The Many Travails of John Smith

In addition to mentioning his son's series, his wife Jennifer Blackstream's urban fantasy series, Blood Trails, is also quite good. One of the solid entries in the urban-fantasy-with-a-female-lead genre that doesn't turn into a mess of cringey paranormal romance tropes. (Sorry, Laurell Hamilton and Ilona Andrews.) For other good options there: Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series, and Seanan McGuire's October Daye and InCryptid series. But going back to scratching the Dresdenish itch, I recently found Chris Tullbane's "The Many Travails of John Smith" series, which is written in a more comedic tone, but quite a bit better than I expected, and still features a snarky lead with a good heart who really should probably stop mouthing off at those far more powerful than him.

Hey everyone! The Many Travails of John Smith is an ongoing comedic urban fantasy series with a slow-burn romance between the lead (a mid-20s San Diego slacker) and a vastly older and more experienced vampire woman. While the romance starts more as a B-plot, it becomes increasingly central to both the story and aspects of the ongoing metaplots as the series continues. Here's the blurb for the first book, Investigation, Mediation, Vindication: The stakes are real. The mediator isn't. "Investigation, Mediation, Vindication." That's how the Yellow Pages ad starts, and if it sounds like the sort of thing a drunk teenager might come up with... well, you'd only be wrong about the teenager part. John Smith owns San Diego's smallest private investigation firm, but he doesn't know the first thing about mediation. Or vindication. On the other side of town, vampire Lucia Borghesi is having a terrible century. Stripped of her throne and banished from Italy, she's now somehow found herself in a dispute with the local demigod of nightmares and terror. And to top it all off, the long-time city mediator has been assassinated, and Lucia's second-in-command just hired a human to fill that role. If he wants to survive, John will need to prove his value to Lucia and her people while keeping that demigod from sucking San Diego into an unnamed hell dimension. And he'll have to work fast, because his beloved Corolla is parked curbside in Logan Heights, like an open invitation to the neighborhood's graffiti enthusiasts. With punk-loving vampires, goblin tribes who take their identities from local sports franchises, demigods who might just be asparaguses, and pixies who will do just about anything if it improves profit margins, and a protagonist who is doing his best to stay alive, grow up, and become worthy of the woman he loves, it's a frequently silly but always heartfelt series. The sixth book, Godswar, just launched at the end of April, with the audiobook coming from Tantor Media on September 22nd.