Crowdsourcing The Essentials: Urban Fantasy

Just as buildings are made of bricks and last night’s dinner was made of donuts and whiskey, the INTERNET IS MADE OF LISTS. And one of the lists I see periodically pop up like a gopher at the hole is the one where the writer curates her list of the essential reads in a particular genre.

And I thought, well, I can do that.

Except, man, I’m totally lazy.

So, I thought, for fun, I’ll crowdsource it. And as it turns out, I have a blog — beards-beers-and-books.blogspot.com, which unfortunately this week was shut down by the NSA for hiding Edward Snowden’s cat videos. So, here I am at my second blog, giving it a go.

This’ll be a series, I think, where I drop in and ask this question about certain essential genre and subgenre (and other as-yet-unseen categorizations and classifications) reads. I’ll tally the top ten by the next post and it’ll all start all over again. Like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill. But more fun. Or something. YOUR FACE IS FULL OF SHUT UP.

So, today, since I’ve got a couple books loosely defined as urban fantasy (ahem, ahem, cough, cough, Blue Blazes, out now), I thought that’s a good place to start.

As such, here’s your task:

In the comments, list your top three essential urban fantasy reads.

Name of book and author of book.

You can just give titles or talk about the books or use rare artisanal Korean emoticons to express your pleasure. I trust your judgment.

Then, next Monday, I’ll list the ten top books that appeared.

So: top three urban fantasy reads.

Let us begin.