California Bones by Greg Van Eekhout - Refreshing take on urban fantasy.
Greg Van Eekhout was not a name familiar to me when I started reading California Bones but I swear to amend this mistake soon. Boy can this guy write! So here's the blurb: A novel of magic, a heist, and the unexpected things that change your life. When Daniel Blackland was six, he ingested his first bone fragment, a bit of kraken spine plucked out of the sand during a visit with his demanding, brilliant, and powerful magician father, Sebastian. When Daniel was twelve, he watched Sebastian die at the hands of the Hierarch of Southern California, devoured for the heightened magic layered deep within his bones. Now, years later, Daniel is a petty thief with a forged identity. Hiding amid the crowds in Los Angeles—the capital of the Kingdom of Southern California—Daniel is trying to go straight. But his crime-boss uncle has a heist he wants Daniel to perform: break into the Hierarch's storehouse of magical artifacts and retrieve Sebastian's sword, an ...