In decades past, if one asked readers of fantasy to picture a magic-user, most would envision a figure in medieval garb, wielding a wand or a gnarled staff capped with an orb, and perhaps wearing a pointy hat. Though long a staple of the swords-and-sorcery niche, spell-slingers have proved to be just as much at home in the urban-fantasy subgenre.
There are, of course, as many ways to depict magicians in modern-day settings as there are authors to write them. There are monster-hunters, vampire-lovers, world-jumpers, and countless other variations on the concept. My personal favorite? Big-city magicians as stone-cold badasses, living life beyond the law, in the shadows, and forever skirting the rough edge of self-destruction. Here are five that I love.
Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey
Smart, vulgar, and funny, the eponymous first volume of Kadrey’s urban fantasy series is the epitome of an ass-kicking sonofabitch sorcerer. When we meet magician James Stark, he’s naked and still smoldering in a heap of trash, having returned to earth after an involuntary sojourn in Hell. He has landed in modern Los Angeles, which he deems not necessarily an improvement. Embarking upon a mission of revenge, Stark racks up enemies and makes some very strange friends while navigating Hollywood’s perverse magical underworld. Sarcastic, irreverent, and cynical, this book (and the rest of the series) is a gut-punch of fun. Apropos of a series set in Hollywood, Sandman Slim will soon be coming to a screen near you.
An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard
New York City is ruled by magical societies known as houses, and regularly scheduled dueling contests known as Turnings determine which house reigns supreme over the metropolis, as well as allowing for the creation of new houses. Now, on the eve of the latest Turning, something is going wrong. Spells are misfiring to deadly effect, or not working at all. With the entire system of magic in jeopardy, a new sorcerer arrives in Manhattan: Sydney, recently freed from captivity in the House of Shadows, is the wild card in this high-stakes game. But unbeknownst to the other players in the Turning, Sydney hasn’t come to win control of the Unseen World—but to smash it down, once and for all. Gritty action, complex plotting, and a compelling strong female protagonist make this one of the standouts of the badass-magician variety of urban fantasy.
Nightwise by R.S. Belcher
If you like your underworlds seedy and your heroes soul-damaged, look no farther than Laytham Ballard. His legend precedes him at every turn. Some say he raised the dead at the age of ten, and that he is “wise in the hidden ways of the night.” He’s also long past giving a shit what people think, and if you ask him if he’s “a good guy,” he’ll either laugh in your face or punch it. But he still believes a promise is sacred, and a vow made to a dying friend sends him on the hunt for a Serbian war criminal who is also an acolyte of black magic and blood sacrifices. To track down this villain who has fallen off the face of the earth and slipped beyond even the Devil’s reach, Ballard risks his life as well as what is left of his soul. But don’t you dare call him “a hero.”
The Magician King by Lev Grossman
When most fantasy readers think of Grossman’s best-selling The Magicians series, they think of it first as a portal fantasy. But its second volume features a major and hard-hitting urban fantasy element. The character of Julia Wicker, who was rejected by Brakebills despite her natural talent, refuses to abandon her pursuit of magical knowledge. Her search leads to her affiliation with a coven of urban “hedge-witches,” renegades who reject Brakebills’ stifling limitations. Though the book’s main character ostensibly is Quentin Coldwater, Julia is this book’s true heavy-hitter, because ultimately it is her illicitly obtained magical skill—and the loss and heartbreak she endures to get it—that saves the day and propels the story, albeit with dire consequences.
Child of Fire by Harry Connolly
Being a tough-guy mage isn’t always about being the best or the strongest. This is doubly true for down-on-his luck car thief turned driver Ray Lilly. He’s got a bit of magical talent, but he makes his living as a driver for Annalise Powliss, a member of the Twenty Palaces Society, which hunts down rogue mages. She has it in for Ray because he betrayed her once before, and she’s looking for an excuse to kill him—or to turn a blind eye while someone else does. But when her latest mission goes wrong, it falls to Ray to finish it for her—meaning he will have to take down a sorcerer with powers far beyond his own. This is a classic David-vs.-Goliath tale with a high rate of collateral damage, one in which raw power must be overcome through cunning, courage, and sheer guts. Urban fantasy adventure doesn’t get much better than this.
