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Is there or can there be a well written urban fantasy series NOT set in London Discuss
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Jun 2, 2017 19:03
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Is there or can there be a well written urban fantasy series NOT set in London Guess that depends on your opinion of Butcher's writing
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Jun 2, 2017 19:06
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biracial bear for uncut posted:The short sample I read of (I assume) Matthew Swift's internal narrative voice made me roll my eyes at how far up his own rear end he is. I must admit, I stopped reading that first book when the author described a random wardrobe and its contents for a page. Hieronymous Alloy posted:Is there or can there be a well written urban fantasy series NOT set in London I like Twenty Palaces, gently caress y'all, yo.
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Jun 2, 2017 19:07
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Is there or can there be a well written urban fantasy series NOT set in London October Daye series is good and not set in London? I mean it depends on how pretentious we are going to get with the term "well written"
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Jun 2, 2017 19:16
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Is there or can there be a well written urban fantasy series NOT set in London Can it ever exist? Of course! Does it exist now? Depends on your definition of "well-written," I think. Do you mean high-quality prose, pacing, and plotting? If so, I don't think this exists right now. If you're more concerned with entertainment and excitement, then it totally exists.
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Jun 2, 2017 20:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Is there or can there be a well written urban fantasy series NOT set in London Depends by what you mean by well written.
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Jun 2, 2017 20:46
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:Is there or can there be a well written urban fantasy series NOT set in London Seems like there's a short list of cities for UF. London, New York, and Chicago. Sometimes Paris, sometimes Vegas. I'd kind of like to read some UF set somewhere different, like Moscow, or Beijing, or something, by someone that knew the culture and the cities. I'm surprised more UF authors don't just make a city up. It seems like a lot of work to research a city and you'll still probably gently caress it up unless you've lived there or know someone that has.
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Jun 2, 2017 20:47
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Seems like there's a short list of cities for UF. London, New York, and Chicago. Sometimes Paris, sometimes Vegas. I'd kind of like to read some UF set somewhere different, like Moscow, or Beijing, or something, by someone that knew the culture and the cities. A lot of them do, its just usually lumped in with standard fantasy instead of UF in yhat case. Like if we extend the definition to include non-real world settings you could probably add a bunch of stuff like Mistborn, Pedido St. Station etc. Adding fictional cities to earth has also largely fallen out of vogue.
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Jun 2, 2017 21:03
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ShinsoBEAM! posted:Depends by what you mean by well written. And indeed what you mean by urban fantasy.
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Jun 2, 2017 21:20
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Seems like there's a short list of cities for UF. London, New York, and Chicago. Sometimes Paris, sometimes Vegas. I'd kind of like to read some UF set somewhere different, like Moscow, or Beijing, or something, by someone that knew the culture and the cities. Eh, from what I understand, Butcher has hosed up Chicago on more than one occasion and no one really cares all that much.
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Jun 2, 2017 21:24
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biracial bear for uncut posted:The short sample I read of (I assume) Matthew Swift's internal narrative voice made me roll my eyes at how far up his own rear end he is. That's so far from how I read it, if it weren't for ConfusedUs agreeing with you, I'd just think you were crazy. The thing is, his internal voice is hosed up, deliberately, because of the dual identity thing, and hard to separate it from that device. But, it's a kind of book that is going to cause strong reactions, so in that sense it's no surprise some folks hate it. The Pax Arcana books are that way for me. They're just terrible, especially badly written and I can't get past that, but others really, really like them.
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Jun 2, 2017 22:03
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Zore posted:A lot of them do, its just usually lumped in with standard fantasy instead of UF in yhat case. Like if we extend the definition to include non-real world settings you could probably add a bunch of stuff like Mistborn, Pedido St. Station etc.
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Jun 2, 2017 22:18
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thrawn527 posted:Eh, from what I understand, Butcher has hosed up Chicago on more than one occasion and no one really cares all that much. He put a cottonmouth snake in the middle of Lake Michigan, and it bugs the hell out of me. You can find them in extreme southern Illinois, but Lake Michigan is over 350 miles beyond their most northern range. Timber rattlesnake would be plausible, possibly even a massasauga, but definitely not a cottonmouth. I know this makes me a giant nerd. OneTwentySix fucked around with this message at 22:59 on Jun 2, 2017 |
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Jun 2, 2017 22:55
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torgeaux posted:That's so far from how I read it, if it weren't for ConfusedUs agreeing with you, I'd just think you were crazy. The thing is, his internal voice is hosed up, deliberately, because of the dual identity thing, and hard to separate it from that device. Eh. I put Pax Arcana about on the same level as Sandman Slim as far as the actual writing goes. King of badly written UF stories goes to Twenty Palaces though, at least the Kindle editions. They're full of horrible typos and flat out wrong word usage that took me out of it every time I came across an error.
