I am reading The Shadow Of The Lion by Mercedes Lackey, Eric Flint & Dave Freer right now. I’m enjoying it (although I think it could be a little shorter than it’s 900+ pages.) The book takes place in an alternate reality in a Venice, a 16th century Venice, that has magic, monsters, priests and gods. It’s pretty good – definitely a fantasy novel with a lot of character development. Speaking of character development, it reminds me a lot of one of my top favorite (like probably top ten books of all time), Angel with the Sword by C.J. Cherryh. They both have lots of character types in common. To start with they both take place in a city riddled with canals with an abundent underlife. Both have a female character who has her own boat that she inherited from her very strong, single mom whom we never meet. Both canalers fall in love with a mysterious blond guy who is working for high class families. Both books have two brothers who were born to one of the high class families but are in hiding. Both have two, maybe lesbian, female singers/musicians. Both have swamps where scary people live but you can hide. And so on. They are very different books but if you enjoy one, you will probably enjoy the other one because the worlds and character types are similar.