Urban Fantasy: I wish there was more necromancy and less group sex

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Urban Fantasy: I wish there was more necromancy and less group sex

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Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

I read one of those Monster Hunter books out of sequence because I like the urban fantasy genre and it seemed up my alley. It kinda sucked. Everything Stonecutter Joe said above is true, though the one I read also included an EVIL villain that was as dumb and thinly realized as a cardboard silhouette target - fitting actually. Read the Sandman Slim stuff from Richard Kadrey instead, if you haven't already.

Wizchine fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Jul 27, 2016

# ¿ Jul 27, 2016 04:25

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 14:33

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

I like Stephen Blaockmoore's Eric Carter series - though there's only two books so far (Dead Things, Broken Souls). He wrote a third, tore it up because he thought it sucked, and started it over - it's due in late 2017. But City of the Lost is a stand-alone book set in the same LA with a different protagonist and shares some secondary characters - I'd recommend starting with that one first if you're interested.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2016 20:30

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

I'd also recommend Patricia Briggs' Mercy Thompson series. Werewolves, fae, vampires - with a healthy bit of Native American mythos - set in Washington State. Well-written and not cringe-inducing.

# ¿ Aug 16, 2016 20:37

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

OmniBeer posted:

I did really enjoy those books and was excited for the third before he restarted- good to know it actually has a date finally. Might need to look up that standalone one now.

Ah, even better - I misremembered and it's slotted for February 2017 - not so far off. From the author's site:

"A lot of people have been asking when HUNGRY GHOSTS will be coming out, since it was so badly delayed. Well, I turned it in in January, and since it was over a year late they had to figure out where to put it into the production schedule. Right now it's set for February 7th, 2017. Trying to get it in any sooner would be like trying to slot a boxcar into the middle of a moving train."

# ¿ Aug 16, 2016 20:47

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Yeah, when I mention Urban Fantasy that I've read or I'm reading, I leave it off the list because I'm slightly ashamed. That said, I'm sure I'll buy the next one in the series as soon as it comes out. I'm also ashamed to say I read Kim Harrison's Hollows series all the way through, which is more embarrassing by a country mile.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2016 01:58

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

To be fair, he's at his smarmiest and most unfocused in the first book, and he delves into most of the stuff you are pointing out in later books, actually. Keep in mind there's always going to be some amount of cheese, though.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2016 07:08

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Codex Alera's romance wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either - in fact I had to wikipedia the series to even remember it. Man, I've read some bad urban fantasy "romances" and that poo poo ain't even close.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2016 00:20

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Scorchy posted:

So the thread was recommending Mercy Thompson/Patricia Briggs. I'm like 120 pages into the first book.

The prose is fine, but so far it's been wall-to-wall alpha dominant werewolf werewolf alpha werewolf dominant alpha alpha. Please tell me it gets better.

It gets less werewolf-centric as it goes along, but they're the core group of beings Mercy associates with. I think the world Briggs builds is very compelling, and the slant on the supernatural critters is often refreshing.

Note that I accidentally started the series with the second book, before going back and reading the first. (I never noticed I was "missing" the first book, by the way,which is always the mark of a good writer.) The second book is focused on vampires and is a good read, iirc. Gut out book one, and if you don't like book two, then bail out I suppose.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2016 03:23

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Mars4523 posted:

I figured that was because she's a giant murdery dog.

I've avoided the Mercy Thompson series because it supposedly has some pretty lovely gender dynamics, despite having a female main character who does lots of things.

The nice thing about the Kate Daniels series regarding Alpha nonsense is that even though it has like a dozen Alpha shapeshifters and her love interest is the local Alpha of Alphas, being an outsider who is pretty powerful in her own right Kate gets to point out shapeshifter bullshit and laugh.

I don't remember any issue with "lovely gender dynamics," honestly. The main objection I can think of is an event occurs in a later book that could trigger people: rape.

Mercy's character operates the same way as you describe the Kate Daniels character: she's an outsider that can challenge the wolves and call them on their bullshit (though she marries the local alpha, not the "alpha of alphas").

