I like urban fantasy. A lot. I write it, so it’s a good thing that I enjoy it, but I’ve been reading it since it really began to become a thing, and have a fairly broad knowledge of the genre. I was asked, after a Twitter thread about awesome urban fantasy authors, whether I would be interested in writing up a recommendation post. Well, sure; any excuse to talk about the books I love! But first, a few caveats:
- This is not a list of the very best, you must read this, absolutely essential urban fantasy books. This is a list of urban fantasy I would personally recommend.
- By the same measure, if something is not included, I didn’t forget it, I didn’t include it. Now maybe that means it’s something I didn’t read. Or maybe it means it’s something I didn’t enjoy. Since this is not “Seanan starts a feud within her genre,” I will not be specifying which is which. When reading and enjoying this article, if moved to comment, please don’t comment with “BUT YOU FORGOT…” I assure you, I did not.
And now, with no further ado, I present to you,
Seanan’s Personal Top Ten Urban Fantasy Books For Adults (Because There’s So Much Awesome YA That We’d Be Here All Week)
Tam Lin, Pamela Dean. This could be a contentious entry, since there’s some question as to whether Tam Lin is urban fantasy or modern adult fantasy. The two genres are siblings, no question, and exist closely enough together that sometimes works can slip from one into the other. To me, Tam Lin is the quintessential urban fantasy: it pre-dates a lot of the genre conventions that we have today. No leather pants or sexy shifters here. But there is a strong female lead (Janet), a beautifully thought-out parallel history, and a deep introspection into what happens when the world of the fantastic collides with the world of the every day. If you follow my essaying around, you’ll see me mention this book a lot. There’s an excellent reason for that.
Buy the Book
Tam Lin
Our second contender is also an adaptation of the old English ballad of Tam Lin, although mixed liberally with Thomas the Rhymer: Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones. This is another book that pre-dates the modern definition of “urban fantasy,” and so is incredibly whimsical and unpredictable to the modern urban fantasy reader. I think I read it five times before I fully understood the ending (and I’m not 100% sure I understand it even now). This book was foundational to me: I quote little bits and pieces of it in my daily life, and I would be someone else if I had never read it. (Being a foundational text isn’t the only requirement to be one of my favorite urban fantasy works—The Last Unicorn and The Stand will not be appearing on this list.) Deftly written, meticulously fair, and very aware of what it means to be kind, this book is what I aspire to every time I tell a story.
Buy the Book
Fire and Hemlock
War for the Oaks, Emma Bull, is probably the first book on this list that most modern readers of urban fantasy would recognize as belonging to the genre, even as its tropes and story beats are shallowly drawn by today’s standards. Which isn’t to say that the story is shallow—just that those tropes had yet to be entirely defined, and in fact, this book was key in defining many of them. On such things are foundations built. This is a classic of the genre, a seminal work that defined the path the rest of us would be walking for years, and deserves to be held up and recognized as such.
Buy the Book
War for the Oaks
Summon the Keeper, Tanya Huff. If I were asked to populate a panel with the fairy godmothers of modern urban fantasy, Tanya’s name would be the first one I put down. She wrote a vampire detective when that wasn’t a cliché. She helped to shape and establish many of the tropes we still work with today. And she turns them all on their heads in this deft, funny, unique, and uniquely Canadian urban fantasy setting. The cats who assist her Keepers over the course of the series are all based on real felines belonging to Tanya and her wife, Fiona; the death of the last of the Keeper-cats in the real world brought about the end of the series, which is sad but understandable.
Buy the Book
Summon the Keeper
The Jill Kismet series, by Lilith St. Crow, is one of those that never seemed to me to get the traction and attention it genuinely deserved. The fifth book, Heaven’s Spite, has possibly the bravest, most true to the character and story ending I have ever encountered in urban fantasy. It takes guts to do what St. Crow does here, and she makes it look and feel so effortless that I am still in awe. Make sure to have book six on hand if you decide to take the plunge, because that is not an ending you want to be forced to process any longer than you decide to.
Buy the Book
Night Shift
Dimestore Magic, Kelley Armstrong. This is technically the third in her Women of the Otherworld series, and you should probably start with book one, Bitten, if you want the story to play out the way the author intended. But damn, I love Paige. Straddling the line between urban fantasy (focused more on the adventure and the drama at hand) and paranormal romance (a sibling genre adhering to several romance conventions, including a guaranteed Happily Ever After), this series shifts narrators every few volumes, which brings us to my beloved Paige, witch and coven-leader and beleaguered problem solver. The whole series is worth your time and attention, being beautifully, brilliantly written.
Buy the Book
Dime Store Magic
A lot of my selections have been made on the basis of “this sets you up for a wider appreciation of the genre,” since when I’m talking about urban fantasy, I want people to understand just how we got to where we are today, and just how big our tent is (it’s a pretty big tent). And it is with those things in mind that I add Laurel Hamilton’s Guilty Pleasures to this list. Anita Blake was among the first police investigators to show up at our party, and she paved the way for a great many more. She was sharp, cynical, and gloriously unique, even as these days, she looks like just another kick-ass heroine in leather pants. The later books include a lot of graphic, extremely detailed erotica, which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but which still doesn’t tip the series over into paranormal romance—make no mistake, we have never been promised a happily ever after.
Buy the Book
Guilty Pleasures
Rivers of London, published in the US as Midnight Riot, is the first book in stellar Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovitch. These books are fascinating and wholly unique in their magic system and cosmology, pulling very heavily on the folklore and folk tales of London, and the massive network of tributaries formed by the River Thames. Our main character, Peter Grant, is an officer with the Metropolitan Police who falls into the seedy underworld of magic that runs through the city. He won’t be the last police officer on our list, either, considering…
Buy the Book
Midnight Riot
London Falling, by Paul Cornell, is the next book on our list. Superficially, this book looks a lot like Midnight Riot, being about the interaction between the police, the supernatural, and the city of London. In execution, however, these two books (and two associated series) couldn’t be more different, and that’s why I am more than happy to recommend them both as exquisite examples of what the genre is capable of.
