, and quite enjoyed the book. But it was the ideas within the story that I fell in love with: the concept of an underground magical reality which gives logical explanations for some of the more fanciful London Tube station names like Earl's Court, Old Bailey and the Angel Islington.
At its heart, this is the sort of thing that urban fantasy is supposed to do - peeling up our mundane reality to show the magic lurking beneath.
Famously, Gaiman wrote the novel to assuage his own disappointment at the rendition of some of the special effects in the TV series, but it's with the the recent BBC Radio adaptation of this work that Neverwhere really comes to life. James McAvoy, Natalie Dormer, Anthony Head, Romola Garai, Benedict Cumberbatch, Bernard Cribbins and Christopher Lee bring the marvellous characters to life and evoke the sheer absurdity that our hero is dragged into when he 'falls through the cracks.'
3. DIANA TREGARDE INVESTIGATES, MERCEDES LACKEY (1989-1991)
Lackey's three Diana Tregarde novels (Burning Water, Children of the Night, Jinx High) were probably the first books I read which set up what we think of now as the urban fantasy standard - a powerful female character living and working in a city who is called in as an expert to deal with paranormal crimes. I really liked Diana and wished there was more of this series - fifteen years before its time, perhaps?
Aztec gods and possessed rock bands made the first two novels entertaining, but I have a particular soft spot for Jinx High, in which an older Diana has to solve a high school paranormal mystery. I'm pretty sure a few bits of this were stolen for season one of Buffy, just saying.
4. GUILTY PLEASURES, LAURELL K HAMILTON (1993)
No one can deny the vital role that Hamilton has had in popularising the urban fantasy genre - and the early Anita Blake novels are fantastic examples of it. I remember being blown away by her first novel, the vivid ensemble characters surrounding Anita (oh Edward the assassin, I will always love you), and the great procedural-with-vampires-and-zombies plot. More importantly, these books have an elegant approach to world building, demonstrating that urban fantasy is simply another form of good old fashioned alt history. Here, the world is just like ours except that everyone knows vampires exist, and they have the vote now. GO.
The books are actually a lot more complicated than that, but I really appreciated the way that they delved into what the real life, pragmatic consequences might be if you could raise zombies from the dead. So, zombie raising becomes an essential legal tool in dealing with will disputes, vampire clubs become the trendy location for hen nights, and what workplace rights are lycanthropes entitled to?
The Anita Blake books, especially early on, are brilliant examples of police procedurals with magic, but Laurell K also added clever domestic details that showed the mundane, everyday ramifications of all the monsters and magic. All told with a saucy modern attitude that has been much copied in the decades that followed.
As with the Diana Tregarde series, this book from 1993 is indistinguishable from what we perceived to be urban fantasy today - a note for those of you who continue to claim that smexy angry trousers ladies are a new phenomenon. Anita's trousers were plenty angry back in the early 90 s.
5. TAM LIN, PAMELA DEAN (1991)
Part of the reason I get a bit cross about the pre-angry-trousers school of magical mundanity AKA urban fantasy being defined as "lovely magical realist novels by Charles De Lint" is that the defining novel of this subset of urban fantasy for me is and always will be Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean.
Pamela Dean effectively ruined me for Charles De Lint, just as she ruined me for university. I'm not sorry.
This is one of the most perfect novels ever written for me. It's about how college is magic, and a lot of that magic is about autumn leaves and first love and Shakespeare classes and birth control and some of it is about sinister professors and faery lore and oh did you forget that the title TELLS YOU this is a novel about that famous old ballad of stolen young men and heroic young pregnant women?
Every time I read this book, I want it never to end. The magic is subtle and creeping until you turn around and realise it was there all along, in everything, and actually this is a book about a completely different world than you thought it was.
6. FIRE & HEMLOCK, DIANA WYNNE JONES (1985)
I've always been a little bit discombobulated by the fact that two of my very favourite novels are based on the same ballad. This is the other Tam Lin story of my heart.
