China Miéville: Kraken

Kraken is an urban-fantasy page turner about eschatological cults and magician gang-bosses in modern London. It is well made, always interesting and, when its not blood-soakedly gruesome, quite funny. I would be stumped to translate the many word-plays that are used to explain some mechanics of magic, but this kind of language together with the treatment of London as an arcane playground/ war zone create the right atmosphere for this kind of tale. I think that true Londoners might find it even more amusing. So, it's a good read: Light enough for a train journey, but with enough substance to keep you reading at home.

But while it feigns to be a fantasy novel about religion, magic and armageddonim (that's the plural of armageddon), it really is about how to structure and present an awesome Unknown Armies campaign. Someone starting with Unknown Armies (or, to a lesser extent, Witchcraft, or Over the Edge, or Mage) will find out how magic could hide in the everyday, how a normal person could stumble into the occult underground, how the magical economy works and how everybody is kept in line and in the dark (or not). The development of the protagonist could be used as a showcase for a PC's journey from the mundane to magical mastery and might enable new players to ease into the world-construct of Unknown Armies.
The longtime game master will find reams of inspiration. Here are jovial malevolent forces, surreally terrible fates, literally tens of cults (and their respective armageddonim), interesting characters and magic tricks to last you a long time. If you want to make London the setting of your supernatural campaign, this novel is indispensable. Read it and From Hell back to back and you are set. I will steal from this book for years to come.