In Defence of Urban Fantasy

When Bastard Books did a series of guest posts discussing urban fantasy I was interested. However i was a little surprised by what was actually written. The guest posters by their own admission are for the most part not urban fantasy readers.

They give the impression that they don’t really like the genre, and they have their reasons. One was due to lack of ‘epicness’ in urban fantasy books, and I’ll cover that later. The other reasons tend to be the proliferation of sexually explicit storylines and lurid covers. The issue of highly traditional relationships to the exclusion of non-traditional pairings was also highlighted.

I was initially going to let the cover thing pass, because it’s something the genre tends to be known for, and I’ve even made jokes about it myself. I have looked at some covers and wondered if the books themselves are set in temperate climes, which is why the people on the covers wear so little clothing. Then I actually began to think about it and realized that it’s a myth. Urban fantasy by and large doesn’t favour those sort of covers, paranormal romance does.

People don’t seem to make a distinction between the two, and it needs to be made. Paranormal romance, and romance in this context generally stands for sex, is an offshoot of the romance genre itself. The main difference being that it features vampires and werewolves. It is true that booksellers do shelve the two; paranormal romance and urban fantasy together and there are examples of crossover, but they are definitely separate genres with their own readerships and marketing channels.

I first discovered what is recognized as urban fantasy these days the same way as many others via Laurell K Hamilton’s Anita Blake. I liked the Anita Blake books to begin with. Anita was a tough talking, hard-edged necromancer who was hell bent on vengeance against vampires and she didn’t care about the laws that protected them in the world Hamilton created for her heroine to operate in. At some point the sex became more important than the story and I gave up the series; it’s still going. The Anita Blake series created their own subgenre; vampire porn.

I stayed away from the genre for some time after that, but picked up a book by Simon Green called Nightside. It was okay, but not outstanding. While reading reviews for it I noticed people referencing the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, so sought out the first book in the series; Storm Front.

I began an ongoing love affair with the Dresdens, and I still enjoy them immensely. Butcher doesn’t shy away from sex, but he doesn’t highlight it. It isn’t the focus of the books, the story arc and Harry Dresden’s interpersonal relationships are.

It wasn’t until I saw Seanan McGuire win the John W. Campbell award at Worldcon 2010, the first urban fantasy author to do so, that I investigated the genre seriously. Rosemary and Rue, the first of Seanan’s Toby Daye books was a revelation. No vampires or werewolves and a really interesting heroine and world. From that point on I’ve sought out concepts within the genre that are different. Faeries, like those in the Toby Dayes, are becoming more and more popular.

Now comes the cover criticism. Once I read it I initially agreed with it, then thought hang on, that’s not right. Chris McGrath’s Dresden and Toby covers never have what is thought of as a typical urban fantasy cover. They’re always fully clothed and often in fairly dark settings, the one possible exception was One Salt Sea and as Toby was a mermaid at the time I think we can let that one pass.

There’s Ben Aaronovitch’s Folly books on which the UK covers display road maps, and what’s in between them isn’t what people think of as urban fantasy either. With a bi racial protagonist and African river goddesses.

I started really looking at the covers after this and thinking about them and I was hard put to find the ones with a hard bodied woman wearing a midriff bearing tank top, posing in such a way that she shows off both her toned body and her collection of tattoos. They exist, and some of them are what I term as urban fantasy, but most are for paranormal romances.

Even a series that straddles the line between urban fantasy and paranormal romance like Charlotte Harris’ Sookie Stackhouses has never used a cover of that sort. The original US covers, which are still in circulation, are bright and almost cartoony in execution. The UK covers are generally a solid cover with a blood splash.

The issue of urban fantasy not being epic, well that perplexes me too. I’m yet to find an epic fantasy where the hero rides an animated dinosaur through a city scape, it happened in a Harry Dresden book, and Harry regularly saves the world, plus the actual scope of the books (it looks at tagging out around 20) is truly epic. Tanya Huff’s Enchantment Emporium had a dragon in it, and some very interesting non-traditional relationships. Atticus O’Sullivan, the 2,000 year old druid from Kevin Hearne’s Iron Druid series took on Norse Gods in one book of that. Laura Resnick’s fabulous Esther Diamond series is about a struggling actress who just happens to get herself into supernatural situations, they’re more comedic than anything and the covers are wonderfully whacky.

