I’ve been on a bit of a fantasy streak lately—though not the swords-and-sagas kind. These days, I’m drawn more to urban fantasy, that magical subgenre where the extraordinary exists just beneath the surface of the ordinary. It’s one of my favourites, in part because it makes the impossible feel just a bit more possible. Magic, but with bus schedules. Ghosts, but with smartphones. Ancient orders, tucked behind government doors or city alleyways.

Urban fantasy authors face a particular challenge: how to weave magic into the fabric of our own world—and convince us it’s always been there, just out of sight. The best of them manage it brilliantly, using the city as character and canvas alike. And lately, I’ve read a lot of this genre set in the UK, where the past is often just around the corner (or under your feet), and where cities wear their history right on their sleeves.

So today, I thought I’d dig into how two very different cities—London and Oxford—tend to show up in the pages of modern urban fantasy.

London: bustling, magical, and brilliantly weird

Let’s start with London. The big one. The noisy, sprawling, delightfully messy capital.

Two series in particular have shaped how I imagine magical London:

First up is The Rook Files by Daniel O’Malley. These books follow the Checquy, a secretive government agency that manages Britain’s supernatural threats. The first book, The Rook, opens with a woman waking up surrounded by corpses and no memory—only a letter in her pocket informing her she’s a high-ranking agent. It’s a clever entry point into a world that’s both absurd and oddly bureaucratic. We quickly learn: London is full of both the unexplainable – the denizens of the Checquy seem to manifest powers at random – and the scientific (but creepy) – the Belgian Grafters can perform sci-fi surgery to grant augmented abilities. The Rook Files works because it doesn’t take itself too seriously, even when discussing matters of national security. Reading the latest book, Royal Gambit, took me back to devouring Alex Rider as a pre-teen, in the best way.

Then there’s Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch. Our guide is Peter Grant, a young constable who accidentally discovers he can see ghosts, and becomes the first wizard apprentice in decades as a result. It’s a more grounded series, rich with lore, history, and affection for the city’s neighbourhoods and rhythms. Aaronovitch’s London is full of river spirits and territorial gods, magical squabbles and haunted train stations—and yet also still subject to paperwork and petty bureaucracy. It’s also rooted in the steady rhythm of a police procedural, and we grow with Grant as he falls in love and starts a family. The latest release in the series, Stone and Sky, perfectly blends magical shenanigans, good old-fashioned police work, and family life in a way that’s comforting and fascinating. The books are a striking juxtaposition of the weird and the familiar, which really lands the worldbuilding for me.

What both series have in common is a vision of London as sprawling, multicultural, and humming with unseen energy. In these stories, magic is messy and unpredictable, but also oddly ordinary. Magic blends into daily life in a way that feels believable. Perhaps that’s London’s great magical strength: it’s big and strange enough that you could almost believe anything’s happening just around the corner.

Oxford: ancient, secretive, and slightly ominous

In contrast, Oxford’s magic is… colder. Older. Heavier. Stories set here tend to carry a different flavour—darker, more introspective, and often more political. If London’s magical world is somewhere you could stumble into, Oxford’s requires a hard-won invite.

Take The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon. In this series, Oxford is literally hidden—its presence scrubbed from maps and memory. What remains is a prison-colony, ruled by an alien race known as the Rephaim. The magic here is closely monitored, rigidly classified, and weaponised. Paige, the protagonist, is a dreamwalker dragged into a cruel power structure that tries to shape her into something useful. Like in many dystopian novels, she faces a forced selection process via a series of dangerous challenges. Paige must navigate these challenges with help from both human friends and her Reph trainer. The challenges force her to assert her identity and values, often at the expense of power or physical security. But interestingly, Paige’s values are just as self-focused as the Reph or Scion, which perhaps detracts from the message.

Contrast that with Babel, one of my favorite reads of 2022. R.F. Kuang explores many similar themes – labor exploitation, freedom, choice. But some subtle differences in choice make the story land much more cleanly. Off the bat, Kuang sets the story at the critical historical juncture – that is, the 1830s – rather than in its aftermath. Kuang’s protagonists are socially manipulated into contributing their labor, rather than physically forced. Since their primary discovery is their own self-worth, the protagonists’ gradual resistance creates a stronger arc than Paige’s continuous failed attempts to create impact. The tone is more thoughtful, the politics more insidious. But both stories ask the same questions: Who gets to belong here? Who pays the price for power?

Across these stories, Oxford becomes a kind of mirror for elitism. It’s a place of gates and gatekeeping—beautiful on the outside, but built on uncomfortable truths. Where magical London is diverse and unpredictable, magical Oxford is narrow and rule-bound. And where London stories are often about discovering hidden magic, Oxford stories are more likely to be about uncovering buried injustice.

A bonus: metafiction in Swindon?

I can’t resist adding one more city into the mix. Not exactly a fantasy hotspot, but one that has my heart: Swindon. Specifically, the slightly surreal version found in Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series.

Perhaps my favorite urban fantasy series (set in 80s Swindon) is Thursday Next by Jasper Fforde. This metafictional series follows the titular protagonist as she jumps in and out of fiction and back and forth across time, solving mysteries while living the suburban life. In my opinion, it takes the best of the London stories (a tongue-in-cheek view, a modern attitude and protagonist) with the best of fantasy Oxford writing (full of literary Shibboleths, themes of choice and freedom). This version of Swindon is quietly absurd, full of dodos, bureaucracy, and metafictional shenanigans. And yet, somehow, it balances this with real emotional stakes and thoughtful themes about identity, creativity, and free will.

I love it deeply—and I’m thrilled there’s a new entry in the series coming this November (!!). I will probably do a full series read leading up to that. Watch this space for more Thursday – and more metafictional urban fantasy meditations to go along with it.

That’s it for this little magical city tour. I find it fascinating how the same genre can reflect so many different versions of a place—how setting shapes story, and vice versa. London’s chaotic wonder, Oxford’s dark allure, Swindon’s surreal charm. Each city reveals a different face of British magic.

More to come soon, especially as I head back into Thursday Next…

Until next time, stay cozy, and stay curious!