Guest Post: Metamorphosis of Urban Fantasy and Cover Art Models by Andrea from the Little Red Reviewer

Urban Fantasy. it’s a slippery thing - sometimes scary, sometimes romantic, usually thrilling, often starring attractive people who try very hard to do the right thing. Pretty hard to say you’re a fan of something, or not, when it’s definition keeps changing every 5 years. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something about most contemporary urban fantasy that just doesn’t do it for me (and by contemporary, I mean UF that was written in the last 5 years or so).

I was shocked at how difficult this essay was for me to write. I was getting so close, but my words never quite matched how I felt. If I was writing this the old skool way, on paper, with a pencil and an eraser, I’d have erased through the fibers of the paper by now.

I used to read Urban Fantasy, except back then we also called it Magical Realism, and many fans used those terms interchangeably. Some of my favorite authors in that genre were Charles de Lint and Neil Gaiman. De Lint wrote about mythology come to life, regular midwestern college kids who had conversations with crows and coyotes, who traveled to other planes and returned mildly unscathed after seeing another level of our world. In Gaiman’s famous Neverwhere, readers got a look into an unknown London, where a regular Joe helps a woman in need and finds himself sucked into a fantastical and horribly dangerous world populated by all sorts of strange people.

For the most part, the UF books I was exposed to when I was younger, and this was before days of the blogosphere and Amazon, were populated by ultra scary paranormal creatures, and humans who ran away from them instead of befriending them or flirting with them. The urban fantasy of my youth was all about the hero’s journey, of the character being forever changed by their experience. The plot was more mystery or coming-of-age than romance, the characters more interested in staying not-dead or not-possessed than in making sure the reader knew they were strong and sexy, yet vulnerable too. The characters were also often quite pissed off about being ripped from their every day lives and forced to do fantasy type things, like slay monsters or talk to spirit animals, or move to a different plane through music. This isn’t to say that nothing written back then (or nothing I read) had paranormal creatures who had romances with humans - The Skin Trade by George R R Martin is an excellent example. That one sure scared the shit out of me.

And here’s the part of this essay where I use clunky and inelegant language in an attempt to say how I truly feel, end up sounding like an idiot, and possibly piss a bunch of folks off. Ya’ll ready for some epically inelegant language?

So much of the urban fantasy I see when I go to Barnes and Noble these days seems like a fashion spread for really tight pants, anorexia, and neat tattoos. A stupid reason to be sure, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say the cover art on a lot of these books is a major turn off to me. Judging a book by the cover? Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing, and I already said it was stupid.

I think I know what they’re attempting to do with that cover art. I could be 100% wrong, but I think they’re trying to tell me that this book features a strong female main character. See how strong she is? I know she’s strong because her back is arched, she’s really skinny, she’s showing me her butt and or midriff, she’s got some super hawt tattoos, and she’s probably holding a weapon at a really weird angle too. My gut reaction is that someone feels it’s very, very important that I know right away how ravishingly beautiful and sexy this character is, and that there aren’t any other attributes about her or the story than they’d like to convey to me via the cover art. She’s hot and sexy, and that should be enough for me, right? Umm... what?

Someone’s brilliant concept of “how to get someone to pick up this book” completely and utterly backfired on me.

Yes, I’m aware of the stupidity of judging a book by it’s cover. but hey, the first thing that caught my interest for the Hurley and the Bledsoe was the cover art, so it goes both ways.

I’m an equal opportunist - I don’t give a shit what the character’s gender is or if the person is attractive or not, or what gender the person on the cover is. I want a character who shouts from the cover art “spend 300 pages with me because I’m fascinating and I’ll change your life”, not one shouts “spend 300 pages with me because I look better in tight pants than you do”.

This is very difficult for me to explain, and no matter the words I use, I feel like I’m sounding like some shithead who wants to go back in time to when women weren’t strong characters in books, women writers couldn’t get contracts, and publishers didn’t want to work with women, and basically, women’s lives sucked like you can’t believe. I don’t mean to sound like that. remember what I said about clunky and inelegant language? Good thing I’m not really using these ovaries, they seem to be defective. Not enough feminism in there, also, not enough elegant words.

Am I knocking down an entire subgenre because of it’s cover art? A little bit. Does the author have any control over the cover art? Usually not. I’ll agree whole heartedly with anyone who says “but that’s stupid!”. Maybe deep down I’m just jealous of all those skinny babes who can eat all the carbs they want and never get fat. Maybe I’m scared of having to face my own insecurities. Would I read more UF if the cover art was different? Maybe, but maybe not. I prefer my fantasy much, much darker than a lot of UF goes. Wow, repression and insecurities! it’s a winning combo! Or not.

This isn’t to say I’m a total UF hater. I recently fell head over heels in love with Stina Leicht’s Of Blood and Honey (and it’s sequel And Blue Skies from Pain) and Alex Bledsoe’s The Hum and the Shiver. Both feature the expected trappings of urban fantasy - secrets hidden in plain sight, ancient mythos, a hidden world of non-humans, and doomed romances. The characters are brave, flawed, face destruction if their secrets are made public, and willing to do what needs doing even when afraid. The intriguing cover art didn’t hurt either.

It’s completely possible those two books spoiled me rotten when it comes to UF.

Urban fantasy is like every other genre and subgenre - there are people who love it, and people like me who aren’t so keen on it in large doses but still find the occasional title to enjoy. The way those books fly off the shelves at the bookstore, me preferring other types of books isn’t hurting their sales one bit.

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Please visit the Little Red Reviewer and follow her on Twitter @redhead5318 for more reviews and insights of the sci-fi and fantasy community.

She also organized one of the more interesting projects I've seen around known as the Bookstore Bookblogger Connection. Through it she helps give online reviews a voice outside of the internet, while at the same time helping bookstores promote novels they're trying to sell. For more information about all that it entails, please read this description. It's very much a worthwhile project, so hope it succeeds in its endeavor.