The Culture series, by Iain M Banks is a cracking good read, although Player Of Games has such an unsympathetic main character I just can’t read it anymore.
If you can get your head around the idea of there being magic within an urban environment, and the most mundane of objects being imbued with power, then Kate Griffin’s Urban Magic series, or the Matthew Swift series as its also called, is a very good read, proper page turners. Kate knows London intimately, has explored it all her life, and uses the hidden grimy corners very effectively.
http://lightningtreelive.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/review-a-madness-of-angels-kate-griffin/
There are six books, but only the first four feature Swift as a main character; he ‘disappears’ in the last two, but remains in the background, while still influencing events. The ‘Magicals Anonymous’ crowd are highly entertaining.
The emotional character development that the blog mentions actually takes place through the course of the four books, and there’s a lot of humour, plenty of it dark, too.
I’m impatiently waiting to see what Kate’s next project is, she’s twenty five, and had fourteen books published so far, and she’s being cagey about what it is. (Gnashes teeth)
And no, she’s not a friend, although I’ve met her a couple of times at book signings. I just love her books, is all.
Oh, and anything by Neil Gaiman, like American Gods, Neverwhere, Stardust, Smoke and Mirrors, The Graveyard Book, and The Ocean At The End Of The Lane.
All superb books.
Stardust you may have seen as a film, with Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, and American Gods is in development as an HBO series as well.