# ¿ Sep 19, 2016 17:33

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Wade Wilson posted:

gently caress that. It's probably going to be something far more likely to twist/break Harry in further situations.

MirrorMirror Harry took the Leanansidhe up on the deal she offers him at the very beginning of the novel, and she twists him far more rapidly than being the Winter Knight will be able to do on it's own.

Makes sense. Then Harry gets a look up close of what he may be down the road on his current path.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2016 21:03

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Murphy will be the Winter Knight and Butters will be the new Knight of the Cross.

# ¿ Sep 21, 2016 03:10

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

I think it's enough that we can have antagonists that mirror or echo our protagonists without them being literally, alternate-reality versions of the protagonists. I mean, the former is a staple of fiction across all genres.

# ¿ Sep 22, 2016 05:57

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Drifter posted:

Maybe. I think it's becuase journalism is such a nebulous undertaking, while still being categorically Brainy rather than Brawny - like a detective does similar poo poo, but there's an end result and measures of success. You'd have to demonstrate beats hitting those results and measures , same with something like teacher or Lawyer or something. Librarians and Paranormal Investigator are also things where a writer doesn't really have to demonstrate any particular skillset.

But a journalist also has that thing where a person's job allows for traveling, so they aren't tied to one place.

I think it's just an ease of use trope. I'm sorry, I mean a lazy trope.

Plus a journalist character is an easy way to introduce background or plot information, i.e. "I was doing some research and i found that ..." or "I talked to one of my sources in the department and he told me that..."

As a tangent, I hate movies where the antagonistic reporter hounds a detective and prints hostile articles about him/her and the techniques they use. In my decades on earth, I've never read any kind of article like that in a newspaper, nor ever seen such a TV news report. It only happens in the movies and stands out to me as patently false whenever I see it.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2016 23:30

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

I just remember feeling the introduction to Michael was a bit awkward - we're dropped en media res and now there's this God-fearing knight all of a sudden, and the cosmological questions that implies. I also though Michael's nemesis - some sort of dragon who only popped up in one subsequent book iirc - was corny.

I also remember liking Fool Moon quite a bit, apart from Murphy's histrionics. Talking about lazy writing, it drives me batty when you have characters that are always too angry to listen and cut off characters before they can explain themselves. Butcher relied on that a lot early on with Murphy and Morgan. It can work once or twice, but quickly grows exasperating if overused.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2016 06:19

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

flosofl posted:

That still doesn't make either one a "nemesis" for Michael.

Jesus, I read it 10 years ago. I remember he had an exchange along the lines of "I killed the dragon so and so" who was one of the last ones on earth, and I though the implication was that both were heading for a showdown in the future.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2016 17:50

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

ImpAtom posted:

Murphy gave Harry a chance to explain himself and Harry straight-up lied to her.

I honestly don't remember the details of every interchange (again - 10 years since I read those early books), but I do remember the gist of the confrontations with Morgan and Karen were along those lines. Maybe I wasn't approaching Harry enough as an unreliable narrator.

# ¿ Oct 3, 2016 17:53

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

AllTerrineVehicle posted:

I think Thomas regressing like that is weird only because butcher seemingly took pains to get rid of the rapey bits as much as he could, and then walked it back

Mostly i just think butcher lacks the finesse to deal with it successfully.

Actually just thinking it over now, it seems like there's a bit of incongruity with how the white court houses feed. Whats-his-name was feeding on fear at splattercon, but as far as I know nobody was afraid of him specifically and he was chowing down on the ambient fear. Yet apparently the Raiths need somebody to be lusting after them specifically? Couldn't Thomas potentially hire himself out as protection at one of Marcone's brothels and siphon off some of the ambient emotion?

Yeah, but he wants hot woman lust, and not middle-aged doughy dude lust....

Well, to guarantee his source of lust he should be running his own brothels, so I'm kind of glad Butcher didn't go down THAT road.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2016 22:25

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Durendal posted:

So I was thinking about the big bad apocalyptic thing that happens every couple thousand years. The only thing really big that comes to mind is that Christ was born around two thousand years ago. Maybe it's a cycle where God takes mortal form? Would explain a few things.