David Mack
is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty-six novels of science fiction, fantasy, and adventure. The Iron Codex, his new novel of badass mages engaged in Cold War espionage, is available now from Tor Books.
I’m not sure how you can make this list without mentioning Harry Dresden: he’s in the phone book, for cryin’ out loud!
Well I was going to express my outrage at the lack of a Dresden mention, but katre expressed it well enough.
I’d also like to add Alex Verus by Benedict Jaka (ok Verus may not be “kick-ass” but Jaka’s stories do) and The Iron Druid by Kevin Hearne.
@1, @2:
In the OP’s defense, the article is titled “Five Books About Bad-ass Modern-day Magicians”, not “ALL the Books About Bad-ass Modern-day Magicians”… :D
I actually gave Sandman Slim a try after reading the first half of Dresden (agree, should be up there). While there is zero doubt that he is indeed bad ass… Stark was so damned hard to root for. The only reason he felt like a bare minimum anti hero is because every other character around him was leaps and bounds worse on the black vs black morality scale. Couldn’t take more than one book of it.
Don’t discount Quentin Coldwater. He went off in a fit of grief-induced insanity at the end of the first book and throw around some advanced magic (though he was conveniently powered down for the sequels).
I’ve had an Amazon Kindle of Child of Fire soo long, I had forgotten about it. Looks like I need to dig it out of my Kindle library and give it a read.
@3: Exactly.
Like other posts in this series, it’s just “5 Books.” Not ALL The Books or The BEST Books or The ESSENTIAL Classics-of-the-Genre Books. Just somebody’s individual collection of Five Books About. To which more examples may be added; that’s the fun of it.
So I’ll suggest Steven Brust’s Good Guys: two magical bureaucracies hunt for a magical serial killer. But which group is the Good Guys? That is the question…
And because badass magic doesn’t happen only in the city, Paul Cornell’s “Witches of Lychford” series.
Kate Griffin/Claire North’s Matthew Swift books are some of my favorites, for having a unique system based around modern rituals (paying to get into the subway! telephone calls!) and a protagonist that’s pretty much always in over his head.
@katre and @Byrd68, as much as I love Dresden, I seriously doubt that anyone who would bother to look at this list wouldn’t have read (or at least heard of) Butcher’s books. A list like this is much more helpful when it includes works that most people need to be introduced to.
@5
Quentin’s power level conveniently fluctuated. Of course, he is immature. But his power level at the end of the 2nd book is nuts. By the time he matures reasonably in the third book, he’s doing really crazy stuff.
Loved “Unkindness” but Daniel Polansky’s “A City Dreaming” is the best modern-magicians-in-New-York-City book out there.
For those of you who haven’t read it, run, don’t walk to your computer & order Harry Connolly’s Child of Fire – the first of his Twenty Palaces series.
The protagonist is a low-level mook who is expected to have the life expectancy of a fruitfly. However, he and his partner kick ass and take names in the best of all possible ways.
@9 Exactly. Everyone who knows about urban fantasy prolly knows about Dresden, and so his inclusion in this list is not really that helpful in my opinion. I appreciate seeing 5 *other* books I can check out because I love Dresden. :)
I would add Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant, et al, to the list. His Rivers of London series is lots of fun.
“For those of you who haven’t read it, run, don’t walk to your computer & order Harry Connolly’s Child of Fire – the first of his Twenty Palaces series.”
Yes! Interesting character development, and a really well crafted underworld. I love where this series has gone.
“Loved “Unkindness” but Daniel Polansky’s “A City Dreaming” is the best modern-magicians-in-New-York-City book out there.”
I went to order this as well, and realized I already had last year and remember how much I enjoyed it.
Oh, and another endorsement for the Matthew Swift series (starts with “A Madness of Angels”), by far the most creative rendition of literal urban magic I’ve read. The pair of books about urban shamans that follows the Swift series are much more light hearted, and absolutely hilarious.
