Why Urban Fantasy?

Jennifer Rardin essentially asked this question last week over on her blog. Without meaning to, my answer ended up rather epic. Enough for a blog post, so I thought I'd share it here, with minor edits to remove the Q&A format.

Angels and Demons by Aykutaydogdu

I read Urban Fantasy because, like so many others, I came to UF from High Fantasy. I got bored with High Fantasy. It was a lot of the same tropes epically told over three (or more) books with names derived by planting a fist on the keyboard and adding a few extra vowels. If there were even remotely emotionally strong women, they didn't stay strong for very long and men always saved the day. (The one exeption was Jill from the Deverry series by Katherine Kerr. My alter ego's name is from that series.)

I've read chick lit in the hopes of finding good female chacters but so much of what I read held with the belief that no protagonist's life was complete unless they loved or were loved by a chap.

Until I read Anita Blake. I stopped reading that series six books in (and I won't bore you with the details as to why i stopped), but it opened my eyes to a new realm of fiction. I adored Buffy when it was actually aired on TV (and have been known to have DVD marathons even now!), and realised I could get it in books too. Yes, Harry Potter would be considered YA UF and I had been reading them since the second book was first published, but I have been known to be a bit slow on the uptake...

Monsters/creatures in UF aren't exactly cute and cuddly and comparing them to classic supernatural villians can't really be done. The classic UF like Frankenstein and Dracula were written at a different time, when the reader's experiences weren't the same as today. We've had more everyday exposure to violence than 120 years ago.

However, considering I've not yet read Dracula (I'm a heathen, I know, but I have read Frankenstein), I have a limited basis for comparison. What I do know is there are some truly scary monsters available in the modern UF genre such as a lot of the monsters the bothers come across in the Cal Leandros series by Rob Thurman. Ilona Andrews has a unique take on vampires in the Kate Daniels series that I adore, but they're still icky.

What makes them scarier than any most other bad guys from the other genres I've read is that they are after more than mere world domination. Sometimes, their motives are actually understandable and just a little bit sympathetic. It messes with your head and makes you re-evaluate what your perceptions of good and evil are. (Dexter is a non-supernatural example of that.)

I get a lot out of reading UF. Escapism. Fantasical escapism. The stories can be truly horrific and scary. (Neil Gaimen, I'm looking at you.) The action can be relentless. Hints of romanticism. Always a mystery. Women who can look after themselves, literally and metaphorically. Throw in some funny lines and you've got all the genres covered in one 300+ page volume. That you can usually read as a stand alone novel.

There is a whole lot more to this genre than kick-ass chicks and the vampires/werewolves who (that? What is the grammatically correct term here?) love them. Unfortunately, they aren't always easy to find in most bookstores, even if you have the time to look in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Romance and YA sections. Yes, like Sophie, I have had to look for books in the same series in ALL of these different sections. Then I discovered Infinitas!