Buy the Book
London Falling
The last book on tonight’s list is a departure from the police procedurals and detectives that have come to dominate the genre: a librarian. A librarian from an order of magical librarians tasked with protecting the world from danger. Specifically, Isaac, the hero of Libriomancer, who may be all that stands between humanity and the dangers of the written word. This is another one that pushes the definitions a bit, which is, I think, a good thing; once a genre or sub-genre really settles into its conventions, it can be difficult to break its self-imposed rules. This is a fabulous series, light, humorous, and very aware of the problems with the genres it stands in conversation with.
Buy the Book
Libriomancer
So there: my top ten. I didn’t forget anything, although I may have left a few things off. Urban fantasy is a big, complex circus, full of diverse and entertaining acts, and if you haven’t already been to see our midway, I hope you’ll make time for a visit.
New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire is the author of the October Daye urban fantasy series, the InCryptid series, and several other works, both standalone and in trilogies. She lives in a creaky old farmhouse in Northern California, and was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. In 2013 she became the first person ever to appear fives times on the same Hugo ballot. Her latest standalone novel, Middlegame, is available from Tor.com Publishing.
One of my favorites about the world of the fantastic colliding with the world of the everyday is Hope Mirrlees’ 1926 novel ‘Lud-in-the-Mist’. Sometimes it reads like an allegory of addiction, sometimes it reads like an allegory of a parent’s reaction to a child coming out, at all times, it casts a dreamlike glamour over the reader.
Our second contender is also an adaptation of the old English ballad of Tam Lin, although mixed liberally with Thomas the Rhymer: Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones
It’s a great book, but
a) I am pretty sure it is YA, not adult: it was published by Methuen, which is a children’s publishing house.
b) it is mostly set in the countryside so I am not sure why it counts as urban fantasy. (Though there are scenes in London.)
The Keeper Chronicles came out on audiobook this year, I think, and there are as delightful now as they were the first time around. Nice to have nostalgia reads that weren’t visited by the suck fairy.
I guess filling out the rest of the fairy godmother panel would get a little too close to starting a feud, eh?
Oh good, more to read! My favorites from this list are War for the Oaks and the Rivers of London series.
Re: #2 (ajay): Fire and Hemlock was originally published in the US by Greenwillow Books, which wasn’t explicitly geared at children; while you may be right that F&H reads well as YA, I don’t think it fits the modern conventions of the genre (too complicated in many ways, romance is very age-inappropriate, etc.). As to how it’s urban, Bristol is a city, and human architecture plays a huge role in the story. I continue to assert that its inclusion was accurate.
Night shift looks pretty good![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_DEDEDE/border_FFFFFF/flags_0/" width="1"/>)
Diana Wynne Jones wrote mostly YA books, but many hold up very well for adult readers as well. I was always disappointed that she never saw the success that J.K. Rowling did.
Thank you for your recommendations!!! I will be reading Fire and Hemlock now. I would LOVE to see what your top YA picks would be as well. With respect – Shannon
Absolutely love Rivers of London – its one of my favorite series, Aaronovitch is fast enough to keep them coming, and its been picked up by Simon Pegg’s new company for a miniseries adaptation.
On the next one, its worth noting that the London Falling series is on book 3 of 5 with no plans to public the last two, so the series ends at a very unsatisfactory point. I also submit that the first two volumes are superior to the third, which may or may not be relevant to the first issue. I don’t regret reading them, but I do wish that there was some kind of an end in sight.
I loved all of these books, with the exception of Lilith Saintcrow, and that’s only because I somehow didn’t know about this series and now I need to go hit up the library and rectify that situation.
I also support Tam Lin and Fire and Hemlock. I read both books when I was in my early teens, and kept coming back to them over and over as I grew older, finding new facets in them every time (and also igniting an interest in stolen-away-by-faeries stories that persists to this day). My current copies of each are over fifteen years old.
What a fun list! I’ve read many of these and have added a few titles to my list. Please do share other lists of favorites (fantasy, young adult, science fiction, ice cream). Thank you, Seanan.
No Perdido Street Station?
12, didn’t you read her preface? If it’s not on the list, it’s not on the list. ;)
Poor, damned, Issac. I have to take a few months off between Libriomancer books because all of his victories are so pyrrhic. The one magic I would have more than every other; and man does Jim Hines do his best to make it look brutal.
Is there any “urban” at all in Tam Lin? Fire & Hemlock yes somewhat, but not completely. Huh. I have considered urban fantasy to require a city setting, whether it’s almost a character (New York in A Winter’s Tale or Little, Big, or whatever the California city was in Folk of the Air), or just a prerequisite (Anita Blake isn’t going to be living in a fishing village). And given that prereq, there’s quite a range, from series also shelved in paranormal romance to things like The Rook. Genre conventions allow for a lot of leeway. But Tam Lin (and Fire & Hemlock to a lesser extent) didn’t seem like natural lead-ins. So I am going to go reexamine my preconceptions, and be grateful Tam Lin AND Fire & Hemlock are getting more mention.
Great list! I love that Emma Bull was on it. She’s one of the forerunners of Urban Fantasy as we know it, and too few people have read her novels. Finder, her stand-alone Borderlands novel, is one of my all-time favorite books and I have to mention it.
Ms Saintcrow is phenomenal. Her Night Shift opened up urban fantasy for me and I never looked back. She is also a very gracious writer who will answer questions, if she has the time of course, and when authors do that, it lifts them 10 fold in my eyes. She also writes a plethora of paranormal romance if your into that. (I am not, but to each their own.)
I love that you have Pamela Dean on here!!!! Anyone who contends that Tam Lin isn’t really urban fantasy should give this a read (or reread). Just because the setting is a college town instead of a huge metropolis, that doesn’t disqualify it.
I read Tam Lin after devouring her Secret Country trilogy (YA), and when I began marathoning the October Daye books years later, I felt a district connection between the two. Totally different stories, but they have the same feeling (someone needs to coin a word for the reading version of “mouth-feel”). Ended up having to give in to my compulsion to reread it after I finished An Artificial Night.
