Fated

Recently I watched an interview with Jim and James J. Butcher, where James says, he thinks urban fantasy is a pretty good idea for not so experienced authors to kind of ease into writing and publishing books. I've never actually done it, so I don't know how accurate that is (though I have no reason to not believe him). All I know is that I like urban fantasy.
Now, not the paranormal romance where the main character has... relations with like werewolves and vampires. I don't like those.
But this is the kind I find fun.

The main character, Alex, runs a magic shop. Which could be a total scam, except he is actually magical and some of the stuff he sells actually works. He can see the future, which isn't brilliant for kicking ass and taking names, though it can be great if you are smart about it.
Right now his skills are needed by the governing body of the magical people to get to some kind of a relic they really really want to find.

Something about urban fantasy works with mystery extremely well. You don't even have to overdo the worldbuilding in your magical setting when 30% is mystery, 30% is... well, urban AND then there is the fantasy.
One of my pet peeves is when an author feels like to micro-manage their magical world, with us taking notes and having a full wall of paper clippings and red yarn with pins. Let magic be magical!
This was. The scope is limited enough for us to get a feel of the few characters we meet. There is talk of the political ways in which the magical people work. There is a lot of room to elaborate on that. But we are never swamped with unnecessary information to act like literary clutter, to make the world feel lived-in.

It's a pretty straight forward book. The way the mistery plays out is kind of fun, I really like the twist around that, but so far it's all a solid book in a genre I genuinely like. I do certainly think series like this have a tendency of becoming cooler the deeper you go, so I am excited for that. There is room for it.

All in all, very competent, fun, fast-paced. An easy read, but not because it's dumb in any way.