Books shelved under “Urban Fantasy”

Faerie Tale is at times delightful urban fantasy and at other times heavy-handed and forced. I really liked it the first time I read it, several years ago, but upon re-reading it I’m forced to pay attention to its flaws as well as its fun parts.

My attraction to and enjoyment of Faerie Tale stems from the atmosphere that Feist creates and sustains through the entire book. The threat of the mischievous faeries to the…

In one sentence: my review of The Man with the Golden Torc stands double. In fact, I'm beginning to feel almost as repetitive as Simon R. Green, just by reiterating this! However, there are things I missed in my previous, somewhat-hastily-written review, so I shall address those now.

Firstly, Green has too many characters and doesn't know what to do with them. I wonder if he just can't control his urge to explore every cool…

After discovering Simon R. Green through his Nightside series, I was looking forward to this new series. While The Man With the Golden Torc is occasionally entertaining, overall I was underwhelmed.

The culprit in this case is a repetitiveness on the part of the author. He reuses certain phrases often, and it's not clear whether this is done intentionally, for the sake of irony, or if he's just not that inventive. Also, is this book…

I won't lie: I plucked this book from the library shelf because it had a blurb from Jim Butcher on the cover. I was not disappointed.

Simon R. Green's created a wonderful milieu in the Nightside, a shady alterna-London where it's eternal night and its supernatural inhabitants fit the mood. His protagonist, John Taylor, is the perfect mix of capable and scary-dangerous. He's not quite as fun as Harry Dresden, but he's got a good…

What began as a fairly bland, contrived plot soon became an entertaining adventure. Living with the Dead was a pleasant surprise.

I can't say many good things about the book's main character, Robyn Peltier. Kelley Armstrong has her flee the scene of a murder not once, but twice, purely because the plot requires Robyn to be a murder suspect. From that point onward, I expected the book to be fairly clunky. Instead, it rapidly…

Significantly better than the first book in this series, Whiskey and Water picks up the loose ends from Blood and Iron and sustains them through half the book, building to a much more satisfying climax consisting of multiple battles and tense magical standoffs. My gripe: why did I have to wait for book 2 for all that heavy worldbuilding to pay off?!

As with its predecessor, Whiskey and Water suffers from a surfeit of mythology…

Although vampires play an important role in this book, vampirism is not the central subject. Rather, Hubbard uses vampirism as the method to explore a girl coming to maturity amid a broken family unit. Hubbard addresses questions of ethics and coming-of-age. Unfortunately, the story is mediocre.

My main problem is a lack of conflict. Each time the story approaches something that resembles a high-stake scenario, it shies away at the last moment. For instance, after…