I also really love that I haven’t read most of the books on this list! Thanks for the recommendations! The Rivers of London books are ones I need to get back to…
Ooh! Nothing like a list of recommendations from one of my very very favorite authors! Thank you so much! I’ve read a few of these (especially the Women of the Otherworld series, a big favorite here) but there’s lots of titles here I haven’t read. So yay for me!
Looks to see–
Yup, my three favorites are at the top. Tam Lin, War for the Oaks, and Fire and Hemlock are basically the urban fantasies in which my teenage brain was forged and tempered.
Mind you, there were many others along the way, but these are The Books which live in my heart.
5: fair enough. Though I’m now wondering how many other books that I think of as children’s books are regarded as too complicated for American kids!
i had begun to feel a bit stilted reading urban fantasy. It’s great to get some recommendations from one of my favorite authors. I’ve read and loved several of the books on this list. Looking forward to reading the rest. I’ll have to add that I consider Seanan McGuire to be at the top of my list of must read urban fantasy authors!
I admit to having tried Guilty Pleasures and bounced off of it. I should try some of the others here and see how they go.
This list overlaps quite a bit with the one I’d make, were I to sit down and make one, ha! I’m especially happy to see Tanya Huff on the list; her books are somehow not as well known these days, it seems, and yet they were always among my very favorites!
15: There’s some argument about how literal the “urban” in “urban fantasy” needs to be; we have rural fantasy (Sookie Stackhouse) and bayou fantasy (Lucy Snyder), but because of the modern setting and adherence to other genre standards, we group them under the “urban fantasy” label. Part of the standard is that the setting is also a character, which Tam Lin manages handily.
On the matter of Diana Wynne Jones and YA: One of the difficulties here is that marketing categories in publishing have shifted over time, and what we now call “YA” — books specifically marketed to (and, by extension, written for) teen readers — is a fairly recent invention.
When I was growing up, everything in the children’s room at the library was shelved as “juvenile”, and this started at picture books and circled up through Dr. Seuss and Winnie-the-Pooh through Disney-esque mysteries and fantasy into more mature SF and classic literature. You’d find The Wizard of Oz just down the shelf from Dickens, science fiction might mean anything from the Mushroom Planet to Danny Dunn to Starman Jones, and mystery might mean anyone from Encyclopedia Brown to the Three Investigators to any of a lot of one-shot tales from authors including Phyllis Whitney, better remembered now as the writer of numerous Gothics and romantic novels for adults.
I should note that fantasy, including epic fantasy, was in that day and age chiefly thought to be specifically for kids, to the extent that a number of Patricia McKillip’s earliest books were initially published and circulated as juveniles. The Del Rey editions of the Riddle-Master trilogy that made McKillip’s reputation among adult readers were reprints, which was very unusual for that line at the time. (See also Robin McKinley in this context.)
This was the publishing business when DWJ came into the field, and the marketing of her work reflects that. (Another note here: Greenwillow Books says in its own Webspace that it has been “publishing books for children of every age” since its inception in 1974. This emphatically does not mean that Fire and Hemlock is unqualified for Seanan’s list as she defines it; it simply means that, like the McKillip titles, it is a book capable of being appropriately marketed to readers of any and all ages.)
The fragmentation of “juvenile” into multiple marketing categories started very roughly in the ’70s, when we began to see specific imprints and publishing formats targeted to different age groups. Very broadly, a distinction began to be drawn between “middle grade” readership (very roughly 5th-8th grade) and “teen” readership (high school). A given publishing imprint would focus on one or the other — and the books themselves looked different, with paperback “middle grade” titles often published in squat, square form while “teen” titles would appear as skinnier versions of “grown-up” paperbacks. Most authors were pushed into one or the other niche, although in a few cases — perhaps most notably those of Madeleine L’Engle and Diane Duane — you could find separate editions of their books in both middle-grade and teen formats.
[And now I need to stop typing, since I’m supposed to be on a plane this afternoon and I’m not packed yet….]
@7: One of the reasons Rowling’s work gained such popularity so rapidly was that it was so conventional, which means there was a very low bar to entry. That’s not a negative thing, exactly, but it was at its heart a schoolboy narrative, which is a very old and well-established genre. It had a comparatively shallow coating of magic and fantasy, neither of which involved complex worldbuilding, were particularly consistent, or had verisimilitude. Inventive, unique books take more effort to get into, and so aren’t immediately appealing to people who aren’t familiar with fantasy.
Breakout fads have to be very accessible, otherwise they don’t spread like wildfire. Quality often isn’t immediately accessible. This is a major theme in Connie Willis’ Bellwether, which is about researchers trying to understand how popular culture changes and why some products take off while others languish in obscurity.
Thank you for this list. I’m not familiar with many of the entries, so I have new reading to look forward to. I want to cast another vote for the Rivers of London series. In addition to it’s unique take on magical tradition, it has a refreshingly pragmatic and realistic take on police procedure. Mr. Aaronovitch also has a compulsively readable style.
My introduction was a mail order book club blurb for Mall-Purchase Night, but my proper introduction was Knight of Ghosts and Shadows by Mercedes Lackey. It was fun, and the idea of elves living among us in a half-dreaming state was intriguing. It’s probably why I took to Changeling: the Dreaming so readily years later.
It was a number of years before I learned that the genre had a name, but it had become my favoured playground for my own writing long before then. There’s just something about taking a familiar space and weaving magic into it, seeing how that affects the texture of the changing world.
Great list! So many favorites here. I won’t ask where Mike Carey’s “Felix Castor” series falls on the didn’t read/didn’t like continuum, but I really enjoyed it, and recommend it to anyone who likes London-based urban fantasy and ghosts (this one definitely falls on the grittier end of the urban fantasy spectrum).
@29 I feel like my urban fantasy list would have a Mercedes Lackey book on it but I’m not sure which one.
I agree with most of the selections and some of the ones that I have not read I will definitely be looking for. However whenever I hear the term “urban fantasy” I immediately think first of Charles De Lint. Obviously this essay represents a highly personal selection but I wonder how he could have been overlooked.