Or something else comes, and God took mortal form just to stop it. Maybe it's a bit like Sandman Slim where God stole the universe from the Old Ones and they periodically come knocking because they want it back.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2016 17:25

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

docbeard posted:

Someone called it a rumor so it became a rumor. Naming is just that powerful.

Touche

# ¿ Oct 25, 2016 22:09

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Dresden likes calling Nicodemus "Nick" quite a bit - not sure what effect that's had, though, other than annoying him.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2016 22:10

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Wheat Loaf posted:

Is there anything good / noteworthy in UF that's set in the 19th / early-20th century?

I enjoyed The Golem and the Jinni - it's set in turn-of-the-20th-century New York, and features, sure enough, a Golem and a Jinni.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2016 22:09

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:

Finished the first Mercy Thompson book today. Wasn't nearly as Anita-Blakey as I thought it might be. I kept expecting it to suddenly jerk the wheel and veer off into paranormal romance, but it stayed the course. I would peg it somewhere between Dresden Files and Magic Bites.

One of my favorite series. The relationship stuff is a large part of the stories, but never cringe-worthy or shower-worthy. Briggs is a good writer.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2017 07:17

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Jeeze, I guess I'm a monster. Still going to read Patricia Briggs, though.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2017 06:18

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

thelazyblank posted:

Yeah, it's hard to tell just how much is Jim Butcher trying to write Harry as the world's most important wizardly man-child and how much is Butcher just being a horny man.

It's both, of course, but it's hard to tell with Dresden being the main set of eyes how much is in each pile. Does Butcher do the same thing in his other novels?

I don't recall that kind of thing going on in the Codex Alera series, but I could be wrong.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2017 01:48

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

I don't know, fellow urban fantasy readers. I've been reading Howard's Conan stories off and on lately,, and I certainly read my share of stuff way back when I was an English major (hello, Joseph Conrad and Arthur Conan Doyle), and I'm pretty comfortable with the sins of the handful of modern urban fantasy writers I've read - they pale in comparison to much of the stuff that forms the canon of English and American fiction.

You write what you know, and I'd rather have Jim Butcher skip writing black characters, for example, than inadvertently write some awful stereotype, or write a white character and paint him black.

# ¿ Jan 8, 2017 07:50

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Geokinesis posted:

Yeah I agree that it is good that not everyone writes like Lovecraft but to handwave by saying well at least it isn't that bad seems a bit weak.

I did set a fairly low bar in the examples I gave. I suppose I feel an author should earn more criticism about what he or she wrote, not what he or she chose not to write.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 03:22

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

I'm looking forward to a bunch of February releases - and hope you are, too:

Feb 07 - Patricia Briggs - Silence Fallen (A Mercy Thompson Novel)
Feb 07 - Stephen Blackmoore - Hungry Ghosts (Eric Carter)
Feb 07 - Neil Gaiman - Norse Mythology
Feb 27 - Richard Kadrey -The Wrong Dead Guy (Another Coop Heist)

# ¿ Jan 22, 2017 01:55

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Wheat Loaf posted:

New Anno Dracula book is out the week after next as well.

You know, I keep hearing good things about Anno Dracula in this thread, so I think I'll give the books a go. Are they written in a faux Victorian style - or just take place in that era?

# ¿ Jan 22, 2017 02:25

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

I liked it, but I always look forward to the Mercy Thompson stuff. This one heavily involves vampires, so maybe that will sway you one way or another. Spoiler for something revealed a quarter of the way through the novel: The setting shifts to Europe, specifically Italy and Prague, and we get to see a bit of the politics of continental vampires and werewolves, who - if you remember - don't report to the Marrok.

Wizchine fucked around with this message at 22:20 on Mar 13, 2017

# ¿ Mar 13, 2017 22:16

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

torgeaux posted:

It's enjoyable if you like the series, but it's the first time I've been able to say unequivocally, "Hey, there's some real power creep here."