I liked Child of Fire when I read it. I just wish Connelly sold better so that he could have put out more books. I couldn’t get into Magicians. The people were so nihilistic, indolent and whiny that I couldn’t even make it to Magician King.
@14 Good catch, but the title of a Bad-Ass Magician certainly goes to Nightingale, not Peter.
Such a clowder of magicians! Or should I say a pandemonium?
Of all the books mentioned here, I have only read Grossman’s series (and liked it, with some reservations), as well as a couple of the Dresden Files, which I liked but found too lightweight and just too many.
Same with the October Daye books. (Though she is not technically a magician, but a Fae. But still.) There is just too many of them, and, though their good moments can be really good, they end up feeling too much like a drawn-out TV series. Sort of like the X Files after they lost their way. I gave up after the fifth installment or so.
What about Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series? PC Peter Grant has to study his Latin and Greek, but he’s great at architecture, his girlfriend is a river, and he tries to be as badass a London police regs allow.
Another vote for Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant/Rivers of London series. Way more people need to know about this series. And if you like Audio Book versions, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith does an outstanding job on the series. So good that I switched from reading the series to listening to it, which I’ve never done before. Can’t recommend this enough.
@TheSeveralFinePostersWhoMadeGreatPointsAboutTheDresdenFilesNotBeingOnThisList: I agree..however: 1) a mention in the opening paragraph could have covered this without adding it to the list; 2) David Mack might have been living under a rock or in a Twilight Book Club/Cult and may not have read the Dresden Files; and 3) I mentioned other Bad-Ass magicians (of course I must now acknowledge that neither Alex Verus (deviner) nor Atticus O’Sullivan (driuid) are technically wizards).
I can’t praise A City Dreaming by Daniel Polansky enough. It’s a true original.
@14 Totally agree, even tho I’m not so sure about the badasseness of Peter…
Definitely the Rivers Of London series! And yes, that reader on the audiobooks sounds to me like a Peter Grant.
I also recommend Tansy Rayner Roberts’s e-novella Merry Happy Valkyrie, about a small town in Tasmania where it always snows at Christmas(this is Australia -Christmas is midsummer!) and the heroine is a Valkyrie, the last one alive in that town. I can’t go into more detail for fear of spoilers, but great fun and fits this category well.
I agree so hard with everyone who mentioned the Matthew Swift series by Kate Griffin and Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch–I also listen to the latter rather than read them! Kobna Holdbrook-Smith is just amazing, and his is the voice of that series for me.
the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews would be a great addition to this list as would Kim Harrison’s Hollows
Another shout out to the Rivers of London books. I also agree re the audio version, I actually read these and then (after a suitable break) listen to the audio because the narrator is so good.
Mind you, can we get enough of the Twenty Palaces series sold so we can have more? The best series nobody’s reading!
@17 You should pick up the sequels. I felt similarly about the first book, which to me was Bonfire of the Magical Vanities. I don’t really enjoy stories of shitty people doing shitty things for no reason beyond the fact that they’re shitty. But the 2nd and 3rd book were much more interesting and enjoyable to me.
Child of Fire was fantastic and if I win the lotto one of my splurges is going to be to hire Harry Connolly to just write Ray Lilly stories. Other stuff too; I’ve liked most of his other things as well. But man the 20 Palaces series really scratches a magical noir itch for me. Stuff in the Dresden vein is fun but it turns out my jam is Jake Gittes with a few spells.
Thrilled to see the Child of Fire books on here. Really enjoyed them. In case you missed it, Connolly released a new Twenty Palaces novella in the last year or so and indicated that there might be more to come. I hope so.
I also enjoyed Polansky’s A City Dreaming and liked it a lot. I tried the Matthew Swift books, but lost interest after the second or third one in. The same with the Rivers of London books. I enjoyed the first couple, but there just wasn’t anything about them screaming at me to read the rest.
I love Dresden, but it’s been so long since we got a new one (or anything by Butcher for that matter), that I’m beginning to wonder if we ever will. Melissa F. Olson’s Scarlett Bernard books are also a lot of fun.