Another terrific urban fantasy series, since librarians were mentioned, is the Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman.
Thank you for the list! I started getting into urban fantasy a few years ago and was starting to consider myself fairly well-grounded in the genre, but several of these are totally new to me . . . *runs to the library*.
Nicole Peeler’s Jane True series is AMAZING!
“Living in small town Rockabill, Maine, Jane True always knew she didn’t quite fit in with so-called normal society. During her nightly, clandestine swim in the freezing winter ocean, a grisly find leads Jane to startling revelations about her heritage: she is only half-human. Now, Jane must enter a world filled with supernatural creatures alternatively terrifying, beautiful, and deadly- all of which perfectly describe her new “friend,” Ryu, a gorgeous and powerful vampire.”
Try.
Kraken. China Mieville.
What a nice list. Many of the books bring back fond memories for me; there are a few on here I’ve not read or heard of. I may be correcting that soon…
I thought Tam-Lin was a very interesting choice. It came out when I was in my last year in college. I came from a tiny small farming town (pop 5k) and I went to a small college in a small town with mining history up in the mountains. Still, it was a bigger place than where I grew up and even had a mall, so to me the emotional reality was that it was wildly “urban” (though now I realize… not so much). But what really interested me when I read Tam Lin was how it made me think and feel about how my college experience had been compared to another fantasy novel set at a college: ESBAE: A Winter’s Tale by Linda Haldeman. ESBAE came out in 81 so it was the college-set fantasy that I read that assuaged a lot of my fears about how scary going to school would be. I suppose maybe no one else on this thread will have read the book, which is a shame. It’s not available digitally as far as I can tell so you’d have to track down a paperback. I remember it being really, really good; and looking up the author’s name I see it got a Locus nomination. I suspect it would be of interest to anyone who enjoys this genre.
I can’t be bothered to bog down in quibbles about whether something is properly urban fantasy. Like the terms science fiction and fantasy themselves, urban fantasy is a marketing category to let readers know what sort of book a book is. You wind up reducing to what the late writer, editor and criitic Damon Knight once said about defining SF – it was what he was pointing at when he said the words
I’m delighted to see Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin and Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks on the list. I read both when they were released and adored them. I first became aware of Dean and Bull in the Liavek shared world fantasy series Emma Bull and Will Shetterly created and edited. The authors were mostly from Minnaapolis, and Pamela commented at one point that the editor who bought the books likened the crew who wrote them to a pack of friendly and very enthusiastic puppies. They collectively learned their craft and went on to even better things, which is a high bar given how good the Liavek books were.
Yes, Emma was starting to define what we call urban fantasy in War for the Oaks, so it lacks some of the subtlty we have come to expect from the sub-genre, but it’s still a cracking good book everyone out to read. And Pamela’s retelling of the Tam Lin myth in modern guise is just stunning.
I have not thus far read Lilith Saintcrow, but Seanan’s recommendation has her on my list to investigate when time permits. (That will be a bit – my To Be Read stack is currently numbered in round thousands.)
Than ks for the recommendations, Seanan. This sort of thing is how I discover things I might wish to read.
#37: No, you’re not the only reader of Esbae in the house; I am right with you in thinking of Linda Haldeman as among the best of the early urban fantasists. (If you have not tracked down her other two novels – Star of the Sea and The Lastborn of Elvinwood – you have further treats in store.)
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Meanwhile, a recommendation for another newer work that pushes the borders of “urban” but fits squarely into this discussion: Spells at the Crossroads, by Barbara Ashford. This one involves a community theater company in small-town New England, the modern New York City woman who can’t resist getting involved, and the townful of eccentrics who are all beholden to the company director…who isn’t from around here. Ashford knows her theatrical culture inside out and backwards…and can do funny as well as she does angst.
Great list! I’ve read most of them and intend to pick up the ones I didn’t, especially Tam LIn. There are several others that would make my personal list, including both of your series (haven’t read your alter’s books yet). One of my earliest introductions to the genre that I still love would be Mercedes Lackey/Rosemary Edghill’s Bedlam’s Bard (and probably the whole series). Other series I’d recommend (I tend to think in terms of series rather than individual books, as in the best series, the characters continue to grow and reveal themselves) would be Anne Bishop’s “Others” series starting with Written In Red, and Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series starting with Moon Called. But really there are probably a dozen urban fantasy authors I could recommend without a qualm. At least. Ilona Andrews and Shannon Mayer immediately come to mind, but there are others. Many others.
My version of the list would have Seanan on there. I’d love to see more lists but with a focus on LGBT protagonists. AFAIK, Tanya Huff has that here.
What a wonderful trip down memory lane!
I think some of the first urban fantasy series I encountered were written or co-written by Mercedes Lackey: Bedlam’s Bard and SerratedEdge. I don’t know how they’ve stood the test of time, but I loved them in the 90s!
@9: I really liked the Shadow Police series and agree about the third book. It felt like Cornell was setting things up there for the next two books, and the book suffered because of that. And now those two final books aren’t going to exist. As I understand it, he couldn’t find a publisher for the last two proposed books in the series. Which is kind of interesting since Tor Fantasy published the first two books…
Thank you, Seanan!!
I’ve read and enjoyed most of the books on this list (“War for the Oaks” is one of my top two favorite books of all time, in any genre — Robert Helprin’s “Winter’s Tale” is the other, and I could make a case for it being an unconventional urban fantasy, simply set across more than one time period.)
It’s been far too long since I read “Tam Lin,” so I’m picking up a copy for my Kindle — and I’ll have to check out the Rivers of London series :)
(As an aside, I finished “In the Shadow of Spindrift House” last night, and thought it was fantastic — wonderfully creepy and atmospheric!)
YAY!!! Someone else who has read Tanya Huff’s Summon the Keeper series and loved them! I quite literally laughed out loud at the puns, and Dean–the handsome and virginal handyman–was just too sweet for words.
I have the need to break those books out of my closet and reread them now. Thanks for all the suggestions!
A book I read long ago which made an enormous impression on me was “Wizard of the Pigeons” by Megan Lindholm. (Still in print I believe.)
