Thursday, July 28, 2016

Five top fantastic cities

Willow Palecek's new novella is City of Wolves. One of five fantastic cities she tagged at Tor.com:
Chicago — The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher

The Dresden Files is an urban fantasy series starring Harry Dresden, the only wizard in the Chicago phone book. It has everything you’d expect from an urban fantasy series (and more): parasitic vampires, scheming faerie queens, dark magic, Dungeons & Dragons-playing werewolves, and mortals in over their heads.

The wisecracking Harry Dresden is great fun to read, but part of the fun of the setting also comes from seeing how Butcher fits fantasy tropes into his Chicago, and seeing Harry fight in and around Chicago landmarks, or even better, occasionally magically animate them. Butcher’s Chicago mixes the familiar and the new and interesting ways, creating a Chicago that is at once both familiar and wondrous.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue