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Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance v. 3.0


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On 6/13/2019 at 12:28 AM, Darth Richard II said:

Yikes.

Reminds me of all the reviews that call Outlander a feminist masterwork. But I will digress from my long and now copyrighted Outlander rant. :P

I tried to read those after hearing so many people gush about them and they're definitely not feminist at all and I found it all pretty terrible. Do you have a link to this rant?

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36 minutes ago, dornishpen said:

I tried to read those after hearing so many people gush about them and they're definitely not feminist at all and I found it all pretty terrible. Do you have a link to this rant?

Ha, no, I should right one up some time though. There are some great one star takedowns of it on goodreads though.

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51 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Ha, no, I should right one up some time though. There are some great one star takedowns of it on goodreads though.

Didn't Lyanna have some pretty lengthy and masterful put downs of the books? Probably lost to the ravages of time by now 

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23 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

Ha, no, I should right one up some time though. There are some great one star takedowns of it on goodreads though.

There are some good takedowns of it in goodreads, also some really gross defenses of it like: it wasn't rape it was rough sex, she deserved to be beaten, it's really historically accurate and so on.

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On 6/12/2019 at 10:44 PM, ants said:

Ok, I'd like to, uh, retract my endorsement of the Aileen Travers books.  The first two were good, and the actual main mystery/plot of three and four were also good.  But the love interest (cringes).

See now you've slightly tempted me to try these!  I have a pretty high tolerance level for such love interests.

I have finally finished reading Lies Sleeping, which I quite enjoyed.  I'm delighted to see a new Peter Grant will be coming out later this year and that we got a bonus story with The October Man which slipped out this spring.  Has anyone read it?  Curious to see how the format works in another country with another character.  Is it too much of the same thing?  Or different enough to hold its own?

I did start one of this years Hugo nominated best novels which sounded urban fantasyish...and it is...well more rural fantasyish...but I got a bit squeamish about it when...

Spoiler

The main character chopped off the head of a little girl and ended her life!  It was sort of an act of mercy I guess since she had been gnawed on by some kind of monster and was pretty much doomed.

But it was a bit more than I am prepared to be reading about at the moment and I'm not really sure I'm going to continue with it.

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8 hours ago, lady narcissa said:

See now you've slightly tempted me to try these!  I have a pretty high tolerance level for such love interests.

I have finally finished reading Lies Sleeping, which I quite enjoyed.  I'm delighted to see a new Peter Grant will be coming out later this year and that we got a bonus story with The October Man which slipped out this spring.  Has anyone read it?  Curious to see how the format works in another country with another character.  Is it too much of the same thing?  Or different enough to hold its own?

I did start one of this years Hugo nominated best novels which sounded urban fantasyish...and it is...well more rural fantasyish...but I got a bit squeamish about it when...

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The main character chopped off the head of a little girl and ended her life!  It was sort of an act of mercy I guess since she had been gnawed on by some kind of monster and was pretty much doomed.

But it was a bit more than I am prepared to be reading about at the moment and I'm not really sure I'm going to continue with it.

Go for it, and let me know your views. What was the Hugo book?

on the October Man, I’m not paying hardcover prices for a novella! When the price drops I’ll pick it up. 

Didn’t know the new Aaronvitch novel was coming out, another to look forward to. I’ve already got two Karen Chance novels coming out over winter (southern hemisphere), but I’m really looking forward to reading the next Alex Verses book. 

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19 hours ago, lady narcissa said:

See now you've slightly tempted me to try these!  I have a pretty high tolerance level for such love interests.

I have finally finished reading Lies Sleeping, which I quite enjoyed.  I'm delighted to see a new Peter Grant will be coming out later this year and that we got a bonus story with The October Man which slipped out this spring.  Has anyone read it?  Curious to see how the format works in another country with another character.  Is it too much of the same thing?  Or different enough to hold its own?

I hadn't seen that we'd be getting a new novel this year, that's good to know. Looking at the summary I'm not sure how I feel about Peter doing something other than working for the police.

I'll probably read The October Man at some point but I've got enough other books to read that it might take a while to get round to it since it seems only loosely connected to the other books.

Quote

I did start one of this years Hugo nominated best novels which sounded urban fantasyish...and it is...well more rural fantasyish...but I got a bit squeamish about it when...

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The main character chopped off the head of a little girl and ended her life!  It was sort of an act of mercy I guess since she had been gnawed on by some kind of monster and was pretty much doomed.

But it was a bit more than I am prepared to be reading about at the moment and I'm not really sure I'm going to continue with it.

 

 

I did think the same as you about the genre, in many ways it feels very much an urban fantasy but the Navajo Nation isn't particularly urban.

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12 hours ago, ants said:

What was the Hugo book?

on the October Man, I’m not paying hardcover prices for a novella! When the price drops I’ll pick it up.  

(I had to look it up) It's Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse.  In the US you can get The October Man ebook for $4.99 which seems reasonable for a new novella.

1 hour ago, williamjm said:

I did think the same as you about the genre, in many ways it feels very much an urban fantasy but the Navajo Nation isn't particularly urban.

I tend to subdivide urban fantasy into - urban, suburban, and rural.  That tends to cover the majority of settings.  There are a fair amount of rural based stories.  I tended to put most of the Sookie Stackhouse into the rural fantasy category and was rather tickled when I heard Charlene Harris speak once and she started out saying she wrote urban fantasy but that she felt her stories should be referred to as rural fantasy.  I agree the Navajo Nation isn't urban but just from the first few chapters I read of the book, the location seemed pretty isolated and rural.  Not sure if the locations change as the novel progresses, however.  I think the crucial factor about any urban fantasy - no matter if urban or rural - is that the location is as much a character in the story as any person.

