I adore the Dresden books, not least because Harry frequently does Dumb Stuff and doesn't get away with it. Admittedly, it doesn't hurt that I keep picturing James Marsters as Harry, since he did the audiobook reading, but I like the character nonetheless; I haven't raised that hard a mental cheer for anybody since...I think the second Anita Blake book, where she actually saved the day with something other than sex? And I'm eternally grateful to Jim Butcher for writing a paladin character who's NOT hypocritical, sneering, doltish, or any combination of the above.
nearly every single urban fantasy seems to go the exact same direction:
That's starting from an awfully narrow definition of urban fantasy, though. You've got "urban fantasy" in which the city is an important part of the book, and not just stage dressing (Simon Green's "Hawk and Fisher", Glen Cook's Garret books, and a few readalikes for the high-fantasy types), and then it narrows down to "urban fantasy" as in modern-day magic with a backdrop of skyscrapers and alleys. ("War for the Oaks", Lackey's modern-elf books (not a recommendation, just an observation *grin*), the "Borribles" books (which I liked and nobody's ever heard of) and about ninety percent of anything Charles DeLint has ever put on paper.) Then there's alternate-universe stuff like the Bordertown books and "Stalking the Unicorn" (points to that one for a catgirl who's a scuzzy little scavenger and STAYS that way. "Why'd you run away from the fight?" "You were losing. Where's my cream?")
I'd say the LKH/Butcher/etc. books are a sub-sub-(sub?)-genre, and therefore necessarily restricted in their structure, much as a limerick has to follow a certain pattern to be a limerick. (Or a sonnet, for a more highbrow example.) This doesn't have to be a bad thing - I like the Dresden books, used to like LKH, and enjoyed the first few Sookie Stackhouse books. When you're writing what amounts to a Chandler homage with things that go bump in the night, you're pretty much STUCK with a cynical, hardass crimesolver. But that's far from the only kind of urban fantasy there is.
I'd also like to say that I read the first of Elaine Cunningham's "Changeling" book, and just...gaaah. That is all.
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nearly every single urban fantasy seems to go the exact same direction:
That's starting from an awfully narrow definition of urban fantasy, though. You've got "urban fantasy" in which the city is an important part of the book, and not just stage dressing (Simon Green's "Hawk and Fisher", Glen Cook's Garret books, and a few readalikes for the high-fantasy types), and then it narrows down to "urban fantasy" as in modern-day magic with a backdrop of skyscrapers and alleys. ("War for the Oaks", Lackey's modern-elf books (not a recommendation, just an observation *grin*), the "Borribles" books (which I liked and nobody's ever heard of) and about ninety percent of anything Charles DeLint has ever put on paper.) Then there's alternate-universe stuff like the Bordertown books and "Stalking the Unicorn" (points to that one for a catgirl who's a scuzzy little scavenger and STAYS that way. "Why'd you run away from the fight?" "You were losing. Where's my cream?")
I'd say the LKH/Butcher/etc. books are a sub-sub-(sub?)-genre, and therefore necessarily restricted in their structure, much as a limerick has to follow a certain pattern to be a limerick. (Or a sonnet, for a more highbrow example.) This doesn't have to be a bad thing - I like the Dresden books, used to like LKH, and enjoyed the first few Sookie Stackhouse books. When you're writing what amounts to a Chandler homage with things that go bump in the night, you're pretty much STUCK with a cynical, hardass crimesolver. But that's far from the only kind of urban fantasy there is.
I'd also like to say that I read the first of Elaine Cunningham's "Changeling" book, and just...gaaah. That is all.
-Foxfire, who likes parenthetical statements.