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KellHound posted:So question, where is the line to you between Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance? Where would something like Buffy fall? There is a serious plot there that's not romance but the romance is important. What about Seanan McGuire's stuff? She was mentioned above has having low key romance but usually there is mystery to be solved. Also do you have stats? Cause most of the signing I've seem pretty even. And a lot editors/publishers/authors I've talked to say the fanbase usually relates to the gender divid of the cast. So like the books you are declaring 100% urban fantasy might be mostly dudes it's probably more like 60/40 rather than a HUGE tip one way or the other. I haven't read anything by McGuire, so I can't comment there, but Buffy falls firmly into Urban Fantasy. When you get down to brass tacks, it's simply a matter of what the story is about. Buffy is about, well, Buffy. It's an adventure serial. She's The Slayer, and she kills the poo poo outta vampires for the betterment of mankind. More stuff happens, obviously, but if you took all of the romance out of Buffy the core of the narrative is still there. As I mentioned above, in Romance the relationship is the story. If it's a Romance novel, you cannot remove the relationship and still have a functioning narrative. If you stripped the love story out of The Notebook, for example, you wouldn't have a lot leftover afterward. And no, I have no stats on hand, but I don't think it's reaching to say that most consumers of Urban Fantasy are men. You mention a 60/40 split, which is a clear majority, and I'd wager the divide is a fair bit bigger than even that. In any case, clearly not all the readers are male, and the issue I'm talking about relates directly to your gripe. A lot of UF and PR both contain some pretty awful tropes, but they exist largely because of poor writing quality. As Mars4523 points out, there are at least a handful of example in UF or authors who treat women with a modicum of respect and, presumably, there are some PR books in existence where the male love interest is merely a literal monster, rather than a figurative one.
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Mar 3, 2016 10:53
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Paragon8 posted:I think it's easy to get into a pedantic rabbit hole contrasting urban fantasy and paranormal romance. The borders between the two overlap hugely for marketing purposes especially now when physical retail space isn't as important. I think the temptation for a lot of male readers is that anything that has a lady protagonist hooking up with a creature is paranormal romance which is unfair. There is a lot of overlap, no question. Genres and especially sub-genres are always nebulous things at best. I'd also agree that there is a unfair bias on the part of male readers to shy away from anything categorized as romance.
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Mar 3, 2016 11:03
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Skippy McPants posted:You mention a 60/40 split, which is a clear majority, and I'd wager the divide is a fair bit bigger than even that. As someone who writes urban fantasy and keeps up with what's going on in the industry and hits a lot of conventions and signings, I think you would lose that wager. Especially if you are saying Buffy falls in the Urban Fantasy side of the line. I think Paragon8 is probably right in that Dresden is the outlier, and it is probably the other way around.
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Mar 3, 2016 11:43
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anilEhilated posted:Particularly impressive by genre standards since she's both the hero's girlfriend AND a succubus. Schaefer generally uses the character pretty well, first book aside. Yeah, in the hands of practically anybody else (including most female authors) she'd be a dubious character at best but instead she's just a terrifying badass who rescues the main character more than ever needing to be rescued beyond the one time in the first book where he simply gave her the opportunity to rescue herself.
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Mar 3, 2016 11:51
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KellHound posted:As someone who writes urban fantasy and keeps up with what's going on in the industry and hits a lot of conventions and signings, I think you would lose that wager. Especially if you are saying Buffy falls in the Urban Fantasy side of the line. I think Paragon8 is probably right in that Dresden is the outlier, and it is probably the other way around. Fair enough. I'm willing to concede the point since my main issue is with the lovely, sexist cliches that pervade, well, I was going to say genre fiction, but I think I can just go ahead and say fiction in general and non-fiction too I guess... Well, now I'm depressed!
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Mar 3, 2016 12:05
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Patricia Briggs is as far as I can go on the amount of romance. The female leads are the true leads, driving the story and the action. The male romantic partners are not just for sexy time and not just for big man rescue me crap. But, the romance piece is there, can be intrusive, but really not terrible. It's for me a good example of the limit for the romance part.
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Mar 3, 2016 14:46
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How are Kim Harrison's Hollows books on the romance/urban fantasy divide (or quality wise in general)? I haven't read any of them, but the western pun titles intrigue me.
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Mar 3, 2016 15:02
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Gilok posted:How are Kim Harrison's Hollows books on the romance/urban fantasy divide (or quality wise in general)? I haven't read any of them, but the western pun titles intrigue me. They're alright, but more on the "romance" side.
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Mar 3, 2016 15:33
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Gilok posted:How are Kim Harrison's Hollows books on the romance/urban fantasy divide (or quality wise in general)? I haven't read any of them, but the western pun titles intrigue me. I like the pixies and how they swear using Tinks name.