Most of Diana Wynne Jones' books are urban fantasies of one kind or another, except the occasional flirtations with portal fantasies, otherworld fantasy, and science fiction. But so many of her best and most memorable works are the ones which are set in ordinary kitchens and schools and families and suddenly the significance of THAT name or THIS plot twist falls into place and you realise she's done it all over again, she's seduced you into reading two different stories at once.
Fire and Hemlock does a marvellous job of showing just how weird and unbelievable it would be if there was magic in the real world, and also how difficult and awkward and embarrassing. It's also about love and friendship and embracing the epic, and how stories and magic are always wrapped up in each other.
It's lovely.
7. SHADOWS FALL, SIMON R GREEN (1994)
This is the town where legends go to die. Well, no, in many cases it's where the legends go after they die, while waiting to be forgotten.
I don't actually like this novel. I don't have the same love for it that I do for Green's epic fantasies and magical mysteries and his extraordinary space opera.
I have read this novel a LOT of times considering I don't like it very much. Shadows Fall is a strange mishmash of folklore and superheroes, cartoon characters and deep psychological trauma. Most definitely, it is a novel about the collision of the magical and the mundane, and the messy after effects. Simon R Green has written other, more conventional urban fantasy - Drinking Midnight Wine is a classic example of all the tropes and traditions done very well - but Shadows Fall is the one that kicked me in the teeth harder with a version of the "real world" that I never ever want to visit.
8. GROWING RICH, FAY WELDON (1992)
Fay Weldon has been writing speculative fiction for decades, and she rarely gets the attention for it that other lit writers like Margaret Atwood do. To me her works have been important because of how many of them get adapted, often into great TV series. The Cloning of Joanna May, for instance, is a brilliant and creepy piece of science fiction made even better by the addition of Patricia Hodge.
I first discovered Growing Rich thanks to a mini-series in 1992 featuring Martin Kemp as "the Driver." As with many other Weldon TV adaptations, I just had to pick up the novel. Growing Rich is the story of three teenage girls who live in a middle of nowhere town (urban fantasy: not always in cities) in East Anglia, and have the misfortune to be vocalising their fed-upness when the Devil is driving by
Their fortunes then rise and crash depending on how grateful they are to the sinister dark man driving the limo - but what do they actually want out of life? Babies, glamour, true love, honest work? A creepy, sensational novel without an angry pair of leather trousers in sight - though it does have a very feisty red dress.
A coming of age novel with rebellion and magic.
9. GOOD OMENS, NEIL GAIMAN AND TERRY PRATCHETT (1990)
Yes, here's Neil Gaiman again. I love this book still, so much. There was a lot of funny urban fantasy around in the 90's (and wow, this list is very early 90 s so far, yes?). I also very much enjoyed a bunch of books by Esther Friesner, and the early works of Robert Rankin and Tom Holt - but this one takes the cake, the biscuit and the cup of tea.
Angels, devils, the Anti-Christ, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the plucky kids, the earnest witch, and a powerful sense of the history of our real actual world, colliding with some of our most potent mythic forces. I like the work of Gaiman generally (though not as avidly as most of his fans), and I adore almost everything that Terry Pratchett has ever written, but there is something really bizarrely wonderful about this combination of both their talents. The fact that Crowley and Aziraphale have a devoted slash following only makes revising this book even better.
10. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1997-2003)
Okay, here we go. You really can't talk about urban fantasy without Buffy, just as you can't talk about children's fantasy these days without addressing Harry Potter. It's worth noting though that the spin off series Angel probably has more in common with a large majority of the urban fantasy genre in bookshis trousers are pretty damn angry.
But Buffy was important in so many ways, a seminal text at the heart of the trope-that-became-a-subgenre: the modern girl warrior who is far more dangerous than she appears. There were popular urban fantasies before this show - Laurell K was both selling very well by this point, Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse arrived a little more than halfway through the TV run and hey, let's talk about Anne Rice for a minute - but this is the point that vampires tipped over into the mainstream.