Any list of top urban fantasy novels that lacks Jim Butcher’s Dresden series loses all credibility as being from someone who knows and admires the genre. I’m sorry to say, your list is interesting, but incorrect.
I’ll add another vote for Bedlam’s Bard by Mercedes Lackey. I think it was the first fantasy novel I’d picked up with a protagonist addressing his sexuality and I was living in LA. To this day, it’s part of my love for Renaissance Faires (and either she really influenced the White Wolf RPGs or they influenced her).
Fire and Hemlock is one I’m glad to see. It does work as a teen novel, and I first read it at 14 or 15, but as a teen, I completely missed why all the adults were so concerned about Tom’s relationship with Polly. But considering how mature I thought I was at that age… It’s a different read as an adult for me. Another excellent urban fantasy by DWJ is “Deep Secret” for those looking.
I liked Midnight Riot, but it seems a shame that A Madness of Angels didn’t make the list. That world is basically magic made urban in every sense, and a much more interesting London adventure.
Thank you so very much (joking sarcasm mode on) for dramatically adding to my To Be Read list LOL (mode off)
I have read several of these, and heard of a few without having enough info to add them to The List until now. My stack of books waiting to be read are side-eyeing me as I contemplate numerous re-reads and new additions being bumped to the top of the list. Urban Fantasy has been one of my go-to genres when my life goes south, and this came up in timely fashion to keep the depression at bay!
I understand the limitations you set on your list, and it actually worked in my favor by introducing me to books by authors I have not read yet, rather than confirming well known faves by de Lint who was my intro to the genre and still a favorite. However as a dedicated omnivore I am always on the hunt for new flavors, so sincerely Thank You!
Never heard of most of these. Looking them up on Goodreads, they don’t look great. I love urban fantasy and was hoping for something good. Your lack of Butcher on this list makes me not want to listen to you.
#47/49/51: Let’s reread the word “personal” in the title of the post; as both that and the text make clear, Seanan’s list is not presented as either objective or definitive.
As to Butcher in particular – certainly he and the Dresden novels hold an important place in the evolution of urban fantasy, as being among the first to emphasize explicitly noir narrative elements. But there’s nothing incorrect about their omission here. There may be grounds for some readers to conclude that Seanan’s tastes differ from theirs…but I’d be wary of drawing even that conclusion, given this particular list’s stated parameters.
Another fan of Linda Haldeman here – she made a huge impression on me back when her novels were first published.
I’m not sure if this counts as paranormal rather than urban fantasy (the two do overlap a lot) but another writer who wrote about vampires before they became a thing is Freda Warrington. A Taste of Blood Wine seemed defining and brilliant for me (the sequels a little less so) and some of her earlier novels were also very interesting (e.g. The Dark Cathedral). Again I’m not entirely sure if they fit the urban fantasy category, but I think they probably do.
This is a solid list. I’ve read them all except the Cornell, which I guess I’ll now have to read! The only one I didn’t like much was the Hines. Something about the writing style disagreed with me and I couldn’t stand reading it. I’ve enjoyed other works of his so I have no idea what the problem was. But I recommend the others. I love Emma Bull and Tanya Huff and Pamela Dean, some of my favorite writers.
@45 Dean ranks quite high on my list of unfortunately heterosexual characters.
@52 Notable is that Dresden takes three or four books to really find its footing. Makes it hard to include on a list because the first really solid entry is so far into the series.
I do so love Tam Lin, I read it every once in a while, always in October!
nice list, ty![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_DEDEDE/border_FFFFFF/flags_0/" width="1"/>)
Not a bad list. It is clear that we have very different tastes, but I’ll try the ones I haven’t yet read. It would be boring to eat the same meal over and over.
@47: Since this list is explicitly a personal one, and not a “these are the absolute best, most important books in all of UF history,” it is literally impossible for my list to be incorrect. These are books I, personally, enjoy and recommend. That’s where the precis stops. The Dresden Files don’t need my support.
I love the Jill Kismet books, thank you for spreading the love on those.
Love The Dresden Files… the fandom is toxic AF, though, and parts of this comment section shows why, and why I don’t put DF on the top of my list when people ask about my favorite UF books. There’s more to UF than just Harry, and if people are looking for UF they’ll find him eventually.
Great list, thanks for sharing! I started with Hamilton, many, many years ago, and I’ve read a few other urban fantasy novels since. I don’t love her work the same way I used to, but I agree – she was another of the First.
@40, I used to love the Mercy Thompson series until she threw in the graphic rape as a plot device. I couldn’t come at it after that, and I still mourn it. And! Anne Bishop! If I have any thing close to a guilty pleasure it’s Bishop. I’ve been reading her work for years and years and years, since her first Black Jewels trilogy came out, and while I love it it’s now almost a resentful love. I’m really glad you’re still enjoying both of those series!
My list would include Hamilton, McGuire, Ilona Andrews… Hmm. Based on other comments, Mercedes Lackey. I wouldn’t have thought of any of her work as UF, but mayhap I’m just not thinking of the right books. I’m not sure what else, off the top of my head. I’d have to go through my bookshelf. UF isn’t my true love, though. I think I’d have a lot more feelings about a fantasy list.
There’s a lot of new things on here for me! Thank you, Seanan. I’ve heard of most of them but haven’t read that many, so it’s great to have some ideas.
What a great list! Anyone who includes Emma Bull in a list of great UF makes me happy. ;) From that same time period I also loved Charles de Lint (man, could he even succeed in today’s world when each of his works was a standalone?!) and Mercedes Lackey’s “Serrated Edge” series (I’m not saying LKH should be paying ML royalties for her long haired pretty boys, but I’m not /not/ saying that. :D).
From more modern stuff I adore the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews–the worldbuilding and payoffs are what keep me rereading those titles. Same with the Dresden series by Jim Butcher–I love seeing a world and relationships built and explored and paid off in a long-running series. Which is also what I love about the October Daye books–but that’s a bit of an obscure series, you’ve probably never heard of it. :D :D
What a delightful list. I love Tanya Huff’s work, but have not read that series. This is sufficient motivation to pick up the authors I have not read as well.
