Calmer now

[lissa_dora]

To people who read/enjoy urban fantasy/modern fantasy novels:

1. What are the elements of urban/modern fantasy which you've read and enjoyed?
   
   
2. What are the mistakes you've seen in urban/modern fantasy novels which should be avoided?
   From reading Laurell K. Hamilton, I can glean:
   
   • Over-repetition of the same phrases (she has two or three which she uses at least once, maybe more, verbatim, in every book)
     
     
   • Writing pornography ahead of plot, or in lieu of plot or, worst, pretending to be plot.
     
   • Taking three novels to get to a point (more or less: in the Marry Gentry books, she never seems to get where she's heading in the course of a book)
     
     
   • Excessive Mary Sue-ing... but I'm a little torn on this. The Black Jewels series by Anne Bishop manages to portray the most powerful people ever known to their universe without it seeming silly... but Anita & Marry keep getting more powerful, and it does seem silly.
     
     
   • Badly scaling the antagonists. I believe it was either LizReay or JmKiru who pointed this out half a decade ago - in the first few novels, Anita's ability to handle antagonist varies wildly, as she takes on vastly powerful vampires and then has trouble with, reasonable, much weaker antagonists.
     
     
   • Lack of continuity between (or within) novels.... I'm torn on this one, too. MZB pulled it off with her Darkover books... is this because she wrote in a more forgiving era, or was a better writer, or I'm just not listening to her fans bitch?
     
     
   • Badly managing an excessive cast of characters... flashing back to Darkover, MZB handled this by having two to five characters be the center of each novel, and the background in others. LKH has Anita (or Merry) at the center of each novel, and this ever-growing menagerie of others as well, so that you lose the feel for any one of them in the crowd. Too-many-characters was often my flaw when writing in high school...
   
   
3. Have you ever read an urban fantasy novel set at a college? If so, what, and how did it work?
   
   
4. What urban/modern fantasy should I read? I've read:
   
   • Charles deLint - Someplace to be Flying and a goodly number of others in this world
     
   • Laurell K. Hamilton - everything Anita Blake and Merry Gentry. Yes, it is "guilty pleasure" sort of reading, on par with romance novels.
     
     
   • Dime Store Magic - Kelley Armstrong
     
   • Moon Called - Patricia Briggs
     
   • Mercedes Lackey's series of "SERRAted Edge" fast cars and faster elves books, even fluffier than Laurell K. Hamilton, and the equally silly Diana Tregarde books.
     
     
   • Anne Rice, of course, the first few in the Vampire Chronicles as well as the first few in the (much better, in my opinion) Witching Hour (Lasher) series
     
     
   • Sherri Tepper - pretty much everything she's written, about 1/4 of which could count as Urban Fantasy
     
   • Ellen Datlow Terri Windling's series of (sometimes modern) retellings of fairy tales, both the short story anthologies and the novels which she edits.
     
   • Sunshine - Robin McKinley
   
   
5. What makes something an urban/modern fantasy? ;-)
   
   
6. What do you think of the genre as a whole?