Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
It's a fair assumption. There's a seedy underbelly aspect to a lot of the urban fantasy I've read. In my opinion, "urban fantasy is fantasy in the real world is a little too simplistic. Is Harry Potter urban fantasy? Maybe to some, but it's certainly not a universal classification. What about some of Tim Powers' stuff like The Stress of Her Regard? Definitely real world, definitely fantasy, but certainly not urban fantasy.
No. Like you you, I think an urban environment does play a big part in most urban fantasies. Not that "takes place in the real world" isn't part of it. I just don't think it's enough by itself.
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I'm waffling back and forth on this one. I think Harry Potter isn't urban fantasy because most of the story takes place in a magical society, so it's closer to a portal fantasy (like Narnia). For something to be urban fantasy, I'd say the story has to take place mainly in (some version of) our world.
But yes, I guess it feels like urban fantasy should have an urban setting. When talking about Brennan's Unspoken (the gothic book I mentioned in
post 15), I've sometimes called it "rural fantasy", so "urban fantasy" but not in cities. But that's not a very interesting subgroup of books (I think?), so I don't see it catching on. There are a lot of books which clearly belong
somewhere in the group of "fantasy and science fiction and related stuff", but don't really have a home in a clear subgenre. And that's OK, I guess.