Urban Fantasy / Paranormal Romance #2

[Darth Richard II]

Pretty sure I never claimed to have read all of them either? Really, I guess all those people who only read the first two sword of truth books shouldn't be posting in the Goodkind forums making fun of him, let alone thise terrible people that only read ONE of the twilight books! For shame!

[RedEyedGhost]

You sure act like you've read the majority of them, and considering it's also widely known around here that they improve drastically after book 3 (or 4 imo), so your opinion is no more valid than Gormenghast's was.  And I've never posted in a Goodkind thread.

[Darth Richard II]

Nah, that's the you can't rate a book you didn't finish mentality, and that's bullshit. I never finished 50 shades, but I can tell you it sucked. And I really don't care what's "widely known", that's just peer pressure mob mentality fuckery.

[Lyanna Stark]

You sure act like you've read the majority of them, and considering it's also widely known around here that they improve drastically after book 3 (or 4 imo), so your opinion is no more valid than Gormenghast's was.  And I've never posted in a Goodkind thread.

I have read all but the last one of the Dresden books, and while ok:ish as a kind of noir/urban fantasy mix, after a while not even that can gloss over its flaws. I quite enjoyed them as popcorn flicks, but then I read romance novels by the buckets during my commutes as well, and to me Dresden kinda falls into the same category as most historical romance flicks.  Popcorn reading you can pick up again after three days, spend 20 min reading, rinse, repeat, and it stays with you as an "fairly entertaining sort of read" without making a deeper impression.

I also disagree that they improve drastically. Once we get further in and Harry just keep bumping into prettier and prettier ladies, most of who want to also bump uglies with him, it ends up being far less of an entertaining story and veering much more into "wishfulfillment territory".

 

Anyways, finished the newest Viola Carr Electric Empire novels called "The Devious Dr Jekyll". A Steampunk/Urban Fantasy of alternative universe London which basically feels a bit as if Penny Dreadful was written in book form and turned into Steampunk/UF/ Paranormal romance. It features crazies in Bedlam, razor-murderers, flash houses, fey people, gruesome murders, alchemy, a twist on Dr Jekyll/Mr Hyde, half automaton humans and shapeshifters. Unfortunately, unlike the first novel, there are plot holes large enough to drive a steampowered omnibus through in this installment. It also starts out slow, meanders in the middle only to crush everything into the end bit. 

 

[RedEyedGhost]

Nah, that's the you can't rate a book you didn't finish mentality, and that's bullshit. I never finished 50 shades, but I can tell you it sucked. And I really don't care what's "widely known", that's just peer pressure mob mentality fuckery.

Sure you can rate a book that you didn't finish, but talking shit on it at every single opportunity is just petty and disingenuous.

 

I have read all but the last one of the Dresden books, and while ok:ish as a kind of noir/urban fantasy mix, after a while not even that can gloss over its flaws. I quite enjoyed them as popcorn flicks, but then I read romance novels by the buckets during my commutes as well, and to me Dresden kinda falls into the same category as most historical romance flicks.  Popcorn reading you can pick up again after three days, spend 20 min reading, rinse, repeat, and it stays with you as an "fairly entertaining sort of read" without making a deeper impression.

I also disagree that they improve drastically. Once we get further in and Harry just keep bumping into prettier and prettier ladies, most of who want to also bump uglies with him, it ends up being far less of an entertaining story and veering much more into "wishfulfillment territory".

Oh, they are certainly flawed, but not even remotely to the extent that Darth purports.  And they also peak at Changes and their flaws are magnified thereafter.  I don't think that that many people around here claim they are anything more than pizza-esque literature (Scot, maybe?).

[Darth Richard II]

If I wanted to do it at every single opportunity I would go into the actual Dresden thread. You sound like a self published author who got a bad review on Amazon.

[Lyanna Stark]

Oh, they are certainly flawed, but not even remotely to the extent that Darth purports.  And they also peak at Changes and their flaws are magnified thereafter.  I don't think that that many people around here claim they are anything more than pizza-esque literature (Scot, maybe?).

Really? I thought "Cold Days" were among the worst offenders what with the Sarissa thing and the absolute overload of super sexy women absolutely everywhere.

 

Apart from Mab's initiation of course being her shagging Harry and the ridiculous Thomas and his super hot wife always engaging in three-somes because she just cared so much about him, I thought the gratuitous insertion of sexy women everywhere, be they human or non human, is just really, really tiresome. It kinda works in a more straight noir setting, but when it more and more drops the noir and more and more ends into some sort of modern elf-land fantasy, then it feels no longer motivated. At all. I also got pretty peeved by the "hur hur" around gay men, which was randomly entered in one of the novels, can't remember which. 

[peterbound]

Really? I thought "Cold Days" were among the worst offenders what with the Sarissa thing and the absolute overload of super sexy women absolutely everywhere.