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Mar 3, 2016 16:42
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Gilok posted:How are Kim Harrison's Hollows books on the romance/urban fantasy divide (or quality wise in general)? I haven't read any of them, but the western pun titles intrigue me. First book is interesting but the quality goes downhill from there. I think I got to book 10 because I am a masochist hoping things would get better
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Mar 3, 2016 17:00
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I have a rule against books that feature flowery descriptions of someone "entering" someone else, which eliminates a lot of paranormal romance. The Hollows books break that rule a couple times. There's even a page-long description in one of the books about how witch vagina muscles constrict during sex to make sure the smaller-than-human penis of the male witch stays inside long enough to get the female witch pregnant.
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Mar 3, 2016 17:23
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Sounds like quality reading.
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Mar 3, 2016 19:10
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KellHound posted:Also, it's very frustrating being a lady that likes urban fantasy but not romance. Seems like I got to flip a coin and pick between some ladies in probably rapey romance or ladies in skippy outfits that are there to get fridge. You might like This Case is Gonna Kill Me (by Phillippa Bornikova[1]), and the sequel. About a young lawyer who gets a job at a vampire law firm. There's romance, but it's low key, and not in the sequel One of those underappreciated urban fantasies. [1] Real name Snodgrass
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Mar 3, 2016 21:29
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Speaking of law and undead, you might enjoy Max Gladstone's stuff. He's pretty good about powerful female characters too.
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Mar 3, 2016 21:34
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Nemo posted:I have a rule against books that feature flowery descriptions of someone "entering" someone else, which eliminates a lot of paranormal romance. The Hollows books break that rule a couple times.  uh ok then. I'm...just gonna go back to reading this Matthew Swift book then.
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Mar 4, 2016 00:26
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cultureulterior posted:You might like This Case is Gonna Kill Me (by Phillippa Bornikova[1]), and the sequel. About a young lawyer who gets a job at a vampire law firm. There's romance, but it's low key, and not in the sequel One of those underappreciated urban fantasies. Cool! I'll check it out!  Do you know if it has an audiobook? I usually audiobook it while working on my next book.
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Mar 4, 2016 05:22
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Nemo posted:I have a rule against books that feature flowery descriptions of someone "entering" someone else, which eliminates a lot of paranormal romance. The Hollows books break that rule a couple times. So they went to the Frank Herbert school of writing sex scenes eh?
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Mar 4, 2016 15:49
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KellHound posted:Cool! I'll check it out! Don't know, sorry. I can't stand them, personally. Another underappreciated urban fantasy I'm just now rereading is John Lambshead's Wolf in Shadow, which keeps feeling like it was written to the generic urban fantasy style by a grumpy old man, but still works quite well.
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Mar 4, 2016 21:50
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I'm listening to Skin Game and A) God the sex scene with dream Murphy before she blows his brains out was like 8 minutes long and a lovely mix of eye roll inducing and uncomfortable. B) I forgot how much I enjoy Id-Harry. He's the only person who can out-Harry Harry in terms of mouthiness.
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Mar 5, 2016 01:05
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Magres posted:I'm listening to Skin Game and It's hard to out mouth someone who knows literally everything about you on a level beyond your own understanding, hah. Id Harry does rule though.
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Mar 5, 2016 02:50
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Found another pretty good UF series - Domino Finn's Dead Man and Shadow Play It's a real solid series so far. It's about a Cuban-American from Miami sort of jack-of-all-trades magician who dabbles shallowly in voodoo, shadow magic, necromancy, black magic, etc - a loose mishmash of the magical traditions that came to Florida with immigrants, and ends up getting caught up in something way over his head and is ritually murdered. He wakes up inexplicably ten years later in a dumpster, with most of his family dead, and his friends and fiance (never having been thrilled with him dabbling in black magic) having already grieved and moved on without him and not exactly happy with the violence and destruction he's brought back with him, and a whole lot of angry Cuban gangsters who really want him to go back to being dead. It's considerably better than I thought it'd be, and the twist/cliffhanger at the end of Shadow Play completely blindsided me and makes having to wait for the next book pretty irritating. Wolpertinger fucked around with this message at 12:05 on Mar 12, 2016 |
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Mar 12, 2016 12:01
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The Girl With Ghost Eyes is joyless and plodding. It reminded me of Vermillion and not just in the obvious way. Avoid.
Megazver fucked around with this message at 12:16 on Mar 12, 2016 |
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Mar 12, 2016 12:05
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Not exactly new, but I just finished Ian Tregillis' Something More than Night and it's pretty fantastic. If you're aching for urban fantasy that's a bit cleverer than standard magical detectives blowing poo poo up, you should take a look at that.
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Mar 12, 2016 12:29
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anilEhilated posted:Speaking of law and undead, you might enjoy Max Gladstone's stuff. He's pretty good about powerful female characters too. I just started reading Three Parts Dead the other day and I am very interested to see where it's going. The two main characters are women of color and they're great.
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Mar 12, 2016 17:02
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http://io9.gizmodo.com/audiences-are-finally-ready-to-root-for-a-damaged-viol-1764327161 Huh. We'll see, I suppose. I do find that people that complain about their 'unlikeable' characters often don't get what people like about the anti-heroes they do like. Megazver fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Mar 12, 2016 |
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Mar 12, 2016 17:57
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Megazver posted:http://io9.gizmodo.com/audiences-are-finally-ready-to-root-for-a-damaged-viol-1764327161
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Mar 12, 2016 18:19
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Mars4523 posted:That person is by no means the first person to write a book starting a female antihero. Yeah, no poo poo. But I suppose everyone needs a selling point.
