flemmings | 90% of everything

Harry Dresden is teaching me to speed read. You only have to read the first sentence of a paragraph, then run an eye through the rest in case any important words jump out, then the next first sentence, and so on. I can't say the exercise is worth it. This is very Campbell soup fantasy-- all the usual ingredients tasting much the same no matter what the label says. Not sure why he's such a big hit; the Night Side is at least enjoyable fluff.

I was going to say But at least there are no vampires, only of course there are vampires. What there isn't is vampires as written by women writers. I picked up something by Nalini Singh, figuring that an Indo-New Zealander would have a different take on things. Nope. The same as Kittredge and McLeod: double whammy female something (in this case a vampire hunter turned angel-with-wings) with 'too many hawt boyfriends' problems and err 'default urban fantasy vocabulary' problems. "She sucked in a breath as she felt the temptation of Dmitri's scent wrap around her in a glide of fur and sex and wanton indulgence." Dmitri is a vampire, of course.

There's a problem when you begin with the best, as I did in the genre which I have to call 21st Century Urban Fantasy, to distinguish it from the folksy likes of Huff and de Lint. Aaronovitch and Griffin are about the urbs, not the genre tropes; but why is no one else?

Saw Miyazaki fils et pere's Poppy Hill yesterday. It was pleasant and cheering, that now nostalgic pre-Tokyo Olympics world; the war still casting shadows on the present but the future looking so much better than the past. (A lot like the early Rainy Willow stories, where the shadow of the Bakumatsu disturbed the precarious peace people had made for themselves in Meiji. Only there the sun of Taishou was a long way off, and we're stuck in the overcast, slightly oppressive, willow-shaded world of Yanaka (for no reason except that's how Yanesen looked to me on my first visits.)

But I doubt if I'd see it again. It's a fantasy Yokohama, which maybe was that small and unbusy back in '63; thirty years later it was unnavigable if you arrived by train. Certainly it's not the Tokyo that makes me want to see Whisper of the Heart again. Pleasant though was the occasional interpolation of Ue o muite arukou", that was playing in NAmerica at the same time.

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Butcher's detective series first couple books are indeed by the numbers. He improves, if you've the fortitude to wade thru the first two or three books though. That was also his first series, started as a class assignment, as it turns out.

I'm reading no. 3 at the moment. Should I ever run out of reading material, she says deadpan, I might look at the later vols.

I would also point out that Aaronovitch and Griffin came later in the progress of urban fantasy, so they don't *have* to trample on the tropes in the way that the first few people did. I'm no fan of Butcher, but he started before either of them (in 2000), so it's a bit like saying Tolkien is full of cliches -- well, yes, for sure, but he got there first. This doesn't make me like him any more at all! I find him very annoying in many ways! But still, in his time he was definitely breaking some new ground. IMO a more interesting question is why there aren't more Aaronovithces and Griffins *right now*, since the ground has been broken by those who came before. But (I am afraid that) maybe there isn't as big an audience for truly "urban" fantasy as I would like. I mean, Harry Potter may be "urban fantasy" but his adventures took place mostly at Hogwarts, not *really* London. It's more boarding school fantasy.

(I have been told Butcher gets MUCH better, btw, but I have gotten sidetracked from attempting to wade through his work.)

I imagine there aren't more Aaronovitches and Griffins now for the same reason there were no innovative Butchers in the 25 years following the release of the Ballantine edition of LotR; while there *was* an overload of medieval fantasy involving dragons and wizards and dwarfs and quests. Too many people will follow that beaten path, just as they're following the hawt vampire and fae beaten path of urban fantasy.

But de Lint and Huff wrote urban fantasy before Butcher. Butcher just introduced more noir than they did, which is probably why he took off. I mean, he's got fae and vampires too, as de Lint and Huff did; but he also has a guy in a black leather trenchcoat.

The other reason might be that doing what Aaronovitch and Griffin do is tough. Theirs is a new kind of system, not 'throw stock ingredients into the blender and serve chilled.' I hope that Cornell will be following the same line.

(What strikes me as odd is the fact that detective noir was very big on sensaplace. The noirish fantasy writers I've read, Butcher-to-date very much included, don't push the feeling of place nearly enough for me.)

