If you enjoyed the Dresden Files... or me telling you to go read Craig Schaefer books (again)
I know that I have talked a little bit about the Daniel Faust series and related books, and how they totally won my heart. But I feel like it deserves a dedicated rambling post, and I deserve one of these "if you like the Dresden Files..." type of posts as well, after being in the fandom for a while.
Disclaimer: I LIKE the Dresden Files. It's not without it's problems, but this isn't me telling you to go read Daniel Faust instead of the Dresden Files. Read both. (Or not. You do what you want with your time.)
And if you HATE the Dresden Files then clearly our tastes don't overlap and I don't take responsibility for my recommendations.
(So many of those "Dresden Files but NOT problematic" book recommendations for me end up being as appealing as a bowl of pasta with no sauce. And I have a SPREADSHEET full of similar book recommendations from all kinds of places that I'm slowly working my way through.)
I have so far read 12 books from this so called "The First Story" book collection, which has 4 different series inside, and there wasn't one I didn't enjoy. So here is my subjective breakdown and key points about the different book series (contains minor spoilers of things I think others might appreciate as much as I did):
Daniel Faust:
This is the one I started with, because it has the classic urban fantasy set-up where a guy with magic gets into lots of trouble and I can't get enough of that.
The tone is everything that I love in the Dresden Files. It's snarky, it's funny, occasionally (very o.O) gory, and sometimes surprisingly deep.
Faust is cool as fuck. He fights with playing cards, hello?
He has two gay dads. They are adorable and awesome, with big personalities of their own.
He gets together with a femdom demon (think of Lash) and while they are not doing everything together in all the books, they are allowed to have a healthy long-term relationship, which felt like a breath of fresh air to me.
Everyone is kinky as shit and they are NOT hiding it. (And there is also plenty of that "this-is-violence-not-kink-but-reads-like-kink" situations that happens so often in the Dresden Files. There is one bit where a bad guy gives Faust a non-con but in technique surprisingly BDSM-appropriate caning... anyways...)
Faust is not a Good Guy. I mean, he does have a moral compass, and he tries to follow it really hard, but he's also a conman and a thief, and he did work for a mob boss in the past so don't expect Harry Dresden levels of moral meltdowns. This was originally a bit jarring for me just because I'm so used to Harry agonizing over doing the right thing.
The supernatural landscape mostly consists of demons. This isn't a positive or negative thing, just depends on how you feel about it. I'm fine with demons.
There is an overarching big conflict and the story escalates quite quickly to it. I'm not at a point yet where I understand everything, but you definitely don't have a million monster-of-the-week episodes before you get to the apocalyptic level of things. I actually wouldn't have minded a bit more low-stakes stuff, but this is also a preference thing.
Finally, I have to mention that I don't think it's as good of a fanfic material, as the Dresden Files. I'm generally satisfied with the canon, and it just doesn't hit that many "what-if" points for me. Which again can be a good thing or a bad thing depending how you look at it.
Harmony Black:
This is also a classic urban fantasy set-up and very enjoyable. Because of the timeline I only read two books from this series, but I'm so looking forward to reading more.
Harmony Black is literally Karrin Murphy if Murphy had magic and joined the FBI. It's fantastic.
She does NOT like Faust. So it's super fun getting both sides of the story.
She has a sort-of werewolf lesbian colleague who makes me scream at them to get together already (instead of that boring small town cop guy ugh)
More extremely fun demon side-characters, and shady secret government agency things. What's not to love?
Revanche Cycle:
This is an alternate universe, sort-of medieval fantasy books from multiple povs. Initially I was a bit hesitant to read them because they are so different in tone, but I enjoyed them a LOT. And eventually they will be connected to the other series so I wanted to read them.
Male witches, Female pope. *chef's kiss*
Lots of plot twists and interesting characters. (Also a lot of character death...)
Delicious toxic yuri endgame.
So many fun and fucked-up characters!
I'm trying to follow this reading order, btw. (It used to have a graph which disappeared :( )
Anyways, I'm enjoying these books a ton, and I wanted to recommend them again, in case you need something to occupy yourself with until Twelve Months comes out.
