"Grym City became our dominion, where we monsters reveled in transforming it into the second largest metropolis in Massachusetts, a sprawling labyrinth of shadows and decay. The humans had surely hoped we would turn it into a terrifying, perilous wasteland, affirming their deepest fears. We had done just that, with a relish that made their nightmares seem tame."
The Setting
Grym City is America's first city governed entirely by monsters, located in Massachusetts (the second-largest city in the state within the series). Roughly a century and a half before the series begins, supernatural beings ("monsters") revealed themselves to the human world and were exiled to Grym City and other monster cities throughout the world by human authorities hoping isolation would either contain or destroy them. Instead, the city's monster residents built it into a sprawling, self-governed power center—beautiful, dangerous, and entirely its own world and soon they were integrated throughout the human world.
Grym City operates largely outside human law—governed instead by the powerful families, packs, and crime organizations that run its neighborhoods, businesses, and underworld. Human & monster authorities still exist at the margins (some establishments post "No Monsters" signs, and tension with human-supremacist extremists is an active plot thread in the series), but day-to-day power in Grym City belongs to monsterkind.
The Species
The series features a wide cast of supernatural beings living alongside (and largely separate from) each other, including:
Sirens — an especially feared and marginalized group; capable of controlling free will through their "song" or touch. Sirens are all born female; a male child of a siren is called a "siren's son" and is immune to the siren song.
Shifters — including werewolves (organized in packs under an Alpha), werebears, jaguar shifters, and other animal forms.
Fae — with their own hierarchy, magic, and a reputation for cunning and blood debts.
Witches — practitioners of a range of magic, from healing to darker arts.
Night Fiends — a vampire-adjacent species with pale skin, fangs, and reflective eyes.
Trolls, goblins, dragons, and more populate the wider city.
The Power Structure
Grym City runs on family power more than official government. The core dynasty across the series is the extended Silva/Insigne family, anchored by two intermarried crime-and-community empires:
The Silva Crime Family — led for decades by T.I. "The Jaguar" Silva, a jaguar shifter crime boss who built and ran much of Grym City's underground economy.
The Insigne wolf pack — led by Johnny "Bloodmoon" Insigne, Alpha of the city's dominant werewolf pack.