Tag Archives: fantasy

Halloween Reads: Urban Fantasy Werewolves, Wizards, Witches, Vampires, Zombies, and Monsters

28 Oct

October is my favorite time of the year with its crisp autumn air filled with the scent of mulled cider and smoky fires and the crunch of vibrant red and orange leaves beneath my feet.  As I put away summer pastels in favor of darker jeweled tones, summer reads also often get shelved for some more serious classic works to linger over during my daily commute.  But Halloween is also the perfect time to catch up with the spookier denizens of the Urban Fantasy realm.  Here is a list of series that will put you in the Halloween spirit!  You can borrow the books from BCCLS libraries and some are even available in ebook format from eBCCLS or eLibraryNJ.

Wonderful Wizards: Jim Butcher’s the Dresden Files

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Jim Butcher’s the Dresden Files is a great read for fans of Urban Fantasy.  There are currently one short story collection and fourteen novels in the series.  Harry Dresden is a Wizard PI in Chicago assisted by “Bob”, a spirit trapped in a human skull, and a human police detective Karrin Murphy.  The novels also involve other creatures of myth including fairies, ghosts, and vampires.  The series has been adapted to many formats including a television series, graphic novels, and even a role playing game.  One of my favorite ways to enjoy the series is the audiobooks, which are masterfully read by James Marsters.  The books are best read in order so start with the Storm Front (the first book) and make your way to Cold Days (the latest).

Find your Inner Beast with Werewolves: Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty Series

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Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty Norville Series centers around a werewolf ironically nicknamed Kitty.  Kitty works as a DJ and her show The Midnight Hour slowly transforms from a late night music show to a talk radio show where she discusses the supernatural.  Witches, gods, vampires, and other werecreatures populate Vaughn’s World.  There are twelve novels and one short story collection in the series.  Each book often feels to me as if Vaughn is asking a what-if question, such as what if there was a supernatural convention, what if the military used supernatural creatures for war, what if there was a reality show with vampires and werecreature participants, and weaves the concept in to her story.  The first few books in the series are mostly self-contained, but later books build on one another as Kitty explores the long game, a plan for world domination by a mysterious master vampire.  My favorite in the series is Kitty’s Big Trouble.

Spellbinding Witches: Juliet Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mystery Series

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Juliet Blackwell’s Witchcraft Mysteries involve Lily Ivory, a witch who owns Aunt Cora’s Closet, a vintage clothing store in San Francisco.  She is able to pick up information about the past from the clothes and other items in her store.  Her sidekick in her adventures is her familiar Oscar who often takes the form of an adorable small pig.  This series is much lighter in tone than many on this list and will appeal to chick lit fans.  Secondhand Spirits is the first in this five book series.  For those who are fans of ghosts, Blackwell is also the author of the Haunted Home Renovations Series.

Bloody Good Reads with Vampires: Cherie Priest’s Cheshire Red Reports

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Cherie Priest is perhaps best known for her Clockwork Century Steampunk series. I am a huge fan, however, of her vampire series Cheshire Red Reports which includes two books, Hellbent and Bloodshot.  Raylene is a vampire from the flapper days of the 1920s who makes her living acquiring unusual and hard to find items in a way that might be slightly aside from the law.  Her sidekicks include Adrian de Jesus, a former Navy Seal Drag Queen; Ian Stott, a blind vampire; and two feisty orphans Pepper and Domino.  While Priest has not ruled out additional books, the publisher has no current plans for more “reports”, which is a shame since it is a great action packed series with a strong heroine.  Priest has a link on her site for fans to submit a request to Random House to publish more “reports”.

Quick Reads with Zombies: Kevin J. Anderson’s Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I.

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Kevin J. Anderson has written 50 national bestsellers and has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the SFX Readers’ Choice Award.  At the 2012 San Diego Comic Con he was honored with the Faust Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement.  His Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. Series currently includes three books Death Warmed Over, Unnatural Acts, and Hair Raising.  P.I. Dan Chambeaux (aka Shamble) is joined by his ghost girlfriend Sheyenne in New Orleans where the “Big Uneasy” has unleashed all manners of creatures on the world.  This series will be enjoyable for those who like a little zany humor with their mystery and horror.  I would recommend that you read the books in order, unlike me, since otherwise you will encounter spoilers which will ruin some of the twists in the previous books.

