#LibraryFinds: Alex Verus is out of Surprises in Book #9, ‘Marked’

The Urban Fantastic I enjoy urban fantasy as a subgenre. Urban fantasy gives me something tangible to hold on to. Yes, there may be a dragon trying to kill everyone, but the heroes are riding a subway train to go kill it. There is a sense of familiarity among the magical, making even the mundane mystic. The urban, juxtaposed to the fantasy, when done correctly can give you another anchor into the world being built. I’ve always found those anchors to be my own private Easter eggs, especially if the city is one I recognize. The undisputed king of urban fantasy is Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, with his main protagonist and everyone’s favorite Wizard P.I., Harry Dresden. The Dresden Files was so popular that it ignited an inferno within the urban fantasy section of the bookstore. The problem was, we were being saturated with Dresden lites, Dresden wannabes and Dresden has-beens.  For every great urban fantasy series that manages to claw and fight its way out from under Harry’s domineering shadow, we had others content to sit in his shade. For every exciting series like The October Daye Books (by Seanan McGuire), The Kate Daniels Series (Ilona Andrews), The Mercy Thompson Series (Patricia Briggs) and The Others (Anne Bishop), we had familiar Dresden clones wars being fought by The likes of the Sandman Slim Series (by Richard Kadrey), The Iron Druid Chronicles (Kevin Hearne) and The Nightside Series (Simon R. Green). All had various loner-type wizards, who were the black sheep of th…