I’ve noticed during my foray on social media that in specific Fantasy forums, when a reader asks for recommendations, there’s always that caveat of ‘but no urban fantasy.’ I’ve also noticed that any posts about books, Fantasy bingo, or responses to someone asking for book recommendations even without the warning, Urban Fantasy (UF) books often are not on the list. As a writer of urban fantasy, I wanted to know why that is and state my case as to why UF should appear more on all these lists.
Fantasy genre, in general
According to the fabulous authors at MasterClass: “Fantasy is a genre of literature that features magical and supernatural elements that do not exist in the real world.”
It seems straightforward, right? Wrong. Fantasy has many subgenres, and those subgenres have subgenres. Trying to navigate what to classify the book you write or the book you read is a confusing mess. When you dig into some of the subgenres, like UF or Contemporary Fantasy, it gets even more confusing.
But first, a caveat.
Until last year and Fantasy Bingo, I was not a big epic fantasy/pure fantasy reader. I’ve read a ton of mysteries, including most of the Golden Age of Crime authors, and many modern authors as well. I’ve read some classics, some literary fiction and quite a lot of UF. UF was the full extent of my fantasy reading over the past twenty to twenty-five years. And I was okay with that.
I’ve also authored a book, The Deep Space Between, and, yes, you guessed it, it falls into the broader UF category. I wanted magic in my world, but I didn’t want to have to create an entire world on top of everything else. Writing is hard. Writing your debut novel after 35 years of suppressing your desire to be a writer is even harder. Adding in an entire world system seemed insurmountable.
I’ve since created (or rather my husband has) an entire world for my book and I could’ve potentially written that epic fantasy, but I didn’t. I might brave a second world book at some point, but I’m not there right now.
So here I am, a newbie author and an avid reader of UF authors such as Ilona Andrews, Patricia Briggs, Seanan McGuire, Drew Hayes, Benedict Jacka and Jim Butcher, to name a few, and I just have to ask: why is UF not fantasy enough for science fiction and fantasy (SFF) readers?
Urban Fantasy Defined (sort of)
Before diving into the meat of the discussion, the definition of UF as I see it and understand it needs to be clear. This way, if you disagree, you can base your scorn on my understanding of it rather than the main point I want to make here — that my book is fantasy enough.
UF is defined as: fantastical characters and concepts placed in real-world settings.
Mostly.
The books tend to contain one or more of the below lists.
Fantasy tropes, such as:
- The chosen one
- Dark lord
- Quest
- Medieval setting
- Damsel in distress
- Mentor figure
Other features, such as:
- Urban setting*
- Magic
- A noir aesthetic
- Mythical creatures
- A protagonist with a foot in both worlds
- A young protagonist
The plot tends to consist of a mystery to be solved or a problem to be corrected, or the world ends. Kim Harrison and Ilona Andrews feature this storyline consistently in all their books. Other UF authors have major Big Bads that needed to be put down instead, like what happens in my book. But they all have some element of a mystery/crime/problem to solve. Many UF books are told from first person POV and can often feature a female protagonist in law enforcement. But not all of them.
And this is where it gets tricky. That’s my definition of it. Someone else’s could be specific as to what types of magic creatures are in the book — werewolves, vampires, the Fae, etc. — or that the female protagonist kicks ass or that it requires romance (which is actually categorized as Paranormal Romance).
This is what happens when the publishing industry doesn’t define the genre sufficiently enough and then those crazy authors go and write a bunch of books that look like they fit into it. Once the deluge occurs, the industry should adjust and define. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they create a new category to get away from all the UF books cropping up everywhere and call it Contemporary Fantasy.
Some people define Contemporary Fantasy as all fantasy that takes place in a modern setting and UF falls as a subgenre to it. Most people, however, use the term UF, regardless of where it takes place, so we’ll keep using it as well.
UF also:
- Doesn’t need a female protagonist. Harry Dresden anyone?
- Doesn’t need a noir aesthetic. October Daye in Seanan McGuire is a good example here.
- Doesn’t need a ‘young’ protagonist. Kate Daniels is not young. She’s just young in comparison to her father and aunt, who are older than dirt (literally).
Basically, what UF boils down to now is this: if it is a book with feet in two worlds — fantasy and ours — it falls under this broad genre.
Where’s the Problem?
UF is a fairly new popular genre, and it has been categorized in a specific way. As the category grew, more stereotypes were introduced. Many of the ‘this is what UF is’ bullets listed above have pushed readers away from the genre, not because the books aren’t interesting, but because they think those are the only types of books written under the UF genre.
Just doing a quick glance on social media over the past 4 years and you find comments around the noir style, the focus on sex (which is not UF, but is paranormal romance and could fall under the broader UF category), or that non-magic users are boring “sheeple.”