Monsters of All Shapes and Sizes: Seanan McGuire’s InCryptid Series

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A cryptid is a creature that is claimed to exist, but who has not officially been discovered, which includes sasquatches, chupacabras, and all manners of legendary monsters.  Seanan McGuire’s InCryptid series currently includes two books Discount Armageddon and Midnight Blue-Light Special, with the next Half-Off Ragnarok scheduled for publication on March 4.   The first two books focus on Verity Price who has descended from a family of cryptozoologists but also moonlights as a ballroom dancer.  Currently she is studying the creatures of New York, but when a member of the monster hunting Covenant of St. George, Dominic De Luca, shows up it complicates both her assignment and her love life.  I like that future books will focus on other members of the Price family so that Verity’s character development is not slowed in order to span a long book run.  You may also enjoy McGuire’s urban fantasy faerie series, October Daye, or her post-apocalyptic zombie thriller Newsflesh series written under the pen name Mira Grant.

For more Halloween Reads stop by the book display at the second floor vestibule or the Fall book display in the back of the first floor fiction area.  Wishing you all a Happy Halloween!

-Written by Aimee Harris, Head of Reference

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Imagining the Past and the Future: Neptune’s Brood and Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells

27 Sep

One of my favorite parts about reading is being able to explore new perspectives and new places.  Fantasy and Science Fiction also allow for the possibility to travel back in time to an alternate history where magical creatures exist or forward to the distance future when humans no longer do.  Charles Stross’s Neptune’s Brood is set thousands of years in the future when robots roam the universe to settle planets in honor of the dreams of their former creators.  The short story collection Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells, in contrast takes the reader back to the Victorian Era, but imagines the world alive with ghosts, witches, and fairies.

Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fantasy

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Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling contains a collection of fantasy short stories set in the Victorian and Edwardian period.  While Gaslamp Fantasy often brings up visions of Steampunk, in these stories rather than featuring dashing airship pilots and clever female inventors, there tends to be a greater focus on historical accuracy, but slipping in some elements of (often dark) fantasy.  The stories on the whole are much more interested in looking at the grittier aspects of life at the turn of the century and not simply the interesting inventions and costuming of the upper class.  The book includes original stories written for the collection.  I was familiar with some of the authors such as Gregory Maguire, Kathe Koja, and Tanith Lee, but I enjoyed majority of the stories in the book, even those of author’s I had never heard of.  There is also a nice variety throughout; one story is told through historical documents (some real and some imaginary), another is told through letters written back and forth between two authors, and another is written in an atypical second person perspective.  In two cases the stories expand on the lives of characters in period literature.  Some of the highlights of the collection for me are: Jeffrey Ford‘s “The Fairy Enterprise”, Veronica Schanoes’s “Phosphorus”, and Catherynne M. Valente’s “We Without Us Were Shadows.”  I was especially fond of the story from which the title is derived, Delia Sherman‘s “Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells.”  I liked not only the stories themselves, but also the historic notes that many of the authors included detailing the true details behind their tales.  This collection will appeal to historical fiction fans, even if they do not typically read fantasy stories.


Neptune’s Brood

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Neptune’s Brood by Charles Stross mixes hard science fiction with biting satire and a bit of mystery.  Some scifi works can read almost like fantasy where the technology seems to work by magic as much as physics, but here Stross has creatively thought out and explained how even the smallest detail works.  Neptune’s Brood is set in the same reality where humans have gone extinct as another Stross novel, Saturn’s Children, but much later in time and it is not necessary to read the previous novel to understand or enjoy this work.  Krina Alizond-114 searches for her missing “sister” Ana who was “spawned” at the same time by their “mother” Sondra Alizond-1 onboard the floating starship New California.  Sondra created her “daughters” in her image, but is by no means a loving mother, but instead had kept them as indentured servants, who are trained with specific areas of specialties that she deems useful such as Krina’s background in historical accounting. This is defiantly the most action packed book about financial practices that you will most likely ever read, though truthfully it is also the only fiction book I have encountered that does so in such depth.  I found the beginning of the novel, when Krina takes a working passage on a spaceship designed like a traveling cathedral based on a religion revolving around resurrecting humanity, to be a bit slow moving, but once Count Rudi, a bat like robot pirate, shows up things pick up considerably.  When Krina arrives at the Shin-Tethys, the water world where her sister was last seen, I couldn’t put the book down.  Krina’s destination ends in a discovery that will change not only her life, but all of her society’s; her journey illuminates our own present.

~Aimee Harris, Head of Reference

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