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Jun 2, 2017 23:10
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That's badly edited, not badly written.
anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Jun 2, 2017 |
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Jun 2, 2017 23:25
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OneTwentySix posted:He put a cottonmouth snake in the middle of Lake Michigan, and it bugs the hell out of me. You can find them in extreme southern Illinois, but Lake Michigan is over 350 miles beyond their most northern range. Timber rattlesnake would be plausible, possibly even a massasauga, but definitely not a cottonmouth. I know this makes me a giant nerd. The giant Wrigley Field parking lot got a laugh out of me.
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Jun 2, 2017 23:41
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Seems like there's a short list of cities for UF. London, New York, and Chicago. Sometimes Paris, sometimes Vegas. I'd kind of like to read some UF set somewhere different, like Moscow, or Beijing, or something, by someone that knew the culture and the cities. I've been tempted to try writing a UF book set in Miami. Really would explain a lot about that city (I'm a Florida native).
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Jun 2, 2017 23:45
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navyjack posted:The giant Wrigley Field parking lot got a laugh out of me. My entire knowledge of the city of Chicago derives from having watched The Blues Brothers about a million times, so the joke's lost on me. 
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Jun 3, 2017 00:08
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navyjack posted:The giant Wrigley Field parking lot got a laugh out of me. I mean, I could be wrong, but I think he's written fifteen books about Fantasy Chicago without a single Polish character. Which is loving nuts. Wheat Loaf posted:My entire knowledge of the city of Chicago derives from having watched The Blues Brothers about a million times, so the joke's lost on me. Wrigley Field has, like, zero parking. It's rather famous for it. If you go to their website and click on "Parking" they advise you to park in a designated lot 10 blocks away and ride the L-train to the stadium. Old Kentucky Shark fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Jun 3, 2017 |
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Jun 3, 2017 00:15
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The prose in Pax Arcana is to me serviceable and sits in the middle of the pack. It's not exceptionally good, nor is it bad. I don't like the series for its prose, but then I don't pay that much attention to prose unless it's bad enough to take me out of the story (character and plotting being more important IMO).
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Jun 3, 2017 00:28
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Mars4523 posted:The prose in Pax Arcana is to me serviceable and sits in the middle of the pack. It's not exceptionally good, nor is it bad. I don't like the series for its prose, but then I don't pay that much attention to prose unless it's bad enough to take me out of the story (character and plotting being more important IMO). It's the lead character telling the reader things, instead of dialogue, or showing things, or in loeu of any of the good narrative devices
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Jun 3, 2017 01:15
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torgeaux posted:It's the lead character telling the reader things, instead of dialogue, or showing things, or in loeu of any of the good narrative devices This kind of narration (first person, directed towards the reader) isn't exactly unheard of in urban fantasy. Most of the big players, including Dresden, do it.
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Jun 3, 2017 01:25
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Cythereal posted:I've been tempted to try writing a UF book set in Miami. Really would explain a lot about that city (I'm a Florida native). Miami is also on my shortlist. I think it's a great setting. Plus you've got the swamp nearby if you really need it. Old Kentucky Shark posted:I mean, I could be wrong, but I think he's written fifteen books about Fantasy Chicago without a single Polish character. Which is loving nuts. I always got the idea that Butters' family was of eastern European descent. I don't know why.
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Jun 3, 2017 02:09
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ConfusedUs posted:Miami is also on my shortlist. I think it's a great setting. Plus you've got the swamp nearby if you really need it. His love for polka and Oktoberfest? Germanic Jews would be Ashkenazim, and they're generally from areas formerly controlled by the Holy Roman Empire..
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Jun 3, 2017 02:11
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ConfusedUs posted:Miami is also on my shortlist. I think it's a great setting. Plus you've got the swamp nearby if you really need it. Plus you'll have stuff like this to pull from.
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Jun 3, 2017 02:30
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ConfusedUs posted:Miami is also on my shortlist. I think it's a great setting. Plus you've got the swamp nearby if you really need it. And Key West.
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Jun 3, 2017 03:39
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There's a great mystery series set in Miami and the Keys in the seventies and eighties, the Travis McGee books by John D. McDonald. You're all wrong though the real answer is Last Call series by Tim Powers, set in Vegas. Even there though the rest of the series it's in is pretty bad.
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Jun 3, 2017 04:10
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:There's a great mystery series set in Miami and the Keys in the seventies and eighties, the Travis McGee books by John D. McDonald. Ahem. Set in Ft Lauderdale, tyvm, Slip F-18, Bahia Mar aboard the Busted Flush.
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Jun 3, 2017 06:40
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I don't know how accurate it is but Charlene Harris does a really good job bringing Louisiana to life.
