There exists, dear reader, a particular sort of hero who refuses to follow the rules—not the rules of magic, mind you, but those tedious rules of goodness that heroes have been expected to obey since time immemorial. These are the antiheroes of urban fantasy, those deliciously complicated souls who walk the shadowed streets of our modern cities, wielding supernatural powers with motives that would make even the most understanding among us pause.
Shall we meet them? We rather think we must.
Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey
Consider, if you will, James Stark—a magician who spent eleven years fighting as a gladiator in Hell itself and returned to Los Angeles with revenge burning in his blackened heart. One does not emerge from such an education with pristine morals intact. Stark hunts through a demon-haunted city, seeking those who betrayed him, and he is not particularly interested in being gentle about it.
This series blends noir sensibilities with supernatural mayhem. Stark is half-human, half-angel, and entirely unwilling to play nice with anyone—celestial or otherwise.
Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning
MacKayla Lane begins her journey as a bartender from Georgia who travels to Dublin seeking her sister’s murderer. What she discovers is a hidden world of Fae, a mysterious bookshop owner named Jericho Barrons, and powers she never knew she possessed.
Barrons himself is a masterwork of moral ambiguity—mysterious, powerful, and operating in the shadowy underworld with decidedly unscrupulous methods.
The Fever series unfolds across Dublin’s streets, where ancient Celtic mythology collides with modern danger, and where trusting the wrong person—or the right one—might cost everything.
Jade City by Fonda Lee
On the island of Kekon, magical jade grants superhuman abilities to those who can wield it, and the Green Bone clans control everything worth controlling. The Kaul family leads the No Peak clan through a world of honor, violence, and terrible choices. There are no purely good people here—only those trying to protect what they love through whatever means necessary.
This World Fantasy Award winner delivers crime family drama with a supernatural edge. Every character, from the burdened Pillar to the hot-tempered Horn, operates in shades of grey that would make a painter weep with envy.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Galaxy Stern can see ghosts, which proves useful when Yale University offers her a full scholarship to monitor its secret societies and their dangerous occult practices. Alex is a survivor of horrors we shall not detail, and her moral compass points in directions that conventional maps do not show. The rich and powerful play with forbidden magic in their windowless tombs, and Alex must navigate their deadly games.
Stephen King himself called this “the best fantasy novel I’ve read in years,” and one suspects he knows something about it.
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Kaz Brekker earned his nickname “Dirtyhands” honestly—through countless acts that respectable society would rather not contemplate. He leads a crew of criminals, outcasts, and broken souls on an impossible heist, and none of them qualify as good people by any stretch of the imagination. Yet somehow, impossibly, one cannot help cheering for these magnificent scoundrels.
Bardugo crafts each of her morally grey characters with profound care, but Kaz’s struggle with his past, his PTSD, and his reluctant humanity make him unforgettable.
Vicious by V.E. Schwab
Victor Vale and Eli Ever were college roommates who discovered how to create superhuman abilities and became enemies in the process. Neither of them is the hero of this story—both are villains, really—and yet Victor’s cold, calculating pursuit of revenge somehow feels justified. He kills with reason if not with joy, and his moral compass, while certainly damaged, still points … somewhere.
Much like The Boys, this is a superhero novel for those who find traditional superheroes tediously virtuous. The Guardian called it “a brilliant exploration of the superhero mythos,” and they were not wrong.
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
Jude Duarte is a mortal young woman raised among the Fair Folk, and she has learned their cruelty well. Her hunger for power drives her to make choices that would horrify gentler protagonists, but in a world where everyone does terrible things, perhaps one must become terrible to survive.
Her enemies-to-lovers dance with Prince Cardan—himself a chaos of vanity, cruelty, and hidden depths—reshaped the world of young adult fiction.
A Demon Bound by Debra Dunbar
Sam is an imp enjoying a permanent vacation from Hel, disguised as a human woman—until she accidentally-on-purpose kills a werewolf and attracts unwanted angelic attention. The angels run the show on Earth, and demons who sneak in for holiday get eliminated. Sam would rather not be eliminated, thank you very much.
One does not root for demons traditionally, but Sam makes that tradition seem rather limiting. This bestselling antihero series proves that even villainous protagonists, perhaps especially villainous protagonists, can be hilarious.
Nightlife by Rob Thurman
Cal Leandros is half-human, half-Auphe—the latter being bloodthirsty monsters that make ordinary nightmares seem pleasant. He spends his life proving he is not the creature his heritage suggests, working as a supernatural detective in New York alongside his fully human brother Niko. The Auphe want Cal back, and Cal wants nothing to do with his monstrous relatives.
This series blends noir vibes with horror and heart, following brothers who would do anything for each other in a city where trolls live under bridges and vampires occupy penthouses.
Hounded by Kevin Hearne
Atticus O’Sullivan is a two-thousand-year-old Druid who looks twenty-one, runs an occult bookshop in Arizona, and has made enemies of multiple pantheons of angry gods. Every mythology is real in this world, and Atticus has irritated most of them at some point.
He is the last of his kind, hiding from the Fae in the desert, and his moral flexibility has kept him alive for two millennia. His telepathic conversations with his Irish Wolfhound, Oberon, provide welcome chuckles.
A Dark and Hollow Star by Ashley Shuttleworth
Four queer teenagers must stop a serial killer whose crimes threaten to expose the faerie world hidden beneath Toronto. Nausicaä, a centuries-old former Fury banished to the mortal realm, stands out as a magnificent antihero—snarky, troubled, and utterly endearing despite her best efforts to be otherwise.
This modern faerie tale offers political drama, romantic tension, and refreshingly casual representation.
Child of Fire by Harry Connolly
Ray Lilly is an ex-convict who works as a “wooden man” for the Twenty Palace Society—meaning his job is to distract enemies while sorcerers do the real work. He carries a ghost knife made of paper and laminate, bears magical tattoos he did not choose, and makes morally questionable decisions because survival rarely permits otherwise.
Publishers Weekly named this to their top 100 books of 2009. Ray is not a good man, but he is trying to be better, which is perhaps enough.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
Karou is a Prague art student with blue hair that grows from her head in that peculiar color, raised by chimaera—creatures blending human and animal—in a workshop between worlds. She runs errands for monsters, collects teeth for purposes unknown, and gradually discovers that neither angels nor demons are quite what stories claim.
Laini Taylor (one of our very favourite authors, truth be known) writes with a level of art and sophistication that’s rare in any genre. Her characters are flawed, her worlds are gorgeous, and her moral universe refuses to simplify itself for anyone’s comfort. If you’ve never read her before, consider starting with Strange the Dreamer.
View Daughter of Smoke and Bone on Amazon
The Devil You Know by Mike Carey
Felix Castor is a freelance exorcist in a London where the dead began rising around the year 2000. He works like a private investigator—research, questions, clues—but his quarry is supernatural. Felix is cynical and morally grey but not without compassion, a man who got out of the exorcism business and finds himself reluctantly pulled back in.
Comparisons to John Constantine are inevitable and not unearned. Mike Carey wrote Hellblazer comics, after all, and he knows exactly what makes a supernatural antihero compelling.
Why We Love These Complicated Heroes
The antiheroes of urban fantasy prove that goodness is a choice, and that the choice becomes infinitely more complicated when we have every reason to choose otherwise. These characters walk our streets, wielding powers we cannot imagine, making decisions we might question—and we love them for it.
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