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Mar 12, 2016 18:20
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Megazver posted:http://io9.gizmodo.com/audiences-are-finally-ready-to-root-for-a-damaged-viol-1764327161 I guess she's got down the 'unlikeable' part, but I wouldn't really want to read about a male main character who bludgeons someone in the head with a cane over a snide insult either. Maybe it's more understandable in context, but still.
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Mar 13, 2016 12:56
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Magres posted:Also thinking about the age of Wizards really makes me think that an actual Wizards' Council like in Dresden files would be filled with terrifying amounts of racism. I totally get why Butcher hasn't written anything like that in, but I would expect "we should go back to the good old days before Lincoln freed the slaves" levels of It's hard to imagine since nobody has ever lived to be 300 or more, but perhaps wizards mental plasticity is greater and remains for longer than mortals, so they change with the times more easily rather than get bogged down at where they where in their 30-40s for the remainder of their lives. Perhaps living that long makes you less racist than more racist?
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Mar 15, 2016 07:42
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Why get all worked about the slightly different humans when you have faeries and vampires to hate?
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Mar 15, 2016 10:10
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And all the disdain for the muggles.
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Mar 15, 2016 10:20
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One thing you need to remember about the White Council is that it isn't a white council, even though that's mostly what Butcher shows.. It's a worldwide organization with all sorts of members, and it has been for hundreds of years. I'd honestly expect it to be among the least racist of organizations.
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Mar 15, 2016 10:38
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McCoy calls one of the other members of the council "Injun Joe". Pretty racist.
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Mar 15, 2016 11:29
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Well, most of the members of the inner council are pretty old (300+ years), they are literally living relics from the past, and probably not exactly progressive thinking types.
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Mar 15, 2016 11:35
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On the other hand when you have vampires and elves running around maybe you're less inclined to project intolerance onto other humans.
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Mar 15, 2016 11:46
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It's the same approach that Sci-Fi takes, where humanity has an easy time getting along because now they've got green people to hate on. Not entirely implausible, but I think it's a shame that more fictional works with long-lived characters often fail to address the friction caused by shifting cultural norms. Even in real life, you see the tension created by the standards and prejudices older generations but what happens when those people don't simply die off? How would you cope with someone who was alive during the height of Rome and owned slaves, hell, how would they cope with it? What about the Antebellum South? How far back would something have to happen for "that's how it was then" to be an excuse; is it ever an excuse? One of my favorite things about Gaiman's Sandman is that you get to see a character struggle with that dissonance and eventually come apart at the seams because he's unable to reconcile with that past. Another example that jumps to mind is Paarthurnax in Skyrim. The Blades want you to kill him for crimes that he unquestionably committed, but that took place eons in the past and he's for which he's spent centuries atoning. How do you apply codes of justice and morality to deeds that occurred before those edicts event existed? Skippy McPants fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Mar 15, 2016 |
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Mar 15, 2016 11:56
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jivjov posted:McCoy calls one of the other members of the council "Injun Joe". Pretty racist. I might just be rationalising it but isn't there an exchange which implies this to be a sort of thing between them and not just anybody gets to call him Injun Joe?
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Mar 15, 2016 13:34
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It took me close to 5 years to get caught up with Dresden Files, reading 2-3 books at a time whenever I felt like it but I finally did it. I have to say I really liked the last 3 or 4 books a lot more then the rest when there was a lot more sort of permanence in what happened and carried over to the next, instead of it just being mostly an isolated case. I was pleasantly surprised Dresden didn't manage to deus ex machina himself out of the contract with Mab which i was expecting.
Demicol fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Mar 15, 2016 |
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Mar 15, 2016 13:37
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It certainly wasn't for lack of trying!
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Mar 15, 2016 14:06
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I'm feeling pretty good today. My wife said she'd try the first Dresden novel (she'd let me pick which one, since I gave her the same warnings about the first two books I've read in here). I decided to go ahead and start her with Storm Front, because it's the best introduction to the characters and the world, even if it's issues are obvious. She finished it last night, said she really enjoyed it, and asked, "Okay, what's next?" I mean, she's read the Harry Potter books several times, so the pitch of, "Since you like books about wizards in modern times named Harry, this is sort of like that, only if he grew up, became a PI, and was kind of an rear end in a top hat." was a pretty easy sell on her. But I'm going to take this opportunity to re-read the series with her. We're jumping to Grave Peril, though. Don't judge me. I really didn't like Fool Moon, and I think the issues I had with the book might turn her off the franchise entirely (I went into it earlier in the thread, but I think that book has some serious issues with the way it treats it's female characters). And I know she'll love the characters of Michael, Charity, and Thomas, so the sooner we get to them the better. And I found summarizing the important parts of Fool Moon took even less time than I thought it would. I've gotten a couple people reading the series now, and I've found the hardest part is getting them to even try. But once they start, they love it.
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