Summer Knight by Jim Butcher offers a great model of what urban fantasy should be. The fourth book in Jim’s Dresden Files series was released in 2002 to great acclaim. And it lives up to the hype. Fraught with tension, the novel takes the reader on a joyride practically from the first page. Jim seamlessly […]
Novels about writers seem to be a proven method for engaging an audience, and P.A. Piatt’s Redcaps Rising was no exception to the rule. In Redcaps, the protagonist, Walter Bailey, is a fantasy writer looking into the suspicious death of his grandmother. A mild-mannered gentleman with a propensity for living in his own mind, Walter […]
Let’s drift a little bit from the core of Urban Fantasy into a dark, supernatural, boarding school fiction. Down a Dark Hall is getting a lot of buzz lately, because it will be released as