Sarah Rees Brennan has written a really good urban fantasy triology, starting with
The Demon's Lexicon.
She wrote about it in
the Big Idea series on Scalzi's blog:
Quote:
We’ve all read about That Guy. You know the one. Tall, dark and largely silent. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know. ...
High fantasy and urban fantasy and paranormal romance and all the slip-sliding books in between, he’s there: tall, dark, silent and surly, knowing a lot more about everything that’s going on than the hapless protagonist and usually, since to live in a genre novel is to live in interesting times, excellent with any weapon to hand.
He’s become so popular that he’s been watered down: mad, bad and dangerous to know becoming ‘Seems a little mean at first, but on the look-out for love: particularly enjoys long walks on the beach and talking about his feelings!’ On my four hundredth go-round with a book involving Mr Tall, Dark and Diet I thought to myself that someone should bring the original undiluted version back, and really think about what made him compelling and made him tick. And that we shouldn’t be seeing it from the point of view of a girl much taken with the muscular thighs and meanness, or a guy haplessly protagonisting behind Mr Tall and Dark’s sword, but from inside the head of That Guy, to see what he was thinking.
Besides ‘why does everyone else talk so much,’ I mean.
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There's a free short story from the same world here
http://sarahtales.livejournal.com/164555.html#cutid1 (but beware of her other free stories from the same world, they are seriously spoiling for the first book).