 

Apart from Mab's initiation of course being her shagging Harry and the ridiculous Thomas and his super hot wife always engaging in three-somes because she just cared so much about him, I thought the gratuitous insertion of sexy women everywhere, be they human or non human, is just really, really tiresome. It kinda works in a more straight noir setting, but when it more and more drops the noir and more and more ends into some sort of modern elf-land fantasy, then it feels no longer motivated. At all. I also got pretty peeved by the "hur hur" around gay men, which was randomly entered in one of the novels, can't remember which. 

For some reason, to me, the way he handled sex reminded me a lot of piers Anthony. Always getting a little perverse, and never really making any sense with it.

And yes, I read piers Anthony. And yes, I've read all the Dresden books. And no, they don't get better.

[Darth Richard II]

But have you read ALL the Piers Anthony? Otherwise you're not allowed to hold an opinion.

[Darth Richard II]

I finished Outlander last year and also hated it.  So yeah, it's the same kind of thing.  I'm glad to see others feel the same way.  I was starting to think I was the only one.

Oh there are plenty of us Outlander haters. I consider it the bane of my existence. It's just the fangirls tend to be, uh, enthusiastic. Although I haven't read EVERY Outlander book so I guess I'm not allowed to comment.

[Mars447]

Dresden is okay, I guess.  As far as male wish fulfillment filled with tons of super sexy 10s falling all over the male protagonist's dick goes, I've read worse, at least (and there is a ton of it).  And at least there's Murphy who is human looking.

Off the top of my head Craig Schaefer and Elliot James are much better with this, which is probably part of why I like them much more than Dresden.

[RedEyedGhost]

Really? I thought "Cold Days" were among the worst offenders what with the Sarissa thing and the absolute overload of super sexy women absolutely everywhere.

 

 

Hidden Content

Did you read my post you quoted?  I said it peaks at Changes and the flaws are magnified thereafter... Cold Days is two books after Changes. 

I must also be the only person that feels that few of these women are actually as attractive as Harry makes them out to be, mostly because it's his unreliable POV and it's also plainly obvious that he is lonely and a little desperate.  That's always going to make women seem a bit sexier.

 

But have you read ALL the Piers Anthony? Otherwise you're not allowed to hold an opinion.

Yeah  because that's what I said   Just don't act like you've read all of it when you've only read 7.5%  You may be able to infer that you won't like the rest, but you're always implying that you know "it's shit" when that is not the case.  But I forget that I speaking with Mister Binary, there's never any middle ground with you. Maybe that should be your new screen name when you have to create a new one.

[Xray the Enforcer]

@Mandy -- it's also funny that you mention Ilona Andrews. I read 1.5 books of one of her series over the holiday break because I wanted some brain-free entertainment: Whichever one has an emotionally damaged superwarrior tomboy-so-you-know-she's-not-some-vapid-bitch-like-real-girls-are chick with a sword and the werelion who loves her -- although that description might be too generic, given how tightly tropes are held in the subgenre. It was definitely brain-free, and I bailed early because nobody should have to endure that much internalized misogyny and heteronormative bullshit on their vacation. That said, I was certainly entertained, although probably not for the reasons the author intended. (Girlfran is no Sandra Hill, that's for sure.) So, thanks Ilona!

I also bought some of what one might consider the masculine equivalent of urban fantasy: MilSF with battle-hardened hard-ass cyborg warriors whose girlfriends get conveniently fridged in order to push along the plot! Sweet Jesus, was that awful. It didn't even inspire lulz, and thus failed utterly in its mission to entertain. I'm sorry emotionally damaged cyborg warrior with a dead girlfriend, but I'm going to bust you back to private and put you on latrine duty for all eternity.

[Mars447]

I find that Kate Daniels is one of the more good examples of a pretty dire field of female written flimsy-"tough girl"-heroine-dates-manly-alpha-male urban fantasy series.  Curran being controlling and possessive as fuck is incredibly annoying, but at least Kate is allowed to be effectual on her own, which is nice.  Of course that's already in Sturgeon's 10%, which tells you how bad large parts of the genre is.

Of course, male written urban fantasy of the Harry Dresden mold isn't exactly a shining exemplar of literature either.

[peterbound]

Did you read my post you quoted?  I said it peaks at Changes and the flaws are magnified thereafter... Cold Days is two books after Changes. 

I must also be the only person that feels that few of these women are actually as attractive as Harry makes them out to be, mostly because it's his unreliable POV and it's also plainly obvious that he is lonely and a little desperate.  That's always going to make women seem a bit sexier.

 

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I can get behind that.  One of the other things is the painful attempts to be witty in the books.  he's always about a decade out of date with regards to pop culture humor, and smacks of that nerdy/geeky/awkward attempt at being clever, but falling short.  Maybe that's intentional, not sure, or maybe it's the authors RL persona leaking through to his character.  Out of the genre, but I get the same feeling when I read sanderson. 

[Lyanna Stark]

Did you read my post you quoted?  I said it peaks at Changes and the flaws are magnified thereafter... Cold Days is two books after Changes. 

