Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: geeky
  • Music: OK-Go, "Here It Goes Again."

6 awesome things about urban fantasy.

My pre-release countdown for A Local Habitation [Amazon]|[Mysterious Galaxy] continues. I'm six days out now. Books have been sighted all over the place (although still not in my home town, which is probably good for my overall level of twitchiness, if not for the local folks who want to buy them). And I've been thinking a lot about urban fantasy.

I've been thinking so much about urban fantasy, in fact, that it's today's countdown item. So there.

6 Awesome Things About Urban Fantasy.

6. Because urban fantasy is a relatively new genre, there's a lot of flexibility for making up rules as you go along. No one says "oh, this book was terrible because they didn't all meet up in a bar and there was no quest for the magical wing-diddy of Macguffindonia." There's an insane amount of freedom in urban fantasy.

5. Because urban fantasy in an incredibly old genre that's just making its reappearance, there are centuries of tradition to draw on. Seem like a contradiction? It's not. As I've said many times, we are the children of Lily Fair, and we are carrying on the traditions of our fairy tale ancestors. There are monsters in those woods.

4. Urban fantasy gives its authors the freedom to play with creatures from both sides of the divide between "fantasy" and "horror." You can have pixies and werewolves, if that's what makes you happy, and nobody gets to tell you different. It's awesome.

3. The modern/pseudo-modern settings of most urban fantasies make it easier to build engrossing and detailed non-human societies, without needing to first introduce your readers to a whole new reality. That creates an illusionary accessibility that reveals itself only when it's too late to escape. Mwahahaha.

2. The scope of urban fantasy means that it really does contain something for everybody. Maybe you don't like my work. That's fine. Kelley Armstrong is more horror, and Kim Harrison is more sexy, and Anton Strout is more funny. We can find you a match!

1. All the ass-kicking heroines. Naturally.
Tags: a local habitation, busy busy busy, contemplation, making lists, toby daye
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  • 48 comments

ravenclawed

February 24 2010, 15:50:58 UTC 7 years ago

1. All the ass-kicking heroines. Naturally.

I'm new to urban fantasy -- are the protagonists usually female?

tikiera

February 24 2010, 16:33:17 UTC 7 years ago

An truly awe-inspiring number of ones are... and they are diverse lot.

U

beccastareyes

February 24 2010, 16:34:04 UTC 7 years ago

It depends. I'd say that there are a lot of female protagonists, but they tend to be in more romance-biplot* books than male urban fantasy protagonists**. Urban fantasy overlaps a lot with the 'paranormal romance' subgenre, and I'm not entirely sure there is a distinct line. OTOH, having romance authors writing fantasy as well does make for more female characters, since romance is a typically woman-dominated space.

* Here distinguished as 'books in which the heroine's romantic interest/relationship is as pressing as whatever outside agency is driving the plot'.

** Though this is open to biases. If I had read the first two-three books about Harriet Dresden, Wizard for Hire, who had a starting relationship with Samuel Rodriguez, tabloid reporter trying to Find the Truth and UST with Karl Murphy, cop and head of Weird Cases that Tend to Be Magical, I might have put them into this group, and maybe stop reading... and then not find out that Dresden and Rodriguez broke up and Dresden spends the next six books single.

shadowkitty

February 24 2010, 17:02:33 UTC 7 years ago

Now I really want to read about the adventures of Harriet Dresden :(

nimitzbrood

February 24 2010, 17:06:56 UTC 7 years ago

It's not just you... :-(

beccastareyes

February 24 2010, 17:06:56 UTC 7 years ago

It would be an interesting alternate universe.

seanan_mcguire

February 24 2010, 18:23:46 UTC 7 years ago Edited:  February 24 2010, 18:23:54 UTC

There's a thin line, but it's becoming easier to find the more that you read in both genres. I'm hoping it'll continue to become more distinct, because it's possible to love both, but you shouldn't judge one by the standards of the other.

beccastareyes

February 24 2010, 21:11:43 UTC 7 years ago

Yeah. Some of my problem is that with the exception of Toby and Marla Mason, it seems to be 'men are in urban fantasy, women are in paranormal romance', when I want a more even split in the genders between genres. And that if, as you said, I go in expecting one and getting the other, I get disappointed.

seanan_mcguire

February 28 2010, 02:36:11 UTC 7 years ago

Yeah. It's difficult to know where to draw the line, and that makes it hard to get the right books to the right readers, sometimes.

beccastareyes

February 28 2010, 02:51:22 UTC 7 years ago

At least I've gotten good enough to realize when it's not the book, it's my expectations. It means if I leave a review on Goodreads or something, I can say that and try to sort out what parts was just 'not the book for me' versus 'this is a bad book'.

seanan_mcguire

February 24 2010, 18:22:46 UTC 7 years ago

Quite frequently, yes.