Reviews :: Book Genre :: Urban Fantasy
This archive contains links to all of the Urban Fantasy Book Reviews we've written over the years. Yeah, most of these end up being geared toward women, but there's some really good stuff here for the guys as well. If you've come here looking for something in that realm, you're in luck! We just happen to have more than a few suggestions lying around the place waiting for your perusal.
If you're looking for something else, say a book in another genre or maybe just any book that we happened to think was awesome-sauce, browse around the site for a bit and check out our reviews.
Just don't forget to let us know what you thought of a book you've read or if there's a suggestion you have for something we'd like to read! We're always looking for some more vampire-werewolf-zombie-magical brilliance. *cough Jim Butcher *cough
Moon Called
I mentioned in a previous review (HERE) that after thoroughly enjoying a short story by Patricia Briggs in that anthology, I was going to load myself up with her books and just read, read, read. Found a bundle of the first six in this series. Go me. Helps that we don’t have reviews up for the first four. Also chatted with V a little bit about it before writing up this review. Apparently she’d reviewed it a while ago (in her early years of doing so on another, now dead, site), and she was kind enough to send me a copy of it. So, this review will be somewhat of an amalgam of both our thoughts on the matter. But regardless, you should know that we both absolutely loved this thing.
Read the rest of this review »
Heroic Hearts
When I saw the announcement for this anthology, I was totally on board. After my experience with SHADOWED SOULS (EBR Review), which was also edited by Jim Butcher and Kerrie Hughes, how could I *not* immediately want to read something new from them? Granted, yes, it has a new Dresden Files story, and I am absolutely a sucker for anything Dresden these days, but even outside of the Dresden story in SHADOWED (which was AWESOME), nearly every story in that group was simply great reading.
Read the rest of this review »
Demons, Ink
Sometimes, all you have to do is ask, and someone will listen.
That’s essentially what happened to me for this book. The author threw out a tweet about needing reviews for his books that made me laugh, and so I told him I’d oblige. Figured out later that the book of his that I bought was self-published and recently entered into the SPFBO that Mark Lawrence runs. Funny enough, he got lumped into the same initial group of books as ALONG THE RAZOR’S EDGE (EBR Review). So, while I’d suggest that Mr. Snyder not hold his breath at the possibility of moving on to Round 2… this was still a pretty good book, and something I’m glad I found my way to.
Read the rest of this review »
Kitty’s Mix Tape
First thing you should know is that KITTY’S MIX TAPE can be read without having read any of the books in the series (we’ve reviewed a few of them HERE). BUT, if you read this book before reading any of the books there will be a few spoilers. However, if you want a taste of the world of Kitty Norville and the werewolves, vampires, and witches that inhabit it without diving wholesale into the 14-book series, you wouldn’t be disappointed.
Read the rest of this review »
The Immortal Conquistador
Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty Norville series (EBR Archive) is popular for good reason. Excellent heroine. Fun storytelling. Interesting worldbuilding. And engaging characters.
Read the rest of this review »
Magic for Liars
I used to just stop reading a book when I figured out I wasn’t going to like it. Ah, those were the days. These days, I find myself not only rationing toilet paper by the square and thinking more than twice about dashing over to Walmart for a single item, but also that I feel like I just have to finish everything I start reading. It’s a scarcity mentality. There just isn’t time anymore to go around reading 20 or 30 percent of a book and then bailing on it just because it doesn’t fit my fancy. How to find a way to know *ahead of time* whether I’m going to like a book or not though? Read other reviews before reading any books? That won’t exactly work out in my favor. Then I’m behind all the time. Any ideas? Any suggestions?
Not like it’ll help me now though. 🙂 Here we go!
Read the rest of this review »
Gods of Jade and Shadow
From the cover: “The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own. Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she find a curious wooden box in her grandfather’s room. She opens it–and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother. Failure will mean Casiopea’s demise, but success could make her dreams come true.”
I spent some time thinking about this book since I finished it, not really sure how to write this review. The book was simultaneously straightforward storytelling but also unexpected. The characters were recognizable but foreign. And the ending was surprising yet also what it should have been. GODS OF JADE AND SHADOW is the kind […]Read the rest of this review »
Guilty Pleasures
A few months ago I hit up a small fantasy and science fiction convention just north of me. The guests of honor were Jim Butcher and Laurell K. Hamilton. Was loads of fun to see both of them. Jim was hilarious and engaging, with a head of long blue hair, and was so much more of a nerd (to my delight) than I figured he’d be. Laurell was calm and collected, had load of insightful comments, and was way shorter than I thought she’d be. Course, I’m no slouch in that department. So, it’s all relative. In the main, I was very impressed by both of them. I came away from that con feeling energized and happy that I’d gone. Near the end, Laurell made a plea in one of her panels for all of us to write reviews of every book we read. They did more good for authors than we realized, she said. Now, granted. The Anita Blake series probably didn’t need another book review done for it. There are plenty enough as it is. But this whole EBR gig is a pretty big part of who I am, and so I went away from that con with the determination to give her a book review. So here it is.
Read the rest of this review »
Black Lotus Kiss
BLACK LOTUS KISS (Amazon) is an unabashed pulp mystery with a side of Marlboro Man smoke-crowned charm, and a kiss on the neck of the Black Dahlia homage to cheesy occult detective novels of the 1970s.
As far as mystery novels go, BLACK LOTUS KISS hits all the marks: character, location, and plot. It doesn’t try to be more than necessary: an over-the-top Hell’s Angels is in league with an eldritch deity-controlled Girl Scouts cookie drive style of mayhem. It is inane, irreverent, and utterly unapologetic in its absurdity.
Read the rest of this review »
Akata Witch
Do you know what the biggest problem is for an author trying to write a novel about kids that are caught in the middle of very dangerous events? Parents. Well, adults in general. How do you keep the grown-ups from coming in and hijacking the story completely while still making it all believable. I have a difficult time believing that any story that is told expressly about kids has a more important question to answer. This was a very interesting novel to read, given that perspective. Because on the one hand, this story totally has adults “dealing with the important stuff”, but on the other hand, there are also several adults that are more than willing to throw children into deadly situations, shrug their shoulders, and say, “If they live, they live. If they don’t, they don’t.” Was an interesting dichotomy to try and swallow, and not the only one I found in this read.
Read the rest of this review »
