There exists a peculiar and delicious moment in storytelling—that breathless instant when a perfectly ordinary soul stumbles upon something that rewrites everything they believed about the world. We speak, dear reader, of the fish out of water tale, and in the realm of urban fantasy, this beloved trope flourishes like wildflowers in forgotten places.
We have gathered here thirteen remarkable series for your consideration, each featuring protagonists who discover that magic lurks just beneath the veneer of modern life. Whether you seek an ordinary Londoner who stumbles into a shadow city or a museum curator pulled into occult warfare, you shall find your next obsession among these pages.
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Richard Mayhew is a young Scottish businessman living an unremarkable life in London—complete with a demanding fiancée and a forgettable job—until he makes the cardinal mistake of helping a stranger. When he stops to aid an injured young woman bleeding on the sidewalk, he tumbles through the cracks of reality into London Below, a shadow city of monsters and angels, saints and murderers, existing in the labyrinthine spaces beneath the ordinary world.
Richard quickly discovers that his act of kindness comes with devastating consequences—he finds himself slipping between worlds, no longer belonging to the London he once knew. Gaiman uses the old technique of throwing a person from the regular world into a fantastical reality—think Alice in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz—and executes it brilliantly. For fans who later discovered The Rook, this stands as essential reading.
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch
When probationary constable Peter Grant encounters a ghost witness to a murder, his career takes rather an unexpected turn. He becomes apprentice to Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale—the last wizard in England—and plunges headlong into a London where river gods hold territory disputes and ancient magic lurks beneath the city’s modern facade.
Aaronovitch writes with a conversational wit that makes even bureaucratic police procedures feel charming. His version of London pulses with hidden magic, where the mundane and the miraculous coexist in delightful tension. The series has sold over five million copies worldwide, and deservedly so. Nick Frost himself declared it more wonderful than the real London.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Galaxy “Alex” Stern was a high school dropout raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands, fallen into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends and dead-end jobs. By age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Then, inexplicably, she is offered a full ride to Yale University—recruited into the mysterious Ninth House to monitor the eight secret societies that practice dangerous occult magic.
The windowless “tombs” of Yale’s secret societies are the haunts of the rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicians to Wall Street’s biggest players. But their occult activities are more sinister than any paranoid imagination might conceive. Alex must navigate a world of privilege and dark magic while carrying the weight of her own mysterious past. Stephen King called it “the best fantasy novel I’ve read in years, because it’s about real people.”
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
Myfanwy Thomas wakes in a London park surrounded by bodies, with no memory of who she is. A letter in her pocket explains: she once worked for a secret government organization protecting Britain from supernatural threats, and someone tried to kill her. Now she must infiltrate her own former life to discover who wants her dead while navigating abilities she doesn’t remember having.
O’Malley’s debut deploys a clever narrative device—letters from Myfanwy’s former self—that elegantly sidesteps the predictability of amnesia stories. Publishers Weekly called it “an impressive debut, a supernatural detective thriller distinguished by its adept use of humor.” For fans of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, this stands as essential reading.
Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning
MacKayla Lane is a Georgia bartender whose world shatters when she travels to Dublin seeking her sister’s murderer. There she discovers she’s a sidhe-seer—one of the rare humans who can see the Fae for what they truly are. The mysterious Jericho Barrons becomes her reluctant guide through this dangerous new reality, though whether he’s ally or enemy remains deliciously unclear.
Moning takes Mac on a transformative journey from apparent shallowness to something far deeper. The Fever series blends murder mystery, Celtic mythology, and slow-burn romance into something quite addictive. Barrons himself has been called “one of the most fascinatingly vague characters in all of urban fantasy history.”
John Dies at the End by Jason Pargin
David Wong and his friend John are college dropouts who find themselves accidentally equipped to see the supernatural horrors lurking in their Midwestern town—courtesy of a mysterious drug called “soy sauce.” What follows is Lovecraftian cosmic horror filtered through absurdist comedy, where the fate of the world rests in the hands of two decidedly unqualified heroes.
Pargin (writing as David Wong) updates the Lovecraft tradition and infuses it with humor that somehow intensifies rather than diminishes the horror. Kirkus Reviews noted that “when it’s funny, it’s laugh-out-loud funny, yet when the situation calls for chills, it provides them in spades.” Think Clerks meets H.P. Lovecraft.
Greywalker by Kat Richardson
Harper Blaine is a Seattle private investigator who dies for two minutes during a brutal assault—and returns with the ability to see and interact with the supernatural Grey that overlays our reality. Suddenly zombies, ghosts, and creatures from beyond are just part of her caseload, whether she wanted this gift or not.