Whedon's focus on the metaphor 'high school is a horror movie' for the first three years, followed by 'life basically is also a horror movie and being grown up sucks a bit more than you thought it would when you were suffering in high school' for four years, gave a sense of reality to the monsters and villains that tore through Buffy's life in a regular basis.
But put simply - we got a coming of age hero super myth, packed into the form of a tiny blonde girl, with a lot of witty dialogue. It was awesome, and it is a LONG time since we've seen as many female-led action TV shows as we had in the late 90's, early 00's. Buffy's legacy did not, sadly, create a revolution as to the kinds of heroes people expected on their screens (though after this point any woman in an action/horror movie not kicking butt herself was open to widespread derision and scorn) but her legacy can be found very strongly in all the books that exploded the market in the early 21st century, to the point that 'urban fantasy' started to mean 'story with crime, magic and a female action hero' to many, many readers.
Interesting, isn't it, that it wasn't horror fiction that changed with the arrival of Buffy as the heroine who killed some monsters, and kissed others.
11. LOCKED IN TIME, LOIS DUNCAN (1985)
Before Buffy, there was Lois Duncan, writing horror suspense for teenage readers. What has horror suspense got to do with urban fantasy? Quite a lot, actually! As a sub-genre, it borrows a lot of tropes from horror fiction, though the focus is often more on strength, sassiness and getting shit done rather than fear and dread. The Buffy mode, in other words.
But the kind of books written by Lois Duncan - and let's face it, Stephen King, Anne Rice, and others- are part of the heritage that culminated with Buffy and then transformed into a thriving sub-genre of fiction that everyone liked to pretend was new and fresh and hadn't been there through the entire 90 s.
Locked in Time is one of many Duncan novels with which I scared myself silly as a pre-teen. Nore's father remarries unexpectedly, to a woman who seems far too young to have teenage children of her own. Magic, creepiness, domesticity and power all collide in this story of a world where supernatural forces bleed into everyday life. It's gothic, it's horror, and if it had more of a sense of humour about those things it would be far more obviously an ancestor of Buffy and the angry trousers that came after her
12. Sunshine, Robin McKinley (2003)
Robin McKinley is an author of marvellous, soul-renewing fairy tale novels. She changed the way I looked at Beauty and the Beast and Sleeping Beauty, and her Deerskin is one of the most heartbreaking (and yet ultimately satisfying) novels I've ever read.
But Sunshine did something else. McKinley she addressed the vampire-slayer-paranormal-romance tropes that were only just beginning to become mainstream in the wake of Buffy's popularity, and added a healthy dose of the same thing she added to her fairytales: pragmatism, real world authenticity, a dash of cynicism to counter all that romantic claptrap, and a heroine you really wanted to hang out with. And not just because she makes really awesome bread and pastries.
13. "MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS,"KELLY LINK (2005)
This novella is one of my favourite pieces of Kelly Link's writing - and yes, another piece of urban fantasy in conversation with Buffy. Seminal text, I believe I said?
Link's work is often described as magical realism rather than fantasy, but despite her writing style being more traditionally literary, almost everything she writes engages with genre tropes of some kind. "Magic for Beginners" is about fandom and fannishness, with teenagers obsessively tracking a randomly-appearing TV Show called "the Library". It speaks to any love of any cult TV but engages so thoroughly with Buffy that it's hard to ignore those aspects. If Buffy was a literary novella, it would be this. And while pretty much anything Link writes set in our world could ultimately be read as urban fantasy ("The Faery Handbag" is another strong contender) this one remains the piece that I would choose as a teaching tool about what urban fantasy is, and can be.
14. Discount Armageddon, Seanan McGuire (2012)
This book is what I actually want urban fantasy to be now, in the second decade of the 21st century, nearly 20 years after I first read Anita Blake and, let's face it, nearly a decade after Buffy ended. Great world building, an enjoyable heroine, and a touch less of the angst-me-vampire schtick that is feeling pretty tired. Verity is a ballroom dancer and parkour fanatic, from a long family line of monster-fighters who prefer to keep themselves as anonymous as possible. I love the fact that even in the face of, well, armageddon-sized plot drama, this novel is packed with friendships, banter and comedy mice. Comedy mice, people!