I also liked how you hit the broad genre note. Toby and Anita live in such very different worlds, let alone some of the works in the comments.
I do wish Dresden fandom was less toxic; I like the books and even have some signed copies, but yeesh.
For what it is worth, my latest “recommend to everyone” is Fonda Lee’s Jade City.
Thanks Seanan. I’ve enjoyed all the books of yours I’ve read, but not yet got around to reading all of your work yet. Working on it.
Always interested in finding new things to read.
Also, thanks to others for adding in other things without negativity. I’ll also be checking those out.
To those being toxic over books not being included on a personal list, talk peace. It’s fine to be a fan of something, but being a fan doesn’t make everything else rubbish.
To those interested, I’ll suggest the laundry files, by Charles Stross, as a great read. I don’t know if they strictly fit into urban fantasy, but they’re close enough that I don’t care. To those who haven’t read them, they start out as an unusual mix of spy novel and lovecraftian horror.
If anyone picks them up on that suggestion, I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
i love this list for a few reasons. It has a lot of original pioneers of the genre that probably are often overlooked due to the over saturation of the market nowadays. It also doesn’t try to stick to the popular or best seller titles/authors either. And the writer has provided great descriptions of why they like each particular book, why it’s on the list, and why other readers might like it.
For the Butcher fans, which I consider myself one, Dresden is not the end-all-be-all of urban fantasy. Butcher took a lot of what he liked from books such as the ones on this list to create Harry Dresden. And to claim to have never heard of any of the books on this list and to dismiss them out of hand because the author’s name isn’t Butcher is pretty much willful ignorance.
I discovered Dean’s Tam Lin in the last month of my undergraduate career, back in ‘92, and it’s still one of my very favorite novels. There are a few on the list I either haven’t heard of, or, in the case of War for the Oaks, meant at one time to track down, and then never got around to it – all of which I intend to remedy soon. Thanks to Seanan and several other posters on here for lengthening my tbr list.
Also, Seanan, I spent a week earlier this month in a house on the beach, where I spent several nights staying up far too late reading your mermaid novel and novella, then lying in bed wondering why on earth I couldn’t have done that at a time when I was considerably more than 100 yards or so from the water. So, cheers for that ;)
Please tell me that some of these don’t fall into the trap I see too often: as a series goes on, things get worse and worse for our main character. I have walked away from so many series because the main character does not ever seem to catch a break. I walked away from The Dresden Files, from The Iron Druid Chronicles, and even Rivers of London (I am yet to forgive a particular moment) over this issue. Maybe that’s just the grit of urban fantasy, but I’d like for them to just, y’know, get a moment or two.
I will check out the Diana Wynne Jones book to start, however. I enjoy her writing style.
Great list! I love when a list points to books or authors that I’ve somehow missed. I’ve already bought 2 of the books through the links here – Tanya Huff and Jim Hines – and plan to be back for more. I have several of Diana Wynne Jones but missed the novel listed here so that will be next on my list.
Where to start…where to start…I guess the elephant in the room needs to go first off.
This is Seanan’s personal list. It isn’t the “you aren’t anything if you aren’t on this list” production of the intelligentsia and glitterati of the publishing world, this is a personal list of some of an individual’s favorite works. If I were to list MY favorites, or those I felt fit a particular theme or sub-genre that I felt like giving some applause to, the list might not include some works SHE was particularly fond of. I’ve read some of the books she pointed to, and some, I gave up on after a while because of my own personal reasons. Laurell K. Hamilton is a particular favorite of mine — I even talked to her once long ago about possibly being horror GoH at a convention I was running, but the con fell through. I love Anita Blake, but frankly, the balance of erotica to urban fantasy started tilting in the favor of the former just a little too much for my tastes. There’s nothing wrong with erotica, but if I want to read erotica, I’ll buy erotica. If I want to read Urban Fantasy, and buy what is touted as Urban Fantasy, I don’t expect to get the Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, I expect to get *urban fantasy*, and I think that’s reasonable. That doesn’t change that I feel LKH’s works to be really, really good, with worldcrafting I truly respect…but I stopped partway through the series because it just overloaded my circuits. There’s a point where “I’ll be in my bunk” starts to overshadow the rest of the story, at least, for me there is. But MY limitations, where I would put my personal priorities, cannot and should not be placed upon Seanan. Those are MY feelings and choices. They only get to compete with Seanan’s choices and feelings if I manage to get someone to publish my own similar list…and then I’ll probably get the same sort of hair-tearing comments from people who think MY likes and dislikes should be subordinate to their own.
I *adore* the Dresden Files. I even watched the ghastly TV series, even though I routinely banged my head on the proverbial coffee table from all the liberties the Skiffy Channel took with it. (A hockey stick? *REALLY?*) I’ve read most of what Jim Butcher has written, and reread nearly everything I’ve read. The only work of his I really couldn’t get through was “The Aeronaut’s Windlass”. I just didn’t see enough of where the story was going for it to really hook me in. It was well written, but I just didn’t get it, and I firmly believe it’s just ME, and nothing to do with Jim’s writing. The Codex Alera is *awesome*, and the story behind its creation makes it even more so. But I don’t think anyone else is somehow required to include Jim’s work on their own personal list of favorites, nor am I going to badmouth or discount what they say simply because I would have said it differently.
