Like Supernatural? Read Jim Butcher's Dresden Files (Storm Front)

I love Supernatural. Urban Legends and ghost stories are the new fairy tales, and in keeping with old world traditions, most of them are dark and based around the death of those that weren't wise enough to respect tradition and the night. I kept up with it up until the end of the fall of the angels and that last episode with Felicia Day...Love Her! But, besides the point. The best part about the series, besides Jensen Ackles, for me at least, is the hook - man versus magic and the unknown and man steadily taking back the world of monsters and demons, and that's one of the big draws of the Dresden Files.

Published back in 2000 by Jim Butcher, my own personal writing deity when it comes to hardcore fantasy fiction, Storm Front, the first book in the series, is a hard boiled, noire-esque urban fantasy novel following Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, a private detective working in the Chicago area solving supernatural-related cases for Chicago PD. But, here's the kicker - Dresden is a wizard. Not the kind that pick pretty girls to saw in half, but rather the kind those of the old school of wizardry that wield the primal forces of wind and fire and, in a pinch, a little bit of devastating lightning.

Cursed by a past he had no control over, Dresden is one bad rumor away from getting a sword to the back of the neck, but when people in Chicago are getting murdered in very...very dark-wizard like ways, Dresden has to find a way to solve the murders and find a missing person while his worst fan is lurking in the shadows with a very sharp sword waiting for him to make one mistake.

Snarky and irreverent, Dresden brings a world of sarcasm and hilarity to the wizarding theme the Harry Potter generation has left with us, for a more adult, modern twist to the private eye genre. I recommend it to anyone who loves a good LOTR's joke here and there and wants to be pleasantly surprised by Jim Butcher's dark take on what happens when you're the only outed wizard in the world trying to make a quick buck.

Like "Attack on Titan"? Read "The Warded Man" by Peter V. Brett

Since I started using Tumbl,r almost a month ago, I've been inundated with nothing but pictures, parodies, GIF's and video's of Attack on Titan, and, curious critic that I am, I decided to look into it since it was free to watch on Netflix. What I discovered was: it's not bad. I can certainly see what the hype is all about. The action is smooth if a little too spaced for me, and the world mechanics are interesting if a little stretched to the imagination, (the three dimensional movement system is cool if a little advanced for a world where they are living in a very post-dark-age kind of civilization.) The characters are interesting. I won't say unique because they draw on the big three of the triad trope: one special, if seemingly insignificant main character, a tough, emotionally cripple, and a genius who is a little bit cowardly, but he leads with his heart and that makes up for it. The storyline, draws on a lot of common archetypes that we see in film and literature, so it's not all that original, but it is a popular theme and that makes up for it.

What it boils down to is that the main character's world is destroyed by the massive, man-eating monsters that destroy his world and he vows revenge. His friends vow to help him accomplish his goals. Though the series is interesting, I found myself reading up on the series, (coming in so late to the game, I wanted to find out if the series dropped at any point and how honest it was to the source material,) and discovered, like with anything, the books, manga's in this case, were much more in-depth and had more going on than the anime, which is where I'll leave it for now.

Now, being a big book nerd, I always advocate finding things out there that are similar to interests that we already have. There's no sense in getting a book on ancient architecture if you like watching things like Sesame Street. Though it's nice to broaden your horizons, such a large gap is going to hamper your ability to really bring yourself to dive right it and stay there. Rather, find things that are similar to the world you like to live in and you can branch from there. It's one of my favorite things about Amazon's Kindle and Netflix: it gives you an option to look at things similar to that but not the same, if you catch my meaning. The only problem is that it doesn't quite cross over from books to moves or vice-versa, so that's where I'm coming in.
 
While watching Attack on Titan, and reading because the Netflix version doesn't come with English Dubs, I was noting a lot of similarities to something else that was at the edge of my memory, something I didn't recognize until I started re-reading The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett. A once prosperous world decimated and its remaining citizens forced to live behind protected walls. A main character driven by revenge and using the very thing he hates to combat the evil. Two capable companions, one a cool-headed woman more capable than her peers. Sound familiar? Well both apply to Attack on Titan AND The Warded Man.

Set in a post-apocalyptic future, mankind is attacked nightly by demons that come up from the core of the world to destroy mankind. Like the Titans, they don't require the humans for food, but simply destroy them at will, (the juxtaposition being that the Titans are fueled by sunlight and the Demons are killed by it and can only survive at night.) The story follows the main characters, Arlen, Leesha and Rojer as they come to grips with the world around them and find ways to bring hope to mankind to fight a war with the demons that have decimated them for years.

The story of The Warded Man is completely character driven. You get to follow the characters as they grow up and experience the world through the eyes of young adults who don't know much about the world around them, giving a perfect view for foreigners like us in their world, making transitions smooth and not long in the use of exposition. Unlike a lot of fantasy writers, Brett keeps the action short and sweet without too much flash to draw attention from the story, but when it starts, keep your eyes peeled. The characters, complete strangers to each other, mix well together, but it's realistic in the sense that these people don't know each other and their reactions to what each does can be jarring and makes for some good drama.

It isn't Attack on Titan, and anyone coming into it thinking it is is going to be in for a shock, but the move from Titan to Warded Man is a good one for people who like the fantasy post-apocalyptic genre and might be looking for more out of it while they’re waiting for the next manga to come out. Pick up a copy at your local bookstore or Amazon. The audiobook is fun, as well, because the voice actor sounds a lot like the guy that did the voice of Two-Face in the Batman cartoon from the 90s. Happy hunting!