And some of that may be true — the humans in my book are a bit sheeple-esque if you compare them to the Magic Community, but you don’t and you won’t because the Magic Community is separate from the humans. Some books have them combined — Kate Daniels works for humans and magical people alike.
Some other complaints are that the contemporary setting isn’t enough of an escape from our current environment. Or that epic scale storylines don’t seem to gel as well in a modern setting. And those are great reasons to not want to read UF. (To be fair, most reasons for not wanting to read UF are good, I just wanted to articulate the ones that aren’t as good.)
What’s the Big Deal Then?
When readers or potential readers of fantasy dismiss UF as not fantasy enough, it drives me crazy. I get it — you want to be carried away into an interesting second world location where things don’t work the way they do here.
But here’s the thing: any good UF world will have many things that don’t work the same as in the real world. You can’t layer a magical world over the real world without having to make changes to the real world. Is it a complete transcendence to a new magical place? No, but there are definite differences, or at least enough to whet most people’s creative imaginations.
Others state that UF doesn’t have the same richness in world building as a second-world fantasy novel. But that argument is only at the level of world building exposition in the book, not the world building itself. Ilona Andrews has a whole world built for the Kate Daniels series. Seanan McGuire does as well. My book has a solid fantasy world behind it; you only get glimpses into it but is it there.
Why do UF books lack more substantial world building exposition? Because the story isn’t about the world or the magic. The magic plays a part; the rules of the world are important and need to be set out for the reader to follow along; but the actual story line, the core plot, a mystery or a problem to solve and the magic is either a huge part of that or just on the fringes.
In my book, I don’t really describe what the Shifters or Wielders look like at all, because to my MC, they just look like people she grew up around. They’re not special to her outside of their relationships to her, so describing them is irrelevant at best, and potentially reader derailing at worst.
Harry Dresden has his number in the yellow pages. He’s a real-life Wizard, with a phone book entry (for those too young to know, back before the internet existed, this is what we used to find businesses). He works alongside the mundane police, and it costs those who work with him more than it costs him, no matter how many knocks the guy gets.
This part of the world building needs to be sorted out; otherwise, the reader will have questions, lots of questions. You need to be able to answer them, even if you never explicitly do so. If you don’t, you get confusion, inconsistencies (you get those anyway, we’re not perfect), and potentially a 2D world.
And here’s the main point I want to make about the world building. In a way, it’s harder, because we have to explain how things work while also making sure they fit into the real world.
I’ve had to create currency rules, hereditary laws and how property works in my book because my Magic Community lives side by side with the human world, but not necessarily in it. The humans don’t know it exists, but you bet the US government will know there are shops in a small town in New Hampshire and demand the taxes for that property. Thus, my dual currency system was created to make sense of it all.
Ilona Andrews has an explanation for magic and technology and why they don’t work at the same time. Seanan McGuire uses special Fae bubbles, called Summerlands, for the different environments that the Fae of her book live in, side-by-side with the humans. Kim Harrison does the same with Rachel Morgan; ketchup and tomatoes have a whole new meaning in the world of her books.
UF isn’t easier to write, it’s just different. Different rules come into play, and you have to get pretty creative to fit your magical world on top of the human one.
I can hear the question from the reader in the back about the style of UF. Yes, it is different from a quest story, a dark lord story, damsel in distress or a mentor story. Absolutely. And if you don’t like following a character’s journey as they work to solve a major issue, mystery or problem, then UF most likely won’t be for you.
And that’s okay, which leads me to…
Why Does It Matter?
It doesn’t, not in the grand scheme of things. But it does in a way to me, because it feels like UF books are valued less than second world fantasy books for SFF readers. And they shouldn’t be.
The same hard work and creativity went into them that also went into other high fantasy worlds and stories. Of course, there are high fantasy authors who are exceptions to this; authors who created incredibly diverse and rich worlds with multiple character POVs and 600+ page books in a multiple book series.
And of course, JRR Tolkien is an exception to this, because the man created his own language. He went much further than a lot of the great fantasy writers have done and really, do we need to compare ourselves to him?
No.
Having dived into the full fantasy novels, I have to say that I’m enjoying them. I like the different worlds, I like the creativity in how the magic works, but do I like them more than Alex Verus or Harry Dresden? No, I don’t. I like them equally well for how the story is crafted and what I learn from and about the characters in them.
That for me is the key — character growth and connection. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s set in Chicago, Merricott, New Hampshire (my book), or the Discworld. As long as it is engaging, the characters are interesting, and the world has some aspects of magic, I’m going to read it and enjoy it.
And isn’t that the point of reading after all?
Originally published in The Writing Cooperative.