I’ve tried to read a fair bit of new stuff in the past few years, as there’s a limit to how often I can reread old favorites. It also reminds me of times when I didn’t have two bucks to rub together at the same time, and had to reread my paperback collection just to keep from going mad — I have Oscar Gordon’s addiction to words-in-a-row — and couldn’t afford to buy new books. I like to get new books, it reminds me that I’m no longer a pauper. But some of the stuff being cranked out is simply chaff, written by a committee under a “Victor Appleton” style house pseudonym, just to crank out books in the hopes that people will buy them. The ebook market, while wonderful and economical, has contributed to this — the old gatekeepers at the publishing houses, while not always choosing stuff I would have chosen, at least kept the truly BAD stuff off the shelves. Mostly. I worked in bookstores for a big chunk of my life, and I know the economics of shelf space vs. floor space, and know you can’t make a bedsheet out of a handkerchief by cutting it up and rearranging the pieces. When dealing with dead-tree distribution channels, you MUST be choosy or you can’t function. This is illustrated most prominently by, of all things, a court decision over devaluation of inventory items at a company that made widgets for the electrical industry, the Thor Power case. Change how you can devalue old inventory stock to improve your tax position, and suddenly you have book publishers pulping an author’s backlist because keeping the books in the warehouse affects their taxes. Look it up sometime, it’s a fascinating case. But I digress…
If I were to make my own version of this list, it’d have very different choices, primarily because I’ve never even heard of some of these authors. I recognize most of them, and have read the works of some of them. But given a constraint of only ten choices, I’d have to weigh THIS book against THAT book…and I am absolutely certain that some of my choices would frustrate and annoy some people out there. I’d probably have the Laundry Files in my list, but I’m sure there would be those who’d throw up their hands because they don’t consider Stross’ books to be urban fantasy, but instead, urban HORROR, and thus, ineligible to be on the list, yada yada yada. It wasn’t long ago that books about vampires weren’t considered sci-fi, but instead were horror, or even mainstream literature (I’m looking at you, Ms. Rice…why was your vampire series in the literature section, and not the horror section? Do you realize how many patrons I had to take halfway across the store because they “couldn’t find them in horror, why the hell aren’t they THERE?” Seriously, nobody ever looked in literature for them, they looked with the OTHER vampire books. Oh, well, I got my exercise for the day…sorry, digression…I do this, forgive me.)
Most of the choices of AUTHOR I agree with wholeheartedly — Diana Wynne Jones doesn’t get enough press, IMHO…”Archer’s Goon” is utterly smashing! — but again, some aren’t my cup of tea. And that’s okay. Can we NOT engage in the current “cancel culture” craze of badmouthing a person simply because they don’t share our own personal choices?
I’ve never read one of Seanan’s books. However, I DO read the works of Marion G. Harmon, and Seanan’s “Velveteen” universe is part of one of Harmon’s books, a crossover story anthology. I’ll get to it eventually, so much on my digital Tsundoku…
I’ll sum up and quit challenging everyone’s patience. Those saying “you didn’t include <favorite author X> in your list, therefore, you <are bad/suck/should be banned/are REALLY bad>” or similarly-constructed effluvia — please knock it off. I’m certain if YOU created a similar list, while I might like some of YOUR choices, there would probably be omissions in your selections that others would find frustrating, too…and by your own logic, shouldn’t YOU be subjected to the same judgemental crap you’ve been flinging? If you think <series Y> should have been on the list, then suggest it. But don’t start flinging unmentionable substances and denigrate people just because they don’t share your priorities precisely. That’s just plain rude.
If you don’t like Seanan’s list, write your own and publish it somewhere…and if you’re going to flounce out in a huff because she didn’t include your personal favorite, please do so quietly. You don’t need to announce your flounce, then wait around to see if people applaud while you pose for the paparazzi at the door.
It is a very good list. I’m especially glad to see Saintcrow and Cornell. I am so confused about the drama though. I read the piece when it first appeared, then last night saw the swirl on Twitter that some Dresden fans were attacking as a mob and made a note to drop a positive comment today to counter negativity. There are two rude comments? Out of 70? And while rude, mercifully brief. Good lord, the world is turbulent enough. Let’s please not create tempests
@62, yeah, that scene was tough to take, and I did take a break after that book. But I will say, later books did a good job of not downplaying the trauma, while still allowing Mercy the agency to recover on her own terms.
@68, I left the Dresden series for the same reason, and also a couple of others, most notably, Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan series. I’ve found that both Seanan’s October Daye and Ilona Andrews’ Kate Daniels series have a good (for me) balance of triumphs and bright happy moments along with the grit and grim challenges that are fairly characteristic of UF.
@70, I agree about the Anita Blake series. I’ve only read a couple, but I found them way too tilted in the direction of erotica. I kept skimming forward to find where the plot picked up again. Or, as I like to put it, I don’t mind a bit of steam, but not so much that you can’t see the plot through it.
I’m actually not much of an urban fantasy fan, though I used to read things that fell more into that category before the genre conventions developed (e.g., I have a first edition of Tam Lin that I bought when it was originally released). For those who mentioned Lackey: Diana Tregarde. Children of the Night was my favorite.
Thank you for including Tanya Huff! I discovered her a few years ago and quickly devoured everything she’s ever written. Third Time Lucky, The Silvered, and the Valor series are books I go to again and again. I recommend her whenever possible.
this hit the major Dresden Facebook group and people were mostly embarrassed by their fellow fans who were so intemperate.
Otherwise. Really enjoyed the list, a nice insight into foundations.
Thank you.
Always interesting to know what strikes sparks off the flint of other minds :)
@30: I’ll second the love for the Felix Castor books, with the caveat that they seemed to be working towards a resolution/explanation of what had occurred in Hell and its consequences which was never, in fact, delivered. It feels like there ought to have been at least one more book in the series.
thanks for sharing; some of these i hadn’t even heard of before! added some new books to my TBR list.
@40 Love Anne Bishop’s Others series – a rare new take on shifters without being a pot-boiler romance novel with fur. Her Elven trilogy is a similarly good rethink of traditional Tolkien-isms IMO. Also have fond memories of the Serrated Edge. Tried to track them down recently (ironically I’ve gotten in to road racing myself and wanted to re-read from that perspective as well), but these days I do 99.9% of my reading on Kindle and for some stupid reason they’re not available as eBooks. If they were I’d rebuy them, but I’m not interested enough to go digging through used book stores looking for copies.
so happy to see Summon the Keeper on here. It’s been one of my favorite books and a comfort read of mine since it came out.
Nice to see Tam Lin on the list.
Have loved War for the Oaks and Tam Lin for well over 25 years now. And I once lived in Eddi McCandry’s apartment! (Well, not actually, but I lived in a building at the intersection of the two streets that are mentioned in the book, although my building was a 1920s brownstone full of efficiencies, and Emma said she based the layout of Eddi’s apartment on another place she lived, closer to Loring Park, I believe.)
