Urban Fantasy – Page 2 – Marked for Plot

The Effaced

I don’t watch much TV, but when Arcane dropped in 2021, I was hooked. I’m not even a League of Legends player and think it’s some of the best fantasy TV to come out this decade. The Effaced felt a lot like watching the first season of Arcane: steampunk meets magitech, a city with a class-war brewing, great fight scenes from a talented protagonist, and a rapidly escalating situation. This book isn’t going to win any awards innovation or complexity, but it was an incredibly fun read, and Tobias Begley remains one of my favorite authors.

Read if Looking for: easy reading, action-packed fantasy, hard magic systems, a surprisingly wide variety of assassins

Avoid if you Dislike: the occasional typo, easter eggs to author’s other series, characters that don’t grow in power

Dad Magic

I picked up this book excited for an urban fantasy with a middle-aged gay parent as a protagonist. It’s about everything you could expect from a book called Dad Magic, and features a lot of elements I don’t normally see in fantasy (urban or not). Ultimately, I didn’t like this book terribly much, and wish that I had DNF’d it. I think there’s a lot of readers who would like it though, especially if they can get into the dad-bod jokes that exemplify the tone of this story.

Read If Looking For: platonic bromances, father/daughter bickering, corny jokes and names

Avoid if You Dislike: different names for everything, suspending disbelief for plot and romance, shallow characters

Small Gods of Calamity

This seems to be the week of book club reviews for me. I’m very happy to be a regular participant in r/fantasy’s Beyond Binaries Book Club, which focuses on queer speculative fiction. This month brings us to a supernatural police procedural story. It wasn’t quite as dynamic a story as I would have liked, but I really enjoyed the lead character, setting, and magic. If you want to check out the mid-way discussion of book club, check it out here!

Read if You Like: loner cops, creepy possession spirits, immersive magic

Avoid if Looking For: thrills and chills, resolutions to all loose threads, critiques of criminal justice systems

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

One of the things I love about fiction (and fantasy in particular) is that writers can operate within a shared bank of references, playing with old ideas and twisting them into new shapes. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is just that. It takes a deal with a devil, the moral ‘be careful what you wish for’ and spins out an engaging tale from it. This was a pick for an in-person book club, and I very much enjoyed my time with it, even if I thought it missed some golden opportunities.

Read if Looking For: resourceful women, hot demons, leads going from overwhelmed to hyper competent

Avoid if You Dislike: constant flashbacks

The Magpie Lord (A Charm of Magpies #1)

This 2013 novel has been a recurring title that’s popped up in recommendation threads ever since I started looking intentionally for gay protagonists. I’ve read quite a few of Charles’ other works, primarily historical fiction romance instead of historical fantasy romance, and I think readers who enjoyed those will get a lot out of this book (and similarly, fans here should read later books; I generally think she’s improved as an author as time has gone on). The Magpie Lord is a romantasy from before the romantasy boom, and it doesn’t follow the same conventions as what’s being published now. While I’ve got some quibbles with this book, I’ll definitely be picking up the sequels sometime soon!

Read if Looking For: quick romance reads, assertive/submissive dynamics, sassy butlers, historical British settings

Avoid if Looking For: fleshed out mysteries, supernatural elements beyond magicians, queernormative worlds, slow burn romances

Falconsaga

Falconsaga made it on my reading list as one of the rare books about queer men written by a queer man that I’ve found so far published this year. While I thought the representation did a great job of presenting gay men as humans independent of their romantic and sexual identities, I generally found the book to be on the disappointing side, especially after a few Urban Fantasy books that really blew me away. However, for those looking for something that dives into Icelandic folklore, I think it would be a great fit. I’m also very much in the minority so far based on other reviews, so take my opinions with a grain of salt.

Read if Looking For: prophecies, tragic backstories, sinister family members, Icelandic myth, grounded gay representation

Avoid if Looking For: tightly plotted books, subtle foreshadowing, page-turners, critical takes on magical age-gap relationships

Three Meant to Be (Branches of Past and Future #1)

Magic school stories are a dime a dozen, and I do love stories of meddling kids and incompetent teachers. However, when Three Meant to Be was pitched to me as a Magic school story from the perspective of a teacher (and a gay teacher no less) it was an easy add to my tbr. I don’t think it totally scratched that itch in particular, but it was a damned fun book to read, and I’m excited for the direction it seems to be headed.

As an aside, happy teacher appreciation week to anyone working in schools! The work we do is important, essential, and tough. Keep on trucking.

Read If You’re Looking For: a twist on classic magic school stories, quick pacing, grumpy leads who smoke too many cigarettes, loveable casts

Avoid if Looking For: deeply realistic portrayals of teacher life, nonhuman characters, epic and dramatic twists

Spirits Abroad

Short Fiction Anthologies are the types of books that I add to my TBR list, but never seem to get around to. I say I want to read more short fiction, say I want to try out some magazines, but never commit the time to it. Spirits Abroad is a first step in trying to make progress on that front and, while it definitely isn’t the best anthology I’ve read, provided several enjoyable reads, including one that I’ll be using in the high school genre fiction class I teach!

Read If Looking For: Urban Fantasy or Magical Realism short fiction, tight focus on Malaysian communities around the world, simple and straightforward language, feminist themes

Avoid if Looking For: writing that experiments with style or structure

Liar City (Sugar & Vice #1)

Liar City should have had the perfect ingredients to make this an excellent book for me. It’s a thriller with a queer male lead, with romantic tension that doesn’t dominate the story. Unfortunately, I found this book to be rather underwhelming. I don’t regret reading it, and think it will be a great fit for some, but it isn’t going to stick with me for any appreciable length of time.

Read if Looking For: brooding men with southern accents, unethical corporate machinations, running jokes about texting while driving, extremely slow burn romance series

Avoid if Looking For: adrenaline inducing reads, romances resolved in a single book, deeply realized characters

The Witchstone

Good Omens is a book that casts a very long shadow. Even when books aren’t explicitly setting out to be humorous, it’s tough to avoid comparisons when your lead characters are angels and demons. In this case, we’re only working on the demon half of the equation, but with humor as a core part of the story’s pitch, it immediately had a lot to live up to. Unfortunately, I found The Witchstone to mostly be a disappointment, though I wouldn’t go so far as to call the book a bad one.

Read if You’re Looking For: plucky humans, sassy demons, some casual tentacle horror

Avoid if You’re Looking For: humor that’s insightful and cutting, tonally consistent books, the next Good Omens