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Urban Fantasy

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Since Survivor didn't seem to sure what I meant by urban fantasy in connection with my new story, here's a thread about it. If you're into it, feel free to add thoughts, recommendations, etc.

Urban fantasy is just a sub-genre of fantasy that has magic and supernatural beings similar to those in fantasy worlds living in contemporary cities.

Some are paranormal romances, with humans and supernatural beings having romantic and/or erotic relationships

Some are paranormal detective stories, with the investigations focussing on supernatural crime and activities.

Some are just stories about what happens when mundane humans and magical beings share space.

In most, the supernatural is either an open secret with vampires and elves and such walking the streets, or else a secret, parallel world that only a few mundane humans get to penetrate (conveniently including the protagonists of the stories).

What We Do In the Shadows (both the original movie and the Prime series) kind of fits here, though I have not heard the term applied to it.

Some genre authors:

Kelley Armstrong - "Women of the Otherworld" features women, usually magical in some way, having adventures and romances in the contemporary world. For instance, the first novel Bitten, and its sequels, features a female werewolf.

Tanya Huff - "Victory Nelson" has a female private eye with failing eyesight teaming up with a Tudor-era vampire to solve supernatural mysteries in Toronto and environs

Jim Butcher - The "Dresden Files" series is about Harry Dresden, a practicing wizard based in Chicago and his adventures with various supernatural beings (vampires, werewolves, demons, fairies, etc.)

Laurell K. Hamilton - "Anita Blake" is about a necromancer battling vampires and other supernatural nastiness and getting into rather wild relationships with them (let's just say some of the novels are best discussed on another site)

Charles de Lint - writes rather wonderful, somewhat dreamy, fantasies set mostly (but not always) in his fictitious city of Newford, though a couple of early ones are set in Ottawa where he is from.

Note that 3 of those are Canadian but I don't think we are dominant in the genre or anything. They just happen to be ones I have come across and that may partly because of being from the Great White North myself.

Halloween looms and my annual story is here. Is it a trick? Or a treat? Let me know.

Grace of Bigelow Street | Stories Space

FYI, Armstrong and Huff both have other series in the genre as well, I just put the ones I am familiar with as examples.

Also, urban fantasy is also sometimes used to refer to more traditional fantasy that happens in an urban setting. So China Mieville's weird and wonderful Perdido Street Station takes place in a fantasy world but the story is set almost entirely in the city of Bas Lag so is often considered urban fantasy.

Halloween looms and my annual story is here. Is it a trick? Or a treat? Let me know.

Grace of Bigelow Street | Stories Space