Urban Fantasy – Page 2 – Marked for Plot

The Incandescent

The Incandescent has established itself as one of the more popular Fantasy novels of 2025, at least in the corners of the internet I frequent. I knew I’d get around to reading it eventually; as a teacher protagonist, I love seeing magic schools turned on their head, and it doesn’t happen often! This book is a great choice for anyone remotely interested in the premise, and feels like a fairly safe pick for people looking for an introduction to modern Urban Fantasy. If you want demons, snarky kids, (possibly) competent adults doing adult things, then look no further!

Read if Looking For: teacher protagonists, chatty demons, unreliable(ish) narrators, plucky kids, and adult take on Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Trilogy

Avoid if Looking For: Dark Academia, challenging themes, romance-forward books, flashy magic

Fables: Volumes 1-3

After trying to hype How to Survive This Fairytale everywhere I could, I got recommended the Fables comics as another take on a dark fairy-tale mashup story. Sort of like if the TV show Once Upon a Time had been produced by HBO instead of Disney, which I think is a pretty good comparison point. This review covers the first three volumes ( Legends in Exile, Animal Farm, and Storybook Love). I’ll definitely be reading more of this, but I didn’t love it so much that I’m putting the rest of my backlog on hold to keep pursuing it.

Read if Looking For: fairy tales with blood, gore, and sex; morally dubious characters, traditional American Comic Book Art with modern storytelling sensibilities

Avoid if Looking For: thematic depth, emotional art styles, niche or non-European fairy tale references (so far)

Perdido Street Station

This is a book that’s been sitting on my ‘priority read’ bookshelf for about three years now. New Weird is a genre I’d been interested in, and Miéville’s reputation as an author who is concerned with his books as political objects pushing against the autoritarian status quo of fantasy really appeals to me. However, I’m finding that extremely large books put me off more than they used to, and I kept pushing it off until I was in the right mood. I left the book with mixed feelings. In some parts I felt in awe of what Miéville was accomplishing, and elsewhere I was disappointed in the choices he made to the point where I considered stepping away for a week or two. I have the feeling that I’ll be thinking about this book for a while, as it seems the type of story to sit with you.

Read if You Like: unhinged worldbuilding, examinations of power and culture, eldritch horrors, characters without happy endings, books to chew on

Avoid if Looking For: fast paced stories, consistent female characterization, happy and mindless books

Abbott (and Sequels)

Despite teaching a few different classes on graphic novels/comics to middle and high schoolers, I don’t actually read that many for fun these days – and almost never ones geared towards adults. In an effort to start changing that, I decided to pitch a graphic novel theme when I was asked to guest host r/QueerSFF’s July Book Club. Out of the nominees I selected, Abbott was far and away the winner, and I think it will lead to some great discussion! Books 1/2 left me with some frustrations (book 2 especially), but the final volume really blew me away and was an excellent ending. While I’m discussing my thoughts about the series as a whole, I won’t reference any specific spoilers for any of the books.

Additionally, I’ll include some images of the art at the bottom of this post for people who want to see some examples of non-cover art, which will become standard practice should I continue to review more sequential art.

Read if Looking For: nuanced depictions of sexism and racism, a historical Detroit setting, gruesome and evocative art, noir vibes

Avoid if Looking For: Dynamic fight scenes, properly-paced plots, innovative villains

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