Cornell hasn't been released here but man, the summary looks like "what would happen if Aaronovitch went dark". He's another ex-Doctor Who writer, ahahaha. It's starting to feel like the equivalent of Law & Order for US actors. XD

I would dispute that Aaronovitch's magic is a new system. His magic feels a lot like D&D (very, very rigid for the PCs, and whateverthefuck the GM wants for the NPCs) except the dice rolling is invisible. And I haven't played Ars Magica, which he said he based his system on XD His magic is pretty stock imo; it's his London-building and prose that really set him apart.

Griffin OTOH I had better be reading for the fantasy elements because ... there's not much else there XD I posit that she was more interested in writing a sprawling love letter to London than anything else, which is what makes her stuff off the usually beaten path - 99% of writers would have focused on something else as their subject, and they do, and it comes out differently. She found a way to make it metaphorical and metaphysical instead of just a travelogue. (I did see one review that said her system was like so-and-so's, but I hadn't read it, so can't speak to it.)

Aaronovitch to date is the only undark writer of the lot IMO. Ghastly stuff happens but he doesn't roll in it. Well, include Gaiman on his side too, sort of.

I wasn't thinking of the magic system so much as the world-building, or rather, what elements they decided to focus on. Sabina analyzes the lineage better than I ever could, but let's say that I'm seeing waaaay much more Hamilton-descended sexy vampires running around a bunch of London place names than I do genius loci. I mean, Aaronovitch does have vampires, they're just-- different from anyone else's that I've read

Ahhhhh! I misunderstood you, my fault. Agreed with you completely then :)

And you know what, you're right about Aaronovitch being the only undark one! Which might work in his favor, I wonder? It sets him apart from all the others, *and* it codes more mainstream, whether or not it is. I would not hand self-avowed fantasy-averse people a book with a Sexy Vampire or a Creepy Surreal Gothic City on its cover, but I *would* hand them something emblazoned with a really cool map of London. /1000% speculation about reader psychology

Sometimes I wonder if he isn't too bright, given what happens to people he loves, but then I look at what others do, and well no. Dark always defaults to the same stuff. Anyway Aaronovitch's undarkness is probably Peter's in the first place, and it's a pleasure to have someone who's both sensitive and bouncy.

Oh, and meant to say I do agree with you about Griffin's sprawling love letter to London. Tops whatever plot there is. I do think her system is on to something, though.

Do you mean what happens with Lesley? Cause if I were to indulge in unfounded speculations, I think he's going to build her up to something there. A hack would take an easy way out and have her make some kind of pact with demons, but I suspect he has something better planned. (I guess there's also Simone, but I was utterly un-invested in that, so I took no emotional damage. Although I am sure Peter did.) I really like Peter, ahahaha, I am rooting for him to stay the good if slightly ditsy cop.

And I really like Griffin's system, as you know :D It's so distinctive -- I wonder if it can beget imitations (or inspired-by), and what that would look like.

Never really occurred to me that Butcher was breaking ground in 2000, tbh -- I mean, I started reading urban fantasy with Emma Bull in high school, and it was urban enough (boring urban mid-America, which was the entire point; at this time it wasn't supposed to be about painting up the interests of interesting cities) and contained sexy fairies and whatnot -- but more to the point 90s Vertigo had covered the entire ground, hadn't it? Sandman, Lucifer, Constantine. And then Gaiman went on to write Neverwhere, and there was Buffy, and Laurell K. Hamilton, and.

It's just been two completely separate lineages since at least the mid-90s. All the sexy vampire hunter stuff is from Laurell K. Hamilton. All the London/noir stuff is from Gaiman, if you accept that Constantine wouldn't have happened without Sandman.

I haven't read the sexy vampire hunter whatnot, so I can't really comment on it. But the "noir detective" ... had the groundwork been completely laid by then? Constantine and Sandman had a completely different focus (although I have not worked my way through the entire canon so I could have missed a sub story somewhere). I couldn't stand Buffy actually so I can't speak to that.

(American Gods is a much more direct predecessor to Kate Griffin, anyway, although I have no idea if she's read it. I would assume so, as it would be major homework.)

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