![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I'm not an avid reader of urban fantasy; it seems to be essentially fairies/werewolves/vampires/angels&demons/whatever are real and Our Hero/ine has to foil their evil plots. There's a thin boundary between UF and paranormal romance, at least in today's market. I enjoy the Dresden Files, however, despite Harry being a jerk. I'm fond of plots with politics and double- or triple-crossing and shadowy conspiracies, which the Dresden Files have in spades.
(When book 10 came out, Phil said it went in a direction that wasn't like the previous books, and I asked if it went into the whole Black Council stuff, and he looked a little surprised & said yes. I pick up on things like that. Well, and it seemed pretty obvious that that's where it was going, and it would have been a huge let-down if Butcher had dropped the thread of that. Huh, maybe I have a better grasp of structure than I thought.)
But at its core, urban fantasy is just fantasy set in a city. Does that make Swordspoint UF? And I guess also Shades of Milk and Honey? Hell, by that definition, much of the Nightrunners series is UF.
I guess, technically, "U8: Alexanderplatz" is also UF: it's fantasy set in a city (a very small part of a city). This kind of weirds me out. But at ReaderCon, people *really* liked it. (I don't know about the other readings, since I missed them because of Stupid Illness, but I've been told it got a good reception at NASFiC.) One person told me she thought it would make a good basis for a novel.
But I don't *write* UF... I write space opera and politics and splosions and selflessness and duty and strength in adversity.
But Berlin keeps calling me. I want to write something set in Berlin, with the city as a character. During the Mauerzeit. Or in the days of the Kaisers. Or ... I don't know. It's just so vague, you know? This feeling like there's a story I want to tell, but I haven't found it yet. Or it hasn't found me.
It'll most likely involve trains. Trains are awesome. And train stations that aren't in service anymore because they were bombed.
(When book 10 came out, Phil said it went in a direction that wasn't like the previous books, and I asked if it went into the whole Black Council stuff, and he looked a little surprised & said yes. I pick up on things like that. Well, and it seemed pretty obvious that that's where it was going, and it would have been a huge let-down if Butcher had dropped the thread of that. Huh, maybe I have a better grasp of structure than I thought.)
But at its core, urban fantasy is just fantasy set in a city. Does that make Swordspoint UF? And I guess also Shades of Milk and Honey? Hell, by that definition, much of the Nightrunners series is UF.
I guess, technically, "U8: Alexanderplatz" is also UF: it's fantasy set in a city (a very small part of a city). This kind of weirds me out. But at ReaderCon, people *really* liked it. (I don't know about the other readings, since I missed them because of Stupid Illness, but I've been told it got a good reception at NASFiC.) One person told me she thought it would make a good basis for a novel.
But I don't *write* UF... I write space opera and politics and splosions and selflessness and duty and strength in adversity.
But Berlin keeps calling me. I want to write something set in Berlin, with the city as a character. During the Mauerzeit. Or in the days of the Kaisers. Or ... I don't know. It's just so vague, you know? This feeling like there's a story I want to tell, but I haven't found it yet. Or it hasn't found me.
It'll most likely involve trains. Trains are awesome. And train stations that aren't in service anymore because they were bombed.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-07 08:30 pm (UTC)From:One thing that makes an "urban fantasy" book different from, say, a fantasy story that happens to involve a city, though, is that the story is heavily influenced by noir style, to the point where many of them - like the real early Dresden books, f'rex - are almost tipping into straight-up noir pastiche or neo-noir with fantasy trappings. I don't think it necessarily has to involve a "real" city to evoke that noir aesthetic, but most people find it easier to achieve that style if they're basing it in a familiar backdrop (either to themselves or to he genre; Dresden's Chicago counts either way). (PERDIDO STREET STATION is more "urban fantasy" in my mind than "New Weird" or whatever that means because it's pretty much neo-noir to the bone.) I think this is where the conflation with the "paranormal romance" genre comes from, because of the strong romantic/sexual streak that runs through noir storytelling that "urban fantasy" inevitably inherited, but that conflation really seems to miss the forest for the trees.