I wrote this series for a friend who asked me to recommend some very modern fantasy novels as a primer on the directions fantasy has taken in the last twenty or so years. The list is not intended to be exhaustive, but is merely my opinion on what shouldn't be missed and where to start. I left out Narnia, Tolkien, E. Nesbit, The Dark is Rising, The Once and Future King, and A Wrinkle in Time on the basis of age, even though several older books snuck in anyway. Once again, this is a personal and somewhat arbitrary list, so please don't email me to ask why I left out [your favorite fantasy novel.

The big revolution in modern fantasy was urban fantasy: fantastical events and creatures co-existing in the modern and generally urban landscape. Although it has a precedent in children's lit, like E. Nesbit and her successor Edward Eager, Charles de Lint's Moonheart and Emma Bull's War for the Oaks were the books that kick-started it as a genre for adults.

Rock singer Eddi McCandry is having the worst gig of her life: her band breaks up, she breaks up with her boyfriend, and the club manager pulls the plug on her just as her band's last gig is starting to really rock. She's just about ready to get a day job when she discovers that she's been drafted into a Faerie war, complete with an annoying, albeit devastatingly handsome, shapeshifting bodyguard who refuses to leave her side. What's a girl to do? Start a new band, of course, where one stray roadie more or less won't be noticed.

Witty, well-written, and totally involving, this is the book that set the standard for the genre. Emma Bull does sing in a band, and the grubby details of a no-name musician's life are as vivid and believable as the sometimes creepy, sometimes elegant Faerie court.

I can't recommend urban fantasy without mentioning Charles de Lint, who created a city called Newford which has become emblematic of the genre, filled with bohemian artists, street people, and faerie folk. Unfortunately, some of the novels which I loved when I was a teenager, like Yarrow or Greenmantle, have jarring shifts in tone and some clunky writing, although they also have plenty of lovely moments, and some of his later books, like The Onion Girl, depend on previous familiarity with the characters. A good starting point would be with one of his collections of short stories, like Dreams Underfoot or The Ivory and the Horn.

The latter, which is out of print, contains the devastating "Pal O' Mine," which is one of my favorite short stories in the genre.

Don't look at the cover. Don't read the back. Just open the book and start. This book is a bravura technical feat on many levels which also ends by breaking your heart. I can't recommend it too highly.

Out of print. Some find it slow.

I wish it went on longer. A bright young woman goes to a wonderful college and immerses herself in the joys of literature, study, and friendship. Slowly and subtly, oddities in the background move into the foreground, until the strangenesses take center stage. I confess that I wuld have liked the book just as well if it hadn't been a fantasy, though. The most vivid magic here is the joy of learning.

In a sophisticated but not modern city that never was, the city's best swordfighter, his half-crazy boyfriend from Hell, a young man desperate for a purpose, and an older woman who plays people like chessmen, tangle, clash, and search each other as the keys to their dreams. Passionate and beautifully written.

Out of print, but you might be able to order it from the publisher, Meisha Merlin.

Jame, an amnesiac woman with some unique talents and physical features, stumbles into the bizarre city of Tai-Tastigon, which has such a complicated lay-out that even people who live there sometimes use lengths of string to find their way back home, and which is peopled with gods, deceased but still hungry gods, their disgruntled priests, shadow assassins, demons, people who live their entire lives on the rooftops, and many, many more... and Jame turns out to be the most interesting and strangest person in the city.

"Apprehensively, Jame recited the charm. It usually took Cleppetty half an hour to ready her bread for the oven; Jame's rose in five minutes. When the widow sliced into the baked loaf, however, they discovered that its sudden expansion had been due to the growth of rudimentary internal organs.

That was the end of Jame's apprenticeship in the kitchen."

Set in a wild, brutal, beautiful, fantastical city, filled with artists and aliens, fascists and rebels. A genius human scientist who is engaged in an illicit interracial love affair with a khepri (a woman with a scarab beetle head) is hired to restore the wings of a maimed garuda. Everything hits the fan. Feel free to skip the pretentious prologue-- it gets much better after that.

Out of print.

A savage parody of the urban fantasy genre, a thoughtful unpicking of its tropes and themes, and a brilliant novel in its own right. Changeling girl Jane slaves in a factory building iron dragons as war machines; she steals one and runs, but her troubles are only beginning. Every sentence is beautiful and sharp as a blade, and every time I re-read the book, I find new insights and themes I had missed the last time. An incredibly rewarding read, but it'll make much more sense if you read other books in the genre first.