This was a fantastic example of UF with humor! When they say nothing’s sure but death and taxes, they almost got it right. The taxes are there, but death’s not quite sure of anything anymore.
This originally started as an award-winning short story in which the Grim Reaper comes to reap the tax man, who’s a bit more prepared than expected. The tables are turned, a body-swap takes place, and suddenly Grim has to figure out how to get his body (and his powers…and his scythe) back before the Powers That Be figure out everything’s gone to hell.
What happens when the grim reaper and the IRS get tangled up with guardian angels, demons, and Hell’s Bureau of Micromanagement? Everything goes sideways. I love the humor in this series, which comes across as Pratchett-esque in how it brushes over the various impracticalities of the human condition.
The Grimsworld series is a trilogy, and I’ve been impatiently waiting for Book 3 to come out. It went live on Kickstarter earlier this week, so if you manage to get through the first 2 books while it’s still open, you know where to get Book 3. Otherwise, it should be available on Amazon at some point down the road.
This one features another long-time fan-favorite, the Charley Davidson series by Darynda Jones.
If you haven’t tried this series yet, you’re missing out. It leans heavily into the Paranormal Romance genre, but with enough character/magic/worldbuilding to satisfy that Urban Fantasy itch. It’s hilarious and serious, quirky and steamy, and I love how well the overarching series plot evolves.
In First Grave on the Right, we meet Charley, who is the Grim Reaper, which means she is a portal that shines like a beacon for the dead. They come to her, they “cross through her,” and she sees the memories of their past life, but all that is just the stage she’s standing on. It’s not even the good part.
Charley is tough and kick-butt, a little goofy, and a pure force of chaos. She’s besties with Cookie, her work pal, who is the Lula to her Stephanie Plum. They make a fantastic and hilarious duo. Charley runs a detective agency. The menfolk in her family are cops, and Darynda does an amazing job weaving that into the series-long storyline in unique ways.
For her entire life, Charley has been dreaming of a very specific hottie. She’s not sure if he’s an actual person or if her mind is playing tricks on her. When she hears the name Reyes Farrow in the real world, she figures out he does, indeed, exist, which puts her firmly on a mission to find him. What unfolds in each and every book is always something new that I never expected. These books are honestly hard to sum up in simple sentences.
There’s family drama, relationship drama, bad guy drama, and a kind of star-crossed lovers drama, plus Charley’s always in danger of one sort or another. There are ghosts and magic and hellhounds, plus Reyes, who is a special kind of supernatural being all by himself. Throw in some biker gangs, serial killers, and criminal best-friends for a well-rounded series that somehow hits every emotional lever you’ve got, and that’s the best summary I can provide without spoiling the show. I don’t think I’ve ever read a storyline quite this unique with characters I love this much. This series is in my top three series ever read. It’s COMPLETE (huge bonus points there) and ties off so well at the end. Highly recommend.
(I would be remiss if I didn’t say the sexy boyfriend thing is steamy and very present in pretty much every single book, in case you’re specifically looking for “not that.” Otherwise, enjoy!)
This series started off solid and keeps getting better. In the world of the Chronos Chronicles, people can make deals with certain entities to gain access to their power, which makes for really interesting possibilities where magic is concerned. Of the various entities one could make a pact with, nobody has ever made one with Chronos, God of Time…except Adair Finch.
Meet the main character. He can manipulate time in unique ways, namely marking a specific place in time that acts as a reset button for his life. He’s had this power for a while, but it didn’t stop his brother from being killed on a dangerous mission years ago, and Adair’s been a mess over it ever since. The wonderful thing about being able to stick yourself in an infinite time loop is having the time to heal.
At the start of this story, Adair’s still coming out of his funk. He and his brother were a powerful, magic-weilding duo, and his brother’s death hit hard. While Adair is no longer curled into the fetal position over it, he’s still only barely functional and not really ready to deal with the world at large and all the BS that comes with it. Then a child bangs on his door in the wee hours of the morning. Adair being Adair, he marks the time before he even gets out of bed. (He does this any time he suspects something out of the ordinary is about to go down.) Then he answers the door.
What does the child want? Her mother was killed a short time ago, and she needs help from the infamous warlock, Adair Finch—powers unknown—to find the killer while keeping the kid safe in the meantime. What follows is a Groundhog-Day style investigation where Adair blunders into situations, consequences be damned. When things go too far sideways, Adair can wake back up, safe in bed, with a little girl pounding on his door, asking for help with her mother’s murder.
This sounds like it could get mundane in a hurry. Believe me, it doesn’t. I’ve read every book in the series so far and love every one of them. The character development is superb. The magic system is unique. The use of such a repetitive magic trick is used in new and unexpected ways at every turn, and the side quests are hilarious. Adair and his makeshift gang of misfits, including a trickster-spirit-turned-famous-social-media-influencer (book 2), are a hoot.
For fans of Dungeon Crawler Carl, the voice of Adair Finch is performed by none other than Jeff Hays, which is perfect because Adair’s personality matches up to what Carl would be like in a completely different universe. He’s quietly frustrated at the chaos that seems to follow him, but it’s just the kick in the butt he needs to get past the mourning stage and start living again. This book is full of found family done so artfully I want to be adopted as part of it. Give this book a try to see what I mean.
This series is fantastic. It’s one of my Top 10 series ever. Urban Fantasy readers tend to be bingers. We’re used to taking the entire first book in the series as an introduction to the main character. In Book 1: Kitty and the Midnight Hour, Kitty is fantastic and loads of fun right from the start. She’s a werewolf in a world where mere mortals are unaware of the supernatural world. Her life with the pack is rough. It was the one down side of the story for me, but things improve drastically on that aspect by the end of book 1, and those events are used to propel the story forward throughout the rest of the series. There’s a ton of character growth early on in the series, which is needed considering her situation.
In this series, Kitty is a radio DJ for the Midnight Hour, where she plays oldies music most of the time. Bored one night, she asks for callers to phone in with thoughts and questions, but what she gets is someone asking theoretical questions of a nature that convinces Kitty she’s talking to a fellow supernatural. Why not? They tend to be creatures of the night, so who else would be up listening to the local radio station at 2am?
The caller is having trouble, so Kitty does her best to provide guidance, only to have a slew of other supernatural creatures calling in for advice on the ethics of their existence and how to handle the difficulties particular to their lives. They start off disguising their questions as theoretical, but pretty soon the cat is out of the bag. The whole world starts listening in to her show, which gains syndication, only to catch the eye…or ear…of a hunter of the supernatural. Kitty has to figure out how to keep her job, avoid the assassin, and navigate her troublesome pack life, which seems to be getting more deeply entangled with the vampire community despite her best efforts. All that is just the introduction to the first book.
This series continues on to worldbuild in big ways. Kitty ends up in a much healthier relationship down the road that gives me good vibes all the way down to my toes. It develops a wide cast of characters, each with their own interesting backstory, and the world at large is intriguing as humanity stumbles its way into one problem after another trying to determine just what to do with the existence of the supernatural. This 16-book series is a phenomenal read that’s been around for over a decade and deserves way more love than it gets. I highly recommend it.
