The best (vampire-free!) real-world fantasy books with a unique and creative premise

This book was so brilliant and creative it made me want to be a writer. It’s set in Tucson, Arizona, and is steeped in a deep love and understanding of the Sonoran desert. But unlike the Arizona I grew up in, these dry arroyos are full of dark gods and faeries. Not your typical overdone Irish fey either, where they look like Tolkien elves and everyone dresses in fetish gear. No, Windling does faeries like Guilerrmo del Toro does faeries. These twisted godlings can unmake reality or grant powers in equal measure. It’s dark, but it’s not death and bloodshed dark, more like Meow Wolf’s “the world is creepy and strange and I don’t understand it” dark. 

If you need a palette cleanser, Erin Morgenstern’s beautiful word pictures make you feel like you’re in a trippy animated film. The premise is that two promising young magicians have been pitted against each other in a duel to the death. Well, it’s more like a seasonal playoff to the death, because they sure take their sweet time about it. 

And it is sweet. The magicians outdo each other in beauty and whimsy until they end up falling in love. 

The venue for these spells is a mysterious circus with the theme of “black and white.” Black and white cats perform tricks. Black and white costumed acrobats leap through the air. One tent has an ice menagerie. Another tent is full of clouds. The lush descriptions were just so beautiful. I felt like I could taste the chocolate mice and smell the roasting peanuts.

Emma Bull wrote urban fantasy before that was really a thing, and this one is set in a shared world which straddles the human world and the world of the fey. Two unlikely friends are misfits in their own life. The titular character was kicked out of his family because his magic power made him seem too “weird” in the human realm, and his elven friend never felt at home in her fey family because her skill as a mechanic made her an outcast among the magic users. The fragile peace of their community is damaged when a new drug promises to turn humans fey.

This book is about making a home when you didn’t fit in with your family of origin, and the lengths people will go through to find a new identity. It may not feel as fresh as it did in the 1980s, but it will probably make you cry.

Molly Tanzer came up with one of the cleverest “magic” tropes ever and I wish I’d thought of it myself. Her Victorian London “diabolists” engage with demons in a way that felt so logical that it seemed 100% plausible. It involves specific plants, for example, ginger. These demons are more like sentient aliens that enter into a (permanent) symbiotic relationship with a human host, upon which they confer benefits.

It made me go, “I mean, getting into devil worship like this may not be my thing, but yeah, I get why people could be into it.” It’s not all gushing balls and gaslit concerts either, since our protagonists are much more middle class. There’s danger here, because not all of these diabolists are harmless. I craved ginger for months after this book.

America in the late 19th and early 20th century was a fascinating place of both turmoil and opportunity. Wecker takes what is already an interesting historical era and makes it even more fun by asking, “what if two of the immigrants to this new land were supernatural?” 

The Golem, created by a rabbi for a man who died on the journey, tries to find a new life in the Jewish neighborhoods of New York, except that she doesn’t really fit in among normal humans. 

The Jinni also struggles to fit in, and you get a lot of his backstory where we learn how poorly Jinni and human interactions usually turn out. Even though they are completely opposite creatures, you just hope these crazy kids will find a home in each other.