Magic and bureaucracy in a supernatural Singapore
It seems like I enjoy a subgenre of urban fantasy that I am starting to think of as “books that involve the bureaucratization of magic,” where main characters working for government agencies try to tame the magical world with procedures, paperwork, and protocols. Examples might include Charlie Stross’s The Laundry Files, parts of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series, and now, it seems, Jared Poon’s new DEUS series beginning with City of Others.
Our narrator is Ben, who works in middle management at DEUS, the Division for Engagement of Unusual Stakeholders, part of the Ministry of Community, that oversees the “Others”: people with magic or connections to the supernatural.
The book is set in a Singapore where magic is everywhere, but most people don’t notice it due to what the ministry refers to as “Deviant Occurrences Blind Eye Syndrome” (DOBES). But most of the Others just all it the “DKP effect,” for “Don’t kaypoh” (kaypoh is Singaporean slang for ‘busybody’).
Ben’s team of government bureaucrats works to help Others fit into the overall fabric of Singaporean society. The team features a psychic, a spell-slinging bomoh (Malay shaman), a half-jinn intern, and Ben, who is a “Gardener” with access to a large well of internal magic. The team is eventually joined by a ghost cat who can rescue objects from the immediate past, as well as by Ben’s boyfriend, Adam.
Ben and his team face a dual threat: first, a world-ending attack from an endlessly ravenous shoal of creatures swimming in from a parallel but connected dimension; second, the possibility that their boss, Rebecca, may catch them performing an exorcism without a risk management plan and filing for official clearances.
There's just something I find charming about the juxtaposition of civil servants and bureaucracy with snake gods and other supernatural magic. For example, at one point, when Ben is trying to figure out what's going wrong in a residential neighbourhood, he tells himself, "OAR—Observe. Analyze. Respond. That was the DEUS framework for field observations around deviant phenomena. There was even a very nice set of slides, featuring clip-art people rowing a kayak together, that showed how the OAR framework could help us navigate complex situations.” As he considers what he can remember from the slides, he ends up submerged and frozen in a parallel universe for a few moments.
The OAR framework helps Ben navigate the situation, but his reference to it (and other government protocols) makes the magic seem possible to tame, which perhaps helps the reader feel like it could be real. Rather than forcing the reader into a magical realm, it brings the magic into our mundane realm with its informational PowerPoints and mnemonics to remember protocols.
Further, just as even mundane employees sometimes face top-down policies that make their lives difficult, Ben must deal with the DEUS’s past policies, which focused more on controlling and policing the Others rather than helping them. In the past, DEUS even violently shut down locations where Others gathered, calling them “unhygienic” and “lawless." Due to this legacy, many powerful Others do not trust DEUS, and Ben must work to prove that the agency has changed.
The book is peppered with pop culture references, with a light and humorous tone. For example, Ben quotes both Aladdin and Star Wars at his boyfriend and, at one point, in the midst of the battle against the shoal, his team needs to stop everything to participate in the Ministry of Community Sports Day to demonstrate their team spirit for their boss. But the book also has a deeper core, where characters cope with past grief and mistakes while learning to grow and work together. Ben begins the book unable to ask for help and feeling emotionally estranged from his father. By the end, he comes to better understand how his father shows care, and also learns to ask for help when he needs it.
I enjoyed that this book was set in Singapore. We get to hear about different forms of magical beings based in Asian folklore, such as the manananggal, a mythical creature from Filipino folklore, and Semar, a Javanese demigod. Poon also integrates aspects of Singaporean history into the book, such as in the fact that the category of “Other” for magical creatures comes from a post-colonial era racial classification that the Singaporean government used as an administrative tool. People were asked to self-identify as “Chinese, Malay, Indian, or Other.” This puts all the magic users together with racialized others: “We, of course, were in the last category, which included jiangshi [undead corpse creatures from Chinese folklore], diviners, and elves right alongside Eurasians, Filipinos, Arabs—all the ones who had to tick a special box and fill something in when they entered the National Service.”
City of Others is clearly the first in a series where we spend a lot of the book meeting new characters and being introduced to the larger context of magical Singapore. The city has several powerful factions of Others that vie for influence, and there’s even a shadowy private organization trying to build technology with magic taken from Others. Because we’re being introduced to so many new characters and settings, the narrative can feel a bit like it’s dragging at times. But it was an amusing first book, and I’ll be curious about how Poon continues to build out this world.
Highlights:
- Fun, magical Singapore
- Bureaucratization of magic
- Queer characters
- Ghost cat
Nerd Coefficient: 7/10. Definitely enjoyable, but you’ll notice that it’s setting up for a longer series.
Reference: Poon, Jared. City of Others [Orbit, 2026].
POSTED BY: Christine D. Baker, historian and lover of SFF and mysteries. You can find her also writing reviews at Ancillary Review of Books or podcasting about classic scifi/fantasy at Hugo History. Come chat books with her on Bluesky @klaxoncomms.com.