I must also be the only person that feels that few of these women are actually as attractive as Harry makes them out to be, mostly because it's his unreliable POV and it's also plainly obvious that he is lonely and a little desperate.  That's always going to make women seem a bit sexier.

 

Ah sorry, I misunderstood your point. I thought you meant that the flaws are magnified in the eyes of the readers, somehow.

As for the desperate part, eh, I suppose, but that still doesn't explain why most of these women seem to find him at least fairly attractive.

 

Re Xray and Andrews:

The internalised misogyny was one of the worst parts for me, actually. The heteronormativity and the often really, really terrible treatment of masculinity are so common I barely even notice anymore. How sad is that tho? It's like I barely noticed how terrible and goddamn awful the lead in "Burn for Me" by Andrews is either, because it's just so common!

 

Mandy,

I think Kelly Gay's Charlie Madigan are far better in the "kickass" heroine segment since it actually features something as unusual as a divorced mother as the lead protagonist. Even if it suffers from a lot of the same tropes as Andrews, I still think it suffers from fewer problems than the Kate Daniels ones. Out of the Kate Daniels books, I tend to like the ones not featuring her the best! The short stories on Dali (who is a nearly blind woman of Indonesian heritage and not at all sword-wielding kickass) are my favourites.

[Mars447]

I really wanted to like Charlie Madigan, but the writing was just so atrocious that I couldn't get past that.  I do like Jaye Wells' Kate Prospero, despite some wonkiness in the second book and the magic system being kind of dumb.  Actually come to think of it that Kate is also a surrogate mother figure to her kid brother.  The romantic subplot in those books has much less bullshit as well.

I prefer the main line Kate Daniels novels to the novellas, because the latter seem to me to be very poorly edited.

It's interesting that so much female written UF doubles down on alpha male bullshit.  There's an interesting contrast with Craig Schaefer's Harmony Black and Daniel Faust UF series.  Harmony's love interest is a muggle sheriff's deputy she knew from her childhood town.  They grew up and played together until tragedy hit her family and she moved away.  She's in the know about the supernatural and a powerful witch, he's not.

Meanwhile, Daniel Faust's girlfriend Caitlin is an immensely powerful demon and an enforcer of a power of hell who could literally tear his heart out if she wanted to.  Their relationship is actually kind of a gender flipped version of the weaker vanilla human/dhampir/were coyote heroine and her alpha male shapeshifter/vampire lover.

[David Selig]

This Alpha nonsense is so tiresome, frankly. I would love to read more UF where werewolves are just people capable of shifting into wolves due to magic reasons and don't have that idiotic Alpha group structure (which apparently even real wolves lack according to latest studies), but treat each other just like regular humans do. 

[lady narcissa]

Not sure how long this ebook sale will last...it might be just the few remaining hours of today.  But Anne Bishop's "Written in Red" which is the first in the Others series is $1.99 at amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Written-Red-Others-Anne-Bishop-ebook/dp/B008RD34VO/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1452911872&sr=8-4

As is the first in the Mercy Thompson series.

http://www.amazon.com/Moon-Called-Mercy-Thompson-Book-ebook/dp/B000OCXHTK/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1452912011&sr=8-1

ETA: As of Sunday, January 17th, they are both still on sale.

[C.T. Phipps]

I'd like to recommend GALEFIRE, an independently published urban fantasy novel by Kenny Soward (author of GNOMESAGA), to those who like really-really dark and gritty urban fantasy. It's basically the story of a Renfield-type character, brainwashed and enslaved for a group of supernatural drug-dealers working out of Cincinnati, Ohio. It's a sleazy kind of world but not glamorous as befitting a story about a drug-addict slave but has some really good scenes including the longest gunfight I've ever seen in fiction.

I'd like to state I've been a long fan of the DRESDEN FILES and generally only object to SKIN GAME. I didn't like the way Murphy was handled and just about every other female character in the book EXCEPT Mab. I also was disappointed with Harry calling someone a bitch. Which is language I thought he was above. Otherwise, I very much enjoyed most of the books and still recommend them but I think of that as probably my least favorite book in the series--even compared to Storm Front.

I would also like to mention how much I enjoy Charles Stross' THE LAUNDRY FILES which I think have a pretty good job of showing multiple kinds of women. There's ugly women, sexy women, plain women, middle-aged women, badass women, non-badass women, badass ugly women, badass middle aged women, and nonbadass competent women.

I think they do a pretty good job of showing layers of the feminine gender beyond the beautiful action girl mold so prevalent in, say, comic books. There's a few missteps like "The Evil Ex-Girlfriend" but they actually rebound from that in a later book in a way I didn't expect (showing the narrator was really biased against her-shocking).

Charles Stross also did something which one-ups a number of major authors by switching from the primary (male) narrator to the central female character in THE ANNIHILATION SCORE. Sadly, this book has come under fire because her perspective isn't all that flattering to her love-interest and plenty of male readers took that personally.

Thanks to everyone who recommended the Daniel Faust novels. I'm very much enjoying the series and think they're a much more gender-balanced storyline.

You guys rock.