You’ve even got books like A. Lee Martinez’s Gil’s All-Fright Diner and Catherine Jinks’ Reformed Vampire Support Group which take the tropes of urban fantasy and turn them on their heads.

I haven’t yet even covered Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate which took steam punk added vampires and werewolves, a wonderfully strong heroine and gave us what Jane Austen might have produced if she’d ever decided to dabble in urban fantasy.

Have a look around with eyes and mind wide open and you may find yourself pleasantly surprised.

The Dirty Streets of Heaven by Tad Williams

Tad Williams is one of the most versatile authors I’ve encountered. From his Tolkienesque epic fantasy trilogy Memory, Sorrow and Thorn to  the cyberpunk tetralogy Otherland, he rarely visits the same territory twice. One of my favourite books ever is Williams’ standalone fantasy The War of the Flowers. I’ve been gradually reading more and more urban fantasy, so I was very happy to hear that Tad Williams had cast his eye in that direction with The Dirty Streets of Heaven.

Urban fantasy these days tends to be the province of vampires and werewolves, although zombies and faeries are starting to claim the territory. Another supernatural creature gaining popularity are angels. That’s where Tad Williams cast his line with The Dirty Streets of Heaven. Bobby Dollar is an earthbound angel who probably has more in common with Phillip Marlowe than he does with Gabriel or Michael. He swears and he drinks, he takes the Lord’s name in vain. Bobby’s job is to guide souls from death, through their initial afterlife trial, and if they pass he sees them off to Heaven.

Things are going relatively smoothly for Bobby and his partner Sam, they seem to win more souls than they lose, and then they’re saddled with an eager young beaver from Records who they nickname Clarence (his real angel name is Haraheliel), not long after they attend the death of a philanthropist and while they’ve got a body the soul is missing.

If Bobby can’t find out what happened then the futures of both Heaven and Hell are at stake, that’s if Bobby can keep himself alive long enough to complete his investigation.

Tad Williams generally likes a lot of room in his books to set things up, possibly why he usually writes epics that are about the same size and weight as your average housebrick. Urban fantasy audiences don’t really go for this and they also tend to like their stories episodic, so that they at least get some sense of closure by the end of the book.  For a Tad Williams book The Dirty Streets of Heaven is really fast paced and still maintains excellent character development and back story mixed in with some high octane action.

Sometimes with popular fiction in a particular sub genre you can get some stereotyping, this wasn’t the case here. Even the peripheral characters were well drawn. I was particularly impressed with Bobby’s ‘love interest’ Casimira, the Countess of the Cold Hands.

One thing that was handled both with class and humour was the depiction of Heaven and the descriptions of the angels. It would have been very easy to inadvertently offend people with this, but it never happened, and I really liked the ideas behind it.

I couldn’t shake the image of Bobby I had in my head as actor Misha Collins. I know this is because Misha Collins plays earthbound angel Castiel in the TV series Supernatural, this is also further evidence of the growing popularity of angels in modern urban fantasy. The fact that the book reads largely like a bit of a whodunit also lends itself to a cinematic view in my head.

The Dirty Streets of Heaven was really well done and a breath of fresh air in the genre. I’m definitely a fan and the good news is that there are two further Bobby Dollar books planned for the future. If they’re anywhere near the quality of The Dirty Streets of Heaven then this fallen angel has a long and successful career ahead of him.

Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm

Megan Lindholm is better known to readers as Robin Hobb, the author of a number of much loved and highly successful fantasy series set in the Six Duchies. Before adopting the pen name she wrote under part of her real name, which is Megan Lindholm.

I’d read some of Robin Hobb’s books, and while not as enamoured of them as many are I was still interested to see what the work she wrote prior to the Farseer trilogy stacked up against the later and better known books. Another intriguing thing was that Wizard of the Pigeons is classified as urban fantasy.

