The best fantasy books invite you to step foot into a world that feels like a real living, breathing place. terry pratchett’s night watch is in my top five favorite books of all time – a book that includes not only one of the greatest characters ever written on the page (sam vimes, of course), but also a of the best cities: ankh-morpork. Twenty-five years later, I still want to go to Ankh-Morpork so badly that I’d even be willing to eat one of Cut My Neck’s cakes to get there.
While I suspect you wouldn’t be living and breathing too much if you set foot in Ankh-Morpork, the reason this is such a joy to read about is because it’s fully realized, so immersive that it blurs the lines between our perspective as a reader. : Standing on the outside of history, looking in… or standing in the bustling streets, ankle-deep in oozing mud from the Ankh River. For me, the perfect escapism is a fantasy setting I want to visit, even better it’s a setting I don’t want to leave.
You are reading: Books set in future london
my first book, the nightjar, is not set in a world so different from ours. As a fantasy portal, its setting, the Colony, is based on real life London: a city I love to travel through and also love to read about. the world of the nightjar combines elements of contemporary and historical London life (there are Bakelite telephones and street runners) and Finnish mythology. I hope it’s a world that readers enjoy as much as I enjoy reading about ankh-morpork!
the nightjar is not the first novel inspired by london. Here are five more fantasy Londons to escape to, each one very (very) different. and since nightjar combines elements of london from different eras, i thought i’d pick novels set in different decades or even centuries.
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shadows of magic series by v.e. schwab
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This series begins with a darker tone of magic, set in Georgian London (specifically, 1819). Not satisfied with the blood, sweat, and tears involved in building the world on a single stage, Schwab has created four versions of the city. gray london, the city with a lot of smoke and no magic (much like the real Georgian London); white london, a cruel city of “blood and ash”, warped by magic and ruled by power-hungry dictators on thrones of marble; red london, where people and magic flourish together in healthy harmony, under benevolent rulers; and the mythical black london, destroyed by its magic and isolated from the others. We follow Kell, a traveling wizard and smuggler, as he teams up with Delilah Bard, a thief from Gray London, to avert catastrophe when a dangerous relic from the legendary Black London puts the four cities in peril.
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dan vyleta smoke
In an alternative Victorian London, people are literally marked by sin. smoke is expelled from the body and soot appears whenever a minor misdeed, an act of greed, a little lie or a criminal transgression is committed. this is a world where all evil thoughts and evil deeds can be seen by others, and no one can hide what lies beneath the surface. This London, appropriately enough, is the London of chimney sweeps, factory chimneys and grimy slums; the city as dirty as its lower-class inhabitants. however, there is a ruling class that has learned to curb their baser desires and live without smoking, their cleanliness and virtue being a sign of their right to rule. We follow two young aristocrats, Thomas and Charlie, as they witness an event that causes them to question the rules of their society and discover the truth about the nature of smoke.
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neverwhere by neil gaiman
this is boss level stuff. the big one. the london-inspired fantasy that spawned them all. Set in the mid-1990s, the story follows Richard Mayhew, a mild-mannered city worker, whose life changes forever when he helps the mysterious door (a girl, not a tall wooden thing with handles) and is catapulted on a weird and wonderful adventure under the city. There, in London below, Richard will meet his fate. Neverwhere plays with the locations of London and the Tube network in the most ingenious way: Night’s Bridge, Earl’s Court, Angel Islington, Black Friars are literal interpretations. a dark, magical world that feels real because… it’s real. something like that.
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ben aaronovitch rivers of london series
The first novel in this series is known as Midnight Riots in the US and Rivers of London in the UK. Published in 2011, this is London today: a diverse and realistic representation of the city, but with hidden magic around every corner. Peter Grant, a young Metropolitan Police officer, is recruited into the Insanity, a secret branch of the Metropolitan Police that deals with supernatural and magical crimes. there, he becomes the first wizard apprentice in decades. PC Grant sets out to find out who owns Londoners and forces them to commit murder, while trying to bring peace between the warring gods, Mama Thames (and her daughters Beverly Brook, Lady Tyburn, Lea and Fleet) and elderly Father Thames. . this is a london with magic and ghosts, but also the personification of the city’s rivers, who appear here as gods masquerading as ordinary Londoners. In the same way that the tube map was never used, the rivers here are a brilliant riff on the geography of London.
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samantha shannon’s season of bones
well, we’ve seen some versions of london stretching from the georgian era to the present day, so now it’s time for a london yet to come. set sometime after the year 2059, this is a much more futuristic city. This book arguably straddles the border between fantasy and science fiction, featuring a high-tech city with gangs committing supernatural crimes; Under the fascist Kindred regime, clairvoyance and dream walking are punishable by execution. When main character and secret clairvoyant Paige Mahoney is transported to Oxford to live under the rule of a mysterious race of otherworldly beings, Paige finds herself in a position to start a revolution and overthrow the cruel Kindred government.
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Special mentions to other fantasy londons (not included here in order to explore different time periods): a discovery of witches by deborah harkness, jonathan strange & mr norrell by susanna clarke, the invisible library by genevieve cogman, the nightside series by simon green, sixty-one nails by mike shevdon, miscellaneous works by china mieville & kate griffin and finally one of my favorite fantasy londons of all time: diagon alley in j.k. rowling.
okay, well, now I’m going to read pratchett’s night watch for the eighth time, assuming the yellow pages don’t go down. happy reading!
deborah hewitt is a teacher and former winner of ‘unknown voices’ and lives in manchester. the nightjar is her first novel.
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