I’d also recommend Emma Bull’s Bone Dance, although that’s more post-apocalyptic than urban fantasy, I suppose.
I also read more than my share of Mercedes Lackey back in the day, including both Serrated Edge and the Diana Tregarde books. I almost wonder if the Tregarde books were precursors to the current crop of more paranormal-focused urban fantasy — vampires & werewolves, as opposed to rock ‘n’ roll elves …
As someone who was a fan of Jim Butcher’s works before he was published — I’ve known him personally since we were both in college — and who helped kickstart his online fandom through running his mailing list and website for the past twenty years give or take, I can firmly tell all of y’all from the Dresden Files fandom who have come here to bust on Seanan’s PERSONAL LIST OF PREFERENCES that celebrates other authors who don’t have the kind of automatic recognition that Jim’s gotten through the past couple decades of hard work, YOU ARE BAD AT BEING FANS.
Cut it out and make room for more people at the table.
You diminish the Dresden Files every time you come in here and swing your [redacted] around declaring them as the end all be all. I saw Storm Front when it was “Semiautomagic” and being printed out on Jim’s dot-matrix printer, y’all, and I know the road he took to get the series sold so you could enjoy reading it . It is hard as hell to get some recognition writing novels; Jim goes by “Longshot” online because he always knew what a slim, slim chance there was he’d actually ever be able to get recognized enough to make a living at writing. Eventually, he made it, but it was never certain. Jim’s already gotten the recognition he needs. Stop sucking the oxygen out of the room every time someone has the temerity to recommend anyone else. You hurt the Dresden Files, you hurt Jim, and you hurt authors who need the attention far more than Jim does these days. It doesn’t make you right. It makes you the jerk.
Hell’s bells.
#78: It’s not that the Lackey backlist isn’t available in ebook form, it’s that Baen — publishers of the various “urban elves” books — handles its own ebook sales. A look over at the Baen web site shows most of the Lackey canon as available. (Also, after a long hiatus, there was a brand new SERRAted Edge book in 2016, and the Baen site also promises a new “Bedlam’s Bard” novel coming in October.)
#81: You’re not wrong; the Diana Tregarde novels were essentially published three or four years ahead of their time, before the vampire/werewolf strain of urban fantasy really took off…and while Tor made a couple of efforts to re-market the series over the years, none of the attempts drew much attention. Lackey tried again some time later with Sacred Ground, introducing a Native American heroine named Jennifer Talldeer — and I happen to think Sacred Ground is one of her best books — but that one didn’t catch fire either.
@@@@@ 26, John C. Bunnell
I should note that fantasy, including epic fantasy, was in that day and age chiefly thought to be specifically for kids, to the extent that a number of Patricia McKillip’s earliest books were initially published and circulated as juveniles. The Del Rey editions of the Riddle-Master trilogy that made McKillip’s reputation among adult readers were reprints, which was very unusual for that line at the time.
That’s not the way I remember it. I watched those books come out in hardcover. I waited for the second and third. I was living in a community of Science Fiction and Fantasy readers at the time. If the trilogy was already available, I’d have heard about it.
Wikipedia agrees with me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Riddle-Master_of_Hed
Mercedes Lackey’s Elemental Masters series includes Home from the Sea. It takes place in an isolated fisherman’s house near an isolated village on the Welsh coast. It includes a community of Selch—think Selkie—and the fisherman’s daughter. Rural enough, you would think.
It also includes a circle of magicians in London. The Wizard of London sends investigators by train to check out the magical activities. They ride bicycles and communicate by telegraph. Not so rural as all that.
Say the characters in a fantasy live in a rural setting. They order pizza on smart phones. They drive cars. To the airport. They use computers. I count that as urban fantasy. These people are living in a high-tech, city-based world. The lonely gothic house on a wind-swept moor is not the significant variable.
#84: Wikipedia is at best imprecise in this case. The Riddlemaster of Hed, on investigation, was originally published in 1976 by Atheneum – a respected juvenile imprint – whereas the Del Rey Books imprint made its debut in 1977 with The Sword of Shannara.
I may or may not expand on this a bit when I have a full keyboard and more screen space to devote to looking up details; we’ll have to see how the day unfolds.
@83,
Ooh, I’d forgotten Sacred Ground. (Goes to look at bookshelves)
@70 A tip of the hat for the Oscar Gordon reference.
Based on all the outrage on Twitter, I was expecting to find some sort of avalanche of rude tweets from Dresden Files fans.
Instead I find 2 rude comments from Dresden fans and an avalanche of comments trashing the Dresden Files fandom.
I’ll toss another endorsement for the Rivers of London series on the pile. In addition to the excellent qualities Seanan lists, the books also include a few hearty doses of the blues (Peter Grant’s dad is a blues musician) and lots of snarking on modern British architecture. And speaking of snark, there is plenty from the Rivers themselves…
I’ve read and enjoyed most of these, in the list. Not the Rivers of London, and Dianne Winn Jones, and was arguing with a reviewer of Pamela Dean, this AM, and finally got my copy of Night and Silence, and saw the dedication. I entered Pamela Dean And seanan McGuire into my Search engine And found this list!
Need to update my reading list on Amazon, to add Fire and Hemlock, Rivers of London, and DWJ books. Not to embarass you, but October Daye stands with the best of them.
In addition to the excellent qualities Seanan lists, the books also include a few hearty doses of the blues (Peter Grant’s dad is a blues musician)
In the UK editions he’s a jazz musician! I wonder why they changed that?
Seanan, I know this is an older article, but a related topic has come up on the interwebz.
Have there been new UF books/series by debut authors in the last 3 years from traditional publishing. There are signs that the answer is no.
We just checked Orbit. Nope, according to their website.
This means we’re only getting sequels or new ideas only from known authors. New authors can’t get their break if Tor ain’t making it. Some of those new authors might have some really radical ideas on the genre.
What do you think from your side of the writing desk?