The “urban fantasy” genre (or “paranormal”, “supernatural” et al) is really big these days. The vile Twilight series is getting all the credit for the rise in popularity of books about vamps, werewolves, fae or faerie, witches and various other ghosties and beasties. This pisses me off enormously because hellooo? Buffy? Anne Rice novels? And the hundreds of other books to be found in the SF&F shelves that were deemed too nerdy for the general adult / young adult populace? Now it’s “cool”. And hey it’s all down to a series that is misogynist, anti-feminist (or anti any-non-passive-female; the only strong female characters are Evil), abstinence-only and MORMON. BLECCHHHH!
I’ve always loved the fantasy genre (oh I like SF too, except for the really heavy-duty military-space-opera stuff) starting with Lord Of The Rings at nine years old, and moving on from there. It’s true a lot of fantasy is, well, bilge, and poorly-written bilge at that. The same-old, same-old heroes and dragons and swords and beautiful useless heroines.
Some fantasy is pretty damn wonderful though. Terry Pratchett is one of my absolute favourite authors, over all genres, not merely the SF&F category. Personally I think his books should be on the same shelves as the posh Booker-Prize-winning Literature, he’s so good; besides he got an OBE for Services To Literature so the Queen (or some lackey) obviously agrees with me! For an incorrigible bookophile (technically it’s “bibliophile” but I don’t want to bring the so-called Good Book into this), even one who is a compulsive list-maker, such a thing as “Absolute Favourite Authors” is difficult to quantify.
Continue reading ‘Book blurb – Urban fantasy: Patricia Briggs’
