When you are reading any kind of book set in the real world, it is especially fun to read one set in your own hometown. On the other hand, urban fantasy characters inhabit lives and landscapes that resemble our own - they own houses or rent apartments, they eat at restaurants, hold down jobs, and walk city streets. While the reader can bond with any well-written character, it take a little more effort to put yourself in the shoes of an epic fantasy character, whether they be pig-farming peasants or high-born nobles. There is always a bit of narrative distance when you place a story in a fictional land. Wizards? Werewolves? Vampires? Dragons in disguise? Maybe some or all of these, maybe something even more unexpected. But crack open an urban fantasy set in Chicago or Atlanta and you don’t know what to expect. If a novel is set in an imaginary land, you know to expect magical things on the page.
The intersection of magic and the mundane can be hugely appealing. One of the pleasures of reading contemporary or urban fantasy, as opposed to epic fantasy, is the fact that it is set in our own world.
Click through for an interactive map of contemporary fantasy by state at
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