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I split my urban fantasy folders on my kindle “Urban Fantasy”, “Historic urban fantasy “ and “poor urban fantasy “. The historic captures books like Michelle West’s Cast series and some of the steam punk. 

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22 hours ago, lady narcissa said:

(I had to look it up) It's Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse.  In the US you can get The October Man ebook for $4.99 which seems reasonable for a new novella.

I tend to subdivide urban fantasy into - urban, suburban, and rural.  That tends to cover the majority of settings.  There are a fair amount of rural based stories.  I tended to put most of the Sookie Stackhouse into the rural fantasy category and was rather tickled when I heard Charlene Harris speak once and she started out saying she wrote urban fantasy but that she felt her stories should be referred to as rural fantasy.  I agree the Navajo Nation isn't urban but just from the first few chapters I read of the book, the location seemed pretty isolated and rural.  Not sure if the locations change as the novel progresses, however.  I think the crucial factor about any urban fantasy - no matter if urban or rural - is that the location is as much a character in the story as any person.

Some of the book is set in the town of Tse Bonito, but most of the book is fairly rural. I think it is a book where the setting is a key part, it's probably the most interesting thing about the book.

A good example of rural urban fantasy would be Ben Aaronovitch's Foxglove Summer, where we have Peter giving an urban perspective on rural England, I think it's one of my favourite books in the series.

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On 6/20/2019 at 5:51 PM, williamjm said:

A good example of rural urban fantasy would be Ben Aaronovitch's Foxglove Summer, where we have Peter giving an urban perspective on rural England, I think it's one of my favourite books in the series.

Yes, I've got that one on my rural fantasy goodreads shelf!  That is probably one of my favorite Peter Grants.  I think Broken Homes slightly edges it out as my favorite, however.  I don't think anything can surpass a mystery set in a Brutalist building for me.

I've started The October Man.  Other than slightly wishing I'd waited till the fall to read it, I'm enjoying it.  It does seem to do a decent job of having similarities yet being different from the Grant books.  One thing that is interesting the magic department seems to be a bit more integrated into the German police force than in England.  There is no Nightingale sort of controlling figure that we've seem so far.  Just a regular policeman who has happened to be placed in that department and gets trained in magic as a result and he seems to be able to reveal its existence to police woman he is working with on this case and answer questions about magic.  I keep forgetting its a novella so I imagine I will be disappointed when it ends more quickly.

ETA: Actually the MagicForce division in Germany does seem to follow a similar setup to that in Britain now that I've read a little further.  It's just cutting that bit out since its a much shorter story and it isn't as obvious when you first start reading.

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Um, SPOILERS????

 

I’ve read the first four Lizzie Grace books by Keri Arthur. I’d read some of Arthur’s first books which were very overpowered characters and had a comic book feel to the world. They were ok but not really my cup of tea. It was nice that they were set in Australia. 

However, the Lizzie Grace books are far more nuanced, and I’ve really enjoyed them. There is a ubiquitous love interest, but although it is obvious it develops at a good (and realistic!) pace. The world is interesting, with decent world building and again is set in Victoria, Australia. My one nitpick would be that she has werewolves, and uses some other cliches.  It would have been nice if they were were-dingoes instead. 

The bad guys aren’t particularly nuanced, but some are original (others definitely are not). 

Overall I’d recommend them as a good fun read. Won’t knock your socks off, but we’ll worth the time. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Because my kindle ran out of memory, and it was an old v4, and I like to download ALL my books (hence why the Kindle 4 was full), I had to buy a new kindle.  Because my old kindle was a v4, none of my folders/archives were in the cloud.  So I not only had to download ALL my books, I've had to sort them again.  

All of which has been leading to some re-reading of old series I've not touched in a while.  I recently re-read the Bite Back series by Mark Henwick.  This isn't exactly ground breaking writing, and the main character is a little Mary Sue, but at the same time it breaks a number of norms (e.g. a number of same-sex relationships/innuendo) and is quite a lot of fun.  Although its mostly not really special, it isn't particularly weak anywhere (IMO).  The plots are pretty decent, and the world building has been quite good as well (although it does use some stereotypes, vampires & werewolves).  But giving it a bit of a modern twist.  Overall, pretty enjoyable.  Another book is coming out soon after a three year gap (part of the reason they had fallen off my radar).  

On 6/29/2019 at 9:29 PM, C.T. Phipps said:

I'm really glad the Hollows is starting up again.

Is it too late for Rachel/Ivy?

I hope not!

Wow, I didn't know this is/was happening.  Not entirely sure how I feel about it, I really love that series, liked the ending, and was kinda happy leaving it where it was.  Especially as the author has a tendency to sometimes kill major characters off, and I don't want to see any more favourites die.  

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If you're looking for McDonalds urban fantasy, I recommend the Elemental Assassin books. There's like twenty of them and probably more that follow an assassin with a heart of gold named Gin in a town full of corrupt evil doers she invariably has to kill. The majority of her foes are Elementals who have various fire, ice, water, lightning, and so on powes but there's also vampires, giants, and (Tolkien) dwarves.

It's first book is for sale on Audible's Great Escapes for $5 like my Rules of Supervillainy book (which is NOT urban fantasy).

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