15. FRUITS BASKET, NATSUKI TAKAYA (1999-2006)
Most of the manga I have read is actually urban fantasy. Adding magical sparkles to an ordinary real world set up (especially schools) is par for the course, and Magical Girl stories like Sailor Moon rely on that collision of sparkles, epic heroism, romance, and having to do your homework while saving the world.
Fruits Basket is my favourite, and to date is the only 20+ volume manga series I have read from beginning to end. It's the story of a homeless girl who is taken in by a "Family" that just get weirder and weirder the more she gets to know them, and is packed with all those fun things that western literature mostly lacks, like an abundance of genderqueer characters, and an unabashed sentimentality. Also boys that turn into cats, which is a trope I'm quite fond of.
In Fruits Basket, the epic happenings are all closely tied to domestic concerns and the people you care about, so every magical disaster really does feel like the end of the world
16. ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS (WRITER), MARK BAGLEY & STUART IMMONEN (PENCILS) (2000 - 2009)
Superhero comics, also urban fantasy. Yeah yeah, Superman and Kryptonite, mutations, whatever, superheroes are mostly not science fiction.
Some superhero comics, it has to be said, feel more like urban fantasy than others. And that's where Ultimate Spider-Man comes in. Round about the time Buffy dropped out of college, this series launched the Marvel 'Ultimate' line in which classic characters and storylines were rebooted into a fresh, more contemporary universe, allowing them to compress decades of plot lines and to produce stories with a fresher and more contemporary feel. Much like Buffy, the 21st century teenage superhero Peter Parker juggled home life, school and other practical responsibilities along with his heroics. Angst, suffering, high school metaphors and banter ensued. A great ensemble cast including some fantastic female characters make this an intense and self-contained superhero reading experience. In particular, the Ultimate Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane and Aunt May feel far more realised and modern to me than the versions in the 'original' universe which have some serious 1960's baggage still lingering around them. Kitty Pryde, however, is awesome in all universes.
Honourable mentions for other great superhero comics that read like urban fantasy include Dan Slott's She-Hulk, Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men, all Justice League comics from 1987-1995, and Gail Simone's Birds of Prey. Kelly-Sue Deconnick's Captain Marvel, though, is definitely science fiction.
17. BAD POWER, DEBORAH BIANCOTTI (2012)
Think you hate superheroes? They probably hate you, too.
So many authors have tried to resurrect the superhero genre outside its traditional format, but you just can't replicate the same colour and dynamic oomph in prose. Biancotti, in this elegant short story suite, didn't try to do that at all. Instead she took the 'what if some metahumans could do special things' trope and turned it into a series of dark, edgy urban fantasy pieces about suicides, immortality and missing children. Brilliant stuff.
18. MOONSHINE, ALAYA DAWN JOHNSON (2010)
So here's why we call it urban fantasy and not contemporary fantasy, even though it doesn't ALWAYS have a city convenient to the story. Urban fantasy doesn't have to be set in the present day. Controversial? Eh.
Look at Moonshine, one of my favourite recent vampire novels. Johnson has shaped her story entirely around the urban fantasy mode - a heroine who is 'different' to those around her (in this case a social justice campaigner in 1920's New York), a charming paranormal gentleman, and a strong alt history involving magical creatures. Yay vampire mob bosses!
The fact that it's set nearly a century ago doesn't take anything away from urban fantasy - rather, it adds to it.
19. SOULLESS, GAIL CARRIGER (2009)
And of course then there's the Parasol Protectorate. Sure, steampunk, whatever. You just can't discuss urban fantasy as a modern, adapting genre, without including the bestselling superpower that is the tea-and-parasol obsessed Gail Carriger. (Well okay I am doing this without Charlaine Harris or True Blood but honestly, we only have 25!)