I think I know what you are talking about, but not sure. Was it: Adam being recognized a "the 4th most capable werewolf in unarmed combat in the New World" (behind The Marrok, Charles, and Asil I'm imagining) and the way he mopped the floor with the master vampire he fought? Or was it this whole "agent of chaos" idea that was played up for Mercy being the daughter of Coyote? Or something else like her power over the dead?

Wizchine fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Mar 14, 2017

# ¿ Mar 14, 2017 00:35

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

torgeaux posted:

No, that's been setup earlier that he was always one of the top. It was the Mercy aspect, especially her greater ability to control ghosts, not just talk to them or see them. Combined with the whole being more like Coyote than coyote, and it's a step up.

Got it. The only thing I hope regarding that is that it was a temporary side effect of interacting with the Golem. But even if it were, I can see that power being rejuvenated in some future plot point. Mercy being the daughter of Coyote leaves the door open for a lot of power creep should Briggs be so inclined.

# ¿ Mar 14, 2017 01:59

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Ornamented Death posted:

http://www.voxmagazine.com/arts/boo...ecb5bb4e0e.html

The relevant part:

So 2018 for Peace Talks.

Yay. It sure beats "unknown."

# ¿ Apr 25, 2017 02:18

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Dienes posted:

I actually read Staked and its almost worth it for the amount of time spent making GBS threads on Atticus for how he fucks up people's lives, to the point where the werewolves banish him from his own hometown.

I like in the series how he's always getting played and outfoxed by his vampire ex-lawyer. Because I don't like the main character either. Also, the best comedic character in the series is not his lovely dog, but Coyote.

I must have been desperate for brainless entertainment when I kept at this series.

# ¿ Apr 25, 2017 20:25

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

navyjack posted:

Agree! Craig Schaffer is a machine. Also, check out Stephen Blackmoore's "Dead Things" (can't remember if that's the name of the series or just a book). It's got a reluctant necromancer willing to burn LA to the ground for the ones he loves. Less ridiculous but about as noir as the Sandman Slim books.

Yeah, Dead Things is the first book in the Eric Carter series (Dead Things, Broken Souls, and Hungry Ghosts are the 3 entries so far). City of the Lost is a standalone book with a different protagonist, but set in the same Los Angeles "universe". In fact I'd start with that one first - it's the earliest one written, too.

# ¿ May 10, 2017 02:33

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Also, the comparison to Kadrey's Sandman Slim stuff is fair - especially with the Los Angeles locale. But Kadrey has everything dialed up to 11 right off the bat in Sandman Slim, whereas Blackmoore's series is a little more grounded (though things get quite a bit more bonkers as it goes along).

# ¿ May 10, 2017 02:37

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

flosofl posted:

I love City of the Lost so much more than the Eric Carter books (and I do like the Eric Carter books).

Me too, it's much more lurid and fun. Eric Carter is sort of a boring, blank slate of a character in comparison to Joe Sunday.

# ¿ May 10, 2017 03:38

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Clearly, they should have danced to Front Line Assembly's Iceolate, followed by cevin Key's Frozen Sky for the ballad. That would be in line with the grimdark Winter Fae court.

# ¿ May 31, 2017 08:52

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

God dammnit, how many times do I have to go to bat for Patricia Briggs in this thread. She writes about the Tri Cities area of Washington, and I think she writes well. :colbert:

Also, Stephen Blackmoore writes Los Angeles better than just about anyone.

Wizchine fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Jun 4, 2017

# ¿ Jun 4, 2017 07:50

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

I thought Butters got waxed a few books ago when he was shot in the church - and was kind of disappointed that he wasn't. The books are a bit too safe in that regard - it doesn't hurt to prune supporting characters now and again.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2017 21:49

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 14:33

Wizchine: Sep 17, 2007; Television is the retina
of the mind's eye.

Mac is the living avatar of the Big Mac.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2017 21:23

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Urban Fantasy: I wish there was more necromancy and less group sex

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