THE ANUBIS GATES
Powers, Tim
c.1983, Ace Books
ISBN: 0-441-02382-7
Tim Powers specializes in dark fantasy, and writes it as well as anybody alive. THE ANUBIS GATES is his first and best novel. I like it so much that it's one of very few SF or fantasy books that I have in hardcover. THE ANUBIS GATES is a bizarre wonderland of a story which weaves deftly among at least three different genres: dark fantasy, science fiction, and historical fantasy. Professor Brendan Doyle, a lesser-known expert on early-nineteenth-century English poetry, is hired for a very peculiar job: briefing the guests for a trip back in time to the year 1810, to see and hear a lecture by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Things get very complicated very fast when Doyle is captured by a powerful Egyptian sorcerer and becomes stranded in 1810. Doyle finds himself caught in a complicated temporal maze, jumping both backward and forward in time both by science and by magic, changing the past (maybe), changing his future (maybe), and incidentally going up against a clown crimelord and an Egyptian sorcerer who is older than Christianity, as he struggles desperately just to stay alive. Sound complicated? It is!

FAERIE TALE
Feist, Raymond E.
c. , Bantam Books
ISBN: 0-553-27783-9
An excellent example of dark fantasy. Feist draws on ancient Irish folklore to spin a tale of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. Phil Hastings, a successful movie screenwriter, finds and buys the house of his dreams for his family. However, the dream quickly turns into a nightmare, as the Amadan-na-Briona, lord of the dark Unseelie Coort, seizes on them as tools for an insane plan to bring humans and Faerie into conflict. Make no mistake: these faerie aren't cute little pixies with wings. The Faerie of the old Irish legends are powerful beings who care little for humankind.

INTO THE OUT OF
Foster, Alan Dean
c.1986, Warner
ISBN: 0-446-34559-8
Alan Dean Foster's best venture into dark fantasy to date. In African mythology, shetani are small, dark, demonic creatures from the other-world called the Out Of. When the wall between this world and the Out Of weakens, the shetani can cross over and wreak havoc here. Now it will require three very special people to stop the shetani: an undercover FBI agent on leave, a night-shift phone saleswoman from Seattle, and a skilled Maasai laibon, or shaman. They must find the breach in the Out Of and seal it, before the shetani can complete their plans and trigger a global war. They travel from Washington to Nairobi, to the mystic mountain called Ol Doinyo Lengai, then on to a site deep in remote Tanzania, where they find the entrance to the Out Of. Alan Dean Foster is very good at building good stories based on native legends, and this is among the best of that sort that he's done.

DHAMPIR
Hendee, Barb & J.C.
c.2003, Roc Books
ISBN: 0-451-45906-7
It's not often that I pick up a book based only on the cover, but this one I did. Magiere is known far and wide as an expert -- and expensive -- vampire-slayer. Any village which is suffering from an undead problem can call on her, and she'll dispose of it for them, for a price. Usually a steep price. But she's worth it.
     Or is she? In reality, the "vampires" she kills are nothing of the sort. She's never seen a vampire, much less killed one, and she even doubts they exist. She and her half-elf partner Leesil are scam artists: he pretends to be a vampire, she pretends to kill him, and then they split her fee equally. Now she's tired of the scam and wants to settle down, so she's bought a tavern in the seaside town of Miiska. Unfortunately for her, Miiska is home to a trio of real vampires. The vampires know who and what Magiere is, and they believe she's come there to kill them. So now Magiere has to learn to fight and kill vampires for real, and she doesn't have much time for training.
     What distinguishes this book from most dark fantasy is the depth of the characters. Magiere, Leesil, and the three vampires are all very well-developed characters. There's never any doubt who's the good guys and who's the bad guys, but all of them are fleshed out into real people. The good guys have some major flaws and foibles, and the bad guys have a certain amount of sympathy.