Brilliant world building that can be conveyed simply, romantic subplots, monsters galore and oh, battle accessories. Also a heroine who is so special, she literally does not have a soul. Based strongly on Victorian superstition with a dash of contemporary kick, the Alexia Tarabotti stories are what urban fantasy is all about. In petticoats.
20. The Diviners, Libba Bray (2012)
I will admit to having been disappointed in this novel at first, largely because it was teased ahead of time as "Zelda Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker investigate paranormal monsters" and I was kind of hoping that was literally a description of the book's contents. The lack of Zelda herself is however where the disappointment ends - this is a massive tome which has all the monsters-and-flappers goodness I was craving, plus it's set around a lovely museum and I am a bit soppy about such things. Can you believe I got two 1920's books into this list?
21. The Confessions of Dorian Gray, various authors,
(2012-2013)
Audio plays again! There have been two seasons in this magnificent series of very short plays based on the simple premise that Oscar Wilde's book The Picture of Dorian Gray was about a real person, and that he did not in fact die at the end - Wilde included that plot twist as something of a kindness.
The plays are scattered back and forth through the late 19, entire 20th and early 21st centuries, each bringing to life an incident in Dorian's long, selfish life. Ghosts gather, monsters lurk, and beautiful men and women drift through his fingers. There is in fact a Dorothy Parker story - in which the ageing lady is very sharp about the fact that the lovely young man from her youth hasn't aged a day, but that doesn't stop her solving a murder mystery with him! There's also a 60's rock music story, a modern stockbroker story, a Blitz storyoh and of particular note, a Sherlock Holmes crossover Christmas Special.
Alexander Vlahos has an amazing voice, and plays the protagonist Dorian with a soulful angst that is probably more human and appealing than the original character deserves. These bite-sized plays, usually only featuring two or three voice actors, are grim, bittersweet and witty all at once, building up the life of a 'youthful' immortal over more than a century while poking holes in any romanticism you might have about such a creature.
22. GUARDIAN OF THE DEAD, KAREN HEALEY (2011)
I haven't chosen many Antipodean examples of the genre, largely because there are fewer to choose from outside US publishers (I have left out quite a few, some by dear friends, sorry about that! So many books to talk about). Guardian of the Dead is quite possibly the first book I ever read that was set in New Zealand. I did read a few Margaret Mahy books as a kid and some might have been set there instead of Australia without me realising, but this was the first one I was conscious of.
For context, this is basically like if you were American and had never read anything set in Canada, ever.
Guardian of the Dead does a fantastic job (as far as I can tell) of showing the blend of cultures and myths that are prevalent in New Zealand, and bringing out the supernatural implications of those myths, while addressing some of the problematic elements of, you know, being a white author writing about Maori legends, etc. I also appreciated the diversity of the ensemble from a racial point of view, as well as with the fat female protagonist (SO RARE) and a very sympathetic asexual character.
23. RAMPANT (KILLER UNICORNS #1), DIANA PETERFREUND (2009)
Because, come on. Killer unicorns.
There are many things to love about this series which sadly only consists thus far of two novels though I have also enjoyed the many short stories Peterfreund has used to build up the history of her world. The heroine, Astrid, has more than a shade of Buffy about her at the beginning, but she becomes her own person very quickly, and it's notable that she isn't 'the Chosen one' but one of a whole team of Chosen ones, each of whom are special, destined for greatness, and female.
Virgins, of course. But the first novel in the series interrogates the whole 'virgins and unicorns' myth quite thoroughly, looking at why it might work, the various definitions of virginity and sex in our culture, and also interrogating the problematic way that sexuality in teenage girls is both controlled and obsessed over in the twenty first century as well as history going back to medieval times.
A clever, crunchy series that deserved more sales - and is ultimately just as much about women and their friendships as it is about kicking killer unicorn ass and taking names.
Did I mention it's set in Rome? URBAN FANTASY SET IN ROME, PEOPLE!
24. AKATA WITCH, NNEDI OKORAFOR (2011)
There should be more urban fantasy about sport.