Richardson excels at creating vivid, fast-moving narratives that blend urban fantasy with paranormal mystery. The private investigator elements shine particularly bright, and Harper’s world-weary pragmatism about her unwanted abilities feels refreshingly realistic. The nine-book series improves significantly as it progresses, finding its stride around the fourth installment.
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews enrolls in a residential program for high schoolers at UNC-Chapel Hill, seeking escape from grief. On her first night on campus, she witnesses a magical attack—a flying demon feeding on human energies, a secret society of “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures, and a mysterious teenage mage who attempts to wipe her memory of everything she saw.
When the memory wipe fails, Bree finds herself drawn into a world she was never meant to see—one connected to Arthurian legend and guarding secrets that may be linked to her own past. The novel earned the Coretta Scott King Award and was named to Time Magazine’s 100 Best Fantasy and Young Adult Books of All Time.
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
Quentin Coldwater is an unhappy seventeen-year-old in Brooklyn who loves a series of children’s books about a magical land called Fillory. When he arrives for his Princeton interview, he finds his interviewer dead—but a mysterious envelope leads him to Brakebills College for Magical Pedagogy, a secret institution where he discovers that magic is real, difficult, and nothing like his childhood fantasies.
Grossman crafts what many have called “Harry Potter for adults”—a story where the discovery of magic doesn’t solve your problems but complicates them immeasurably. The trilogy explores what happens after the wonder fades and the hard work begins. A television adaptation ran for five seasons on Syfy, testament to the story’s enduring appeal.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Shadow Moon is released from prison only to learn his wife has died in a car accident. With nowhere to go, he takes a job as a bodyguard for a mysterious con man named Mr. Wednesday, and travels with him across America. Shadow gradually discovers that the Old Gods—brought to America by immigrants who believed in them—still walk among us, and that a storm is brewing between ancient powers and newer forces.
Gaiman’s Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel transforms a mundane road trip into a mythological epic. Shadow’s journey from ordinary ex-convict to something far stranger unfolds with Gaiman’s characteristic blend of the quotidian and the numinous. The novel spawned a television adaptation and remains one of the defining works of American urban fantasy.
Kraken by China Miéville
Billy Harrow is a cephalopod specialist at London’s Natural History Museum whose life changes forever when the museum’s prize specimen—a giant squid preserved in formaldehyde—impossibly vanishes. As Billy soon discovers, this theft is the precipitating act in a struggle between mysterious forces in a London whose existence he has been blissfully ignorant of until now.
Miéville pulls Billy into a world of squid-worshipping cults, criminal masterminds inked onto human flesh, Egyptian spirits leading unions of magical familiars, and Londonmancers who read the future in the city’s entrails. Initially as innocent and unsuspecting as Richard Mayhew in Neverwhere, Billy finds himself caught in the middle of something far larger than a simple theft.
City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
When Clary Fray witnesses a murder at a New York nightclub—committed by teenagers covered in strange tattoos, wielding bizarre weapons, and completely invisible to everyone else—she stumbles into the hidden world of Shadowhunters. These warriors dedicate themselves to ridding the earth of demons, and Clary’s ability to see them suggests she may have a connection to this world that her ordinary life never hinted at.
Clare constructed a vivid parallel world populated with warlocks, vampires, and werewolves woven into the gritty fabric of New York City. The Mortal Instruments series launched a franchise spanning multiple book series, a film, and a television adaptation. For readers seeking punchy dialogue, romantic tension, and creative supernatural concepts, this delivers.
Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
Sunny Nwazue lives in Nigeria, but she was born in New York City. She looks West African but is albino, unable to play soccer in the sun. She doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere—until she discovers she’s a “free agent,” overflowing with latent magical power. Her classmates Orlu and Chichi reveal they have magical abilities too, and together they form the youngest coven ever assembled.
Okorafor draws on Nigerian culture, African cosmology, and West African folklore to create a magical world unlike anything in Western fantasy. Sunny needs a crash course in magical history, spells, juju, and dimensional travel—all while facing dangers that will test her newfound abilities. Time Magazine named it one of the 100 Best Fantasy and Young Adult Books of All Time.
Finding Your Perfect Fish Out of Water Fantasy
Each of these series offers a different flavor of that intoxicating moment when everything changes—when ordinary becomes extraordinary and the supernatural becomes personal. Some lean toward detective noir, others toward romance, still others toward cosmic horror or action-packed adventure.
We recommend sampling based on your particular preferences: for noir atmosphere, try Rivers of London or Greywalker; for romance elements, Darkfever or City of Bones; for mythology and folklore, American Gods or Akata Witch; for horror comedy, John Dies at the End stands alone in its peculiar glory.
Whatever you choose, may your reading be as delightful as that first startling glimpse of magic hiding in the margins of the mundane world.