It came out in 1986, which was almost before there was a subsection classified as urban fantasy, I think at that stage it was still being called contemporary fantasy. It shows how the subgenre has changed since those days, too. No vampires and werewolves in Wizard of the Pigeons, what we have is a homeless man called Wizard who may or may not be able to perform acts of magic, and is battling to keep his home city of Seattle safe from evil, and trying to use his powers to make a difference in the lives of ordinary people, often those who are the most defenceless members of society.

Wizard isn’t the only one of his kind in Seattle, there’s Rasputin and Euripides, and the mysterious woman who found them and brought them together; Cassie. The book follows Wizard as he wanders through Seattle living his hand to mouth existence. Along the way readers meet Rasputin, Euripides and Cassie, as well as the waitress Lynda, who could bring Wizard’s life crashing down about his ears. Interspersed with the narrative are snatches of Seattle’s history as a frontier and goldrush town, as well as Wizard’s past as a Vietnam war veteran, who has tried to escape what he did during that conflict initially through drugs and alcohol and now as a pigeon fancying wizard.

I thought the sections dealing with Seattle’s history were some of the most interesting and best written in the book, and they were something I thoroughly enjoyed. It seems that a number of speculative fiction writers live in Washington state, and Lindholm researched her home city thoroughly to write this book.

Even if I hadn’t known that Megan Lindholm and Robin Hobb were the same person I could see a couple of themes that run through both works. A connection to nature and things not being what they seem at first look. I’ve also found a lot of the Six Duchies work depressing and devoid of hope, that’s something that runs through Wizard of the Pigeons, although it does end on a hopeful note.

It was a quick read, but not an easy one as such, due to me finding it fairly heavy and rather miserable. I also never bought the character of Lynda as being particularly well written, she was a bit of a walking collection of clichés. The disaffected war veteran, seeking escape from the reality of his life is a well trodden path, too. It’s been something that has become increasingly common in urban fantasy since Wizard of the Pigeons made it’s appearance.

I’ve read a number of works in a similar vein, but they haven’t been particularly memorable, because I can’t recall the titles or the authors at present. One book that I was reminded of while reading Wizard of the Pigeons was Jo Walton’s Hugo Award winning Among Others, the protagonist of that is a young girl who believes she sees fairies and that magic works, but the audience is left wondering whether it’s real or only in her imagination, similar to how I was never quite sure if a lot of what happened to Wizard really did happen the way it seemed to, or the readers saw it that way because it was filtered through his perspective.

Right Hand Magic by Nancy A. Collins

Right Hand Magic by Nancy A. Collins is another entry in the urban fantasy market. It has paranormal romance elements as well as urban fantasy, but only rarely strays into paranormal romance territory and the human protagonist’s love interest is not a werewolf or a vampire (werewolves do make an appearance, but no vampires as yet), but a magical race called Kymerans.

What attracted me to the book, normally any mention of paranormal romance is enough to steer me in the opposite direction, was the premise that there is a borough in Manhattan which is specifically there for magical races to live in, Golgotham, the setting of Right Hand Magic, is not unlike Fabletown in the comic book series Fables, one main difference being that no one knows Fabletown exists, whereas Golgotham is actually tourist attraction. Where else can you see leprechauns rubbing shoulders with dryads or take a old fashioned cab ride from a genuine centaur?

The fact that very few humans live in Golgotham is largely what attracts trust fund baby and metal sculptress Tate to the area. She rents a room in a house owned by an attractive Kymeran named Hexe, who practises a beneficial form of magic known as right hand, as opposed to the left hand kind which puts curses and the like on unsuspecting people. From the moment Hexe appears at the door to answer Tate he has love interest written all over him and that’s the way it goes, but along the way to romance for Tate and Hexe there’s the bust up of an illegal fighting ring run by a vicious and unscrupulous Kymeran mob boss. The finale to that is a hoot with the mob bosses crew going head to head with shapeshifters, demons and a motorcycle gang whose membership is composed of valkyries and amazons.