Actually, there should be more sport in speculative fiction generally - are we really all such geeks that we can't acknowledge the cultural power and significance of kicking a ball around a field? (JK Rowling at least acknowledged the importance of sport in school culture with Quidditch)
Akata Witch is special for many reasons - as with Healey and NZ, I don't think I had read much about Africa at all before Okorafor's books. Having been warmed up by the brain-expanding and confronting Who Fears Death (which would itself be a good contender for this list, despite its science fictional aspects), I welcomed Akata Witch, a challenging and wondrous story of outsiders, and African magic, culture and friendship.
But I'm also a soccer nut, and it was so lovely to read a female protagonist for whom playing soccer was a key part of her identity. There are a few great YA books that do a good job with soccer but this is the first time I've seen it in spec fic. MORE PLEASE.
25. THE LYNBURN LEGACY: UNTOLD, UNSPOKEN, SARAH REES BRENNAN (2012-2013)
You have to wait another year for the trilogy to be complete. I could have recommended Brennan's other trilogy, which is wonderful and includes demons, dyslexia and goblin markets, and is packed to the brim with banterific characters that I love. But while there's more city in The Demon's Lexicon, the Lynburn Legacy is well on its way to being her more important urban fantasy.
These books have the literary tradition of the gothic at their heart, in the hands of a smart feminist writer who is having great fun boiling up the tropes and hurling them at unexpected characters. It's based around a village and its community, with the idea that magic has always been there, simmering in secret, but because it's a YA, the story begins with the teenagers of that community discovering the secret for the first time.
Revelation that the mundane is really magical is a key if not essential urban fantasy trope (many begin with the magic awareness already established and taken for granted by the protagonist, which is just as awesome and legitimate) and Brennan does a very good job with the reveals and their consequences in what looked at first like a sleepy little English village
AND I'M DONE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
Aargh, 25 already? But I'm not done at all! I wanted to talk about Jennifer Stevenson's Trash Sex Magic, Alice Hoffman's Practical Magic, everything Holly Black has ever written and most of Justine Larbalestier's workbut, no. Time to stop.
So, what would your top 25 Urban Fantasies be? Do yours have to have cities in them? Does YA even count? Does historical count? How do you feel about the angry trousers revolution, or would you prefer to be reading Charles De Lint?
Answers on a postcard! Or, you know, in the comments.
TANSY'S LIST WITHOUT ALL THAT COMMENTARY GETTING IN THE WAY:
1. The Almighty Johnsons (2011-2013)
2. Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman (BBC Radio 2013)
3. Diana Tregarde Investigates, Mercedes Lackey (1989-1991)
4. Guilty Pleasures, Laurell K Hamilton (1993)
5. Tam Lin, Pamela Dean (1991)
6. Fire & Hemlock, Diana Wynne Jones (1985)
7. Shadows Fall, Simon R Green (1994)
8. Growing Rich, Fay Weldon (1992)
9. Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (1990)
10. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)
11. Locked in Time, Lois Duncan (1985)
12. Sunshine, Robin McKinley (2003)
13. "Magic For Beginners,"Kelly Link (2005)
14. Discount Armageddon, Seanan McGuire (2012)
15. Fruits Basket, Natsuki Takaya (1999-2006)
16. Ultimate Spider-Man, Brian Michael Bendis (writer), Mark Bagley & Stuart Immonen (pencils) (2000 - 2009)
17. Bad Power, Deborah Biancotti (2012)
18. Moonshine, Alaya Dawn Johnson (2010)
19. Soulless, Gail Carriger (2009)
20. The Diviners, Libba Bray (2012)
21. The Confessions of Dorian Gray, Big Finish Productions (2012-2013)
22. Guardian of the Dead, Karen Healey (2011)
23. Rampant (Killer Unicorns #1), Diana Peterfreund (2009)
24. Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor (2011)
25. The Lynburn Legacy: Untold, Unspoken, Sarah Rees Brennan (2012-2013)
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