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Jun 3, 2017 19:02
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God dammnit, how many times do I have to go to bat for Patricia Briggs in this thread. She writes about the Tri Cities area of Washington, and I think she writes well.  Also, Stephen Blackmoore writes Los Angeles better than just about anyone. Wizchine fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Jun 4, 2017 |
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Jun 4, 2017 07:50
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Wizchine posted:God dammnit, how many times to I have to go to bat for Patricia Briggs in this thread. She writes about the Tri Cities area of Washington, and I think she writes well. I'm with you on both.
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Jun 4, 2017 14:18
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Seems like there's a short list of cities for UF. London, New York, and Chicago. Sometimes Paris, sometimes Vegas. I'd kind of like to read some UF set somewhere different, like Moscow, or Beijing, or something, by someone that knew the culture and the cities. Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch series is set in Moscow in the 90s. I've just finished the first one, which is kinda three stories linked into a novel. I nearly put it down twice, but it was definitely worth finishing. The setting is fairly bleak, the characterisation isn't quite the usual urban fantasy stuff, and it feels kinda like watching a foreign film, in that you know there's stuff you aren't understanding properly because of cultural differences. Also the story isn't quite what you'd expect from urban fantasy, exactly. It's a bit depressing and philosophical. Not overly so, but much more so than Dresden or Pax Arcana or whatever. It does have wizards and vampires and shadowy organisations and stuff though. I'm gonna read the next one sooner or later. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Jun 5, 2017 |
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Jun 5, 2017 13:41
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I just finished The Library at Mount Char on this thread's recommendation. It's a bizarre novel. I got about a third of the way in on pure curiosity, and then it dug its claws into me and I could hardly put it down after that. I really enjoyed it. It's got a unique setting and does "people who grew up only tangentially related to our society" really well. It's got a mystery/heist groove to it, in that there's a secret back-plot that unravels throughout the book and there's a reveal of a couple key points at the end. It skirts close to a deus ex machina but manages to avoid it deftly, IMO. If you're one that doesn't like stories told from multiple perspectives, this one might not be for you. There's ~3'ish main characters and they each get a comparable share of the page-count. They each have a pretty distinct voice. There were a couple of genuinely beautiful passages in it. If you're looking for something really different, give it a shot.
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Jun 5, 2017 15:56
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AlphaDog posted:Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch series is set in Moscow in the 90s. The Night Watch series gets both more and less standard as it goes on. It's really a bizarre franchise and by the last book it's in a completely different realm that the first, though no less bleak.
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Jun 5, 2017 15:59
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Blasphemeral posted:I just finished The Library at Mount Char on this thread's recommendation. I felt the first 3/4ths or more was really good. Everything up to the moment of victory was outstanding. Then there's this whole weird denouement thing where it explores the consequences of it all. While that part is also interesting, it felt really extraneous and rushed. It's almost like the author came up with the idea for the sequel and decided to pare it down to a few chapters.
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Jun 5, 2017 16:18
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ConfusedUs posted:... It's almost like the author came up with the idea for the sequel and decided to pare it down to a few chapters. I can see that... I think it's more that he wanted to address that stuff in this book because he wanted the next one (if it ever happens) to be about the battles against the enemies and the weirdness that exists in the world now due to the ... "change of management" and the short-lived famine It's his first novel (ever) so I hope he decides to write another.
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Jun 5, 2017 16:48
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ConfusedUs posted:I felt the first 3/4ths or more was really good. Everything up to the moment of victory was outstanding.
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Jun 5, 2017 16:48
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darthbob88 posted:Honestly, I kinda thought the denouement was a clever exploration of the consequences of her victory, and the fact that her problems don't end there. My real problem was the other side of that, that some things felt unnecessarily fleshed out, like the Brazilian model's and the DHS agent's backstories. Still thought it was pretty good, damned if I know how he can follow it. Oh, yeah, I found it fascinating. It's unusual that books take an actual look at consequences of the main story--at least not until the sequel. I thought it was a really great addition.
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Jun 5, 2017 16:52
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ImpAtom posted:The Night Watch series gets both more and less standard as it goes on. It's really a bizarre franchise and by the last book it's in a completely different realm that the first, though no less bleak.
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Jun 5, 2017 17:10
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anilEhilated posted:It is also really, really formulaic, to the point where you can accurately predict where the plots will go after reading two or three stories. Setpieces change but the structure and result are always the same. The "different realm" stuff is mostly based by the main protagonist's power creep that makes Harry Dresden's constant accumulation of favors and powers look tame. Yeah, the book has absolutely insane power creep. It's pretty annoying because the theme of the first book played a lot into the idea that power couldn't be changed and that it was an irreconcilable gulf between people but then each successive book downplays that more and more, while simultaneously introducing even bigger and newer Ultimate Dangers that are even more powerful than the most powerful thing ever, until by the 5th book they encounter God and by the 6th book they encounter Double God.
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Jun 5, 2017 17:13
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