It’s a fun read, and while the excursions into paranormal romance territory were at times excruciating they were only mildly painful and not explicit, and they were also thankfully rare. The concepts in Left Hand Magic were great, there’s a lot to like about it. Nancy Collins is a little heavy on the exposition early on and at times I felt like I was reading a vistors guide to Golgotham rather than a novel. This does settle down about halfway through and the story starts to take shape, rather than meander on as it was before that point. This also lets readers get to know the three main characters of Tate, Hexe and the runaway shapeshifter or werecat Lukas. Of the three I tended to like Lukas the most, he was the most believable. Hexe was a little too good to be true and tate vacillated between being clueless and the tough tattooed butt kicker that populates many urban fantasy and paranormal romance novels.

It’s pretty disposable fiction, but it was enjoyable and easy to read. I’ve got the sequel (Left Hand Magic) ready to go and I can see this series becoming a bit of a guilty pleasure for me, because I do love the way it deals with mythical races. The dwarves subway and their kingdom directly under the streets of New York was a delight.

The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff

Tanya Huff, the author of the The Enchantment Emporium, is a veteran writer (published since the late 1980’s) has experienced success in the Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance (her Blood Books was turned into the TV show Blood Ties) alternate world fantasy and even SF genres over her career.

The Enchantment Emporium finds her clearly back in Urban Fantasy territory. Alysha ‘Allie’ Gale is one of the younger members of the prolific, insular and highly powerful Gale family (none of the girls are ever named Dorothy). The opening of the book finds her jobless and without focus. That is until she receives a letter from her Gran (Catherine Gale) saying that the older lady has died and left her shop (the emporium of the title) in Calgary to Allie. Allie’s multitude of meddling aunties, especially the intimdiating and formidable Auntie Jane, are none too happy that the irresponsible Catherine (Gran isn’t held in high regard by the rest of the clan) has taken action that will give Allie an excuse to leave the bosom of the family, they’re based in rural Ontario. However they do know that they can’t stop Allie from leaving, and they have no intention of just letting her get on with her life without their influence, they’ll be phoning regularly and may even visit from time to time. There’s also nothing to stop them from sending some of the families younger members to Calgary to ‘spy’ on Allie.

Right from the time Allie arrives in Calgary, and looks around the shop, she has suspicions that her Gran is not dead and there’s a mystery to be solved here. Before she can really even find her feet she’s adopted a leprechaun, managed to trap a monkey paw and formed a sarcastic relationship with the shop’s magic mirror. Favourite cousin; the wild and highly amusing musician Charlie, also drops in for a visit, although she acts to me, and everyone else, like she’s staying for quite a while.

As Allie probes deeper into the mystery that was her grandmother she becomes involved with a charming reporter, who has an interesting sideline as a magical sniper for a malevolent sorcerer, and realises that the dragon in Calgary may have something to do with her Gran’s disappearance. Auntie Jane tells her great niece: ‘Dragons are not this family’s business.’
Allie counters with ‘Unless one ate Gran.’
‘Yes, unless one ate your grandmother.’ Auntie Jane sighs resignedly.
To get herself and everyone near and dear to her out of this Allie is going to need every member of her high powered family she can get and will have to call on powers she never knew she had.

I had a ball reading The Enchantment Emporium, and although the book is largely laying the groundwork for the concept and a series (the sequel The Wild Ways, has just come out and as that is from Charlie’s point of view; one of my favourite characters from the opener, it should be a hoot) it never really flags. There’s enough weight behind the concepts and the tension is good, which stops it from straying too far into light and fluffy territory. The ideas are fun and interesting, the characters are engaging and appealing as well as being multifaceted with depth. One small quibble there, I got very early on that Allie’s best friend and adopted Gale; Michael, was a big guy, I didn’t need it spelled out nearly every time the character was mentioned. The dialogue between the characters flows and it snap, crackle and pops with plenty of pop culture references as any self respecting Urban Fantasy book should. I’m also in total agreement that Sci-Fi cancelling The Dresden Files was a very bad thing.

I hope the series gets the attention and popularity it deserves because I’d like to learn more about the Gales, and I think The Enchantment Emporium has only just scratched the surface.