So I just finished my umpteen thousandth urban fantasy and it got me to thinking about what I like about this subgenre and what I don’t like. Obviously there is something to like about them as I read quite a few so let’s start with the good.
Urban fantasy, at least for me, is pretty much a female centric version of a lone knight (medieval not dark knight) protecting their world. Obviously there are some good male urban fantasy characters that spring to mind – Harry Dresden and Atticus O’Sullivan for example, but the genre really is saturated with women heroines. These heroines tend to be strong, independent types who are able to take care of themselves, thank you very much. There generally is a love interest, generally male, but our heroine is not dependant on this person in resolving their issues. It’s great to have this type of role model to counteract all the thin pouty helpless female images we are inundated by in other visual media. I also really enjoy authors taking certain tropes and tweaking them and the universe in which all the characters reside. As long as the rules remain consistent within that universe I’m a happy camper.
So, let’s move on to the less desirable qualities in urban fantasy. One of my biggest peeves is that we introduce a trope such as a fallen angel, vampire etc and have the character differ from the standard but then don’t explain why this character isn’t following the expected behavior associated with this trope. My most recent read used fallen angels including Lucifer yet did not explain whether Lucifer and his associates were truly evil or not and how they function in the author’s universe outside of being convenient plot devices to move the story forward. The author doesn’t have to expend the whole novel sketching in character but doing so as well as showing the heroine’s reactions to the goodness/evilness of these secondary characters is going to add depth to the story. One liners are sometimes used to sketch in brief answers such as the following “mortals are not permitted to know these things” but this is just lazy writing and poor world building in my opinion.
I’ve also noticed that author’s don’t necessarily think about basic questions a reader might be asking themselves as they read the book. To use the example of the fallen angels above, if there are fallen angels/demons destroying cities then where are the other angels, if there is Lucifer then where is God? Author, it is your world so think of a reason why these other characters may or may not be in your book. Once again, you don’t have to spend the entire novel on this type of question but a paragraph or two isn’t going to hurt either.
There are other things I don’t like about urban fantasy but my last gripe concerns the injuries our heroines sustain over the course of a novel. This gripe can extend to many other types of genres, by the way, as it seems to be endemic. Our heroine gets knocked unconscious, beaten, shot, what have you and yet never really appears to be debilitated by what happens to her. Inevitably there is generally some healing spell, salve etc. that rejuvenates her but never have I read where the heroine is laid up for days due to a concussion after a blow to the head or in extreme pain due to being shot. Make the heroine a little more human and have her suffer a bit before healing her. It makes for a more appealing character in my opinion.. Well that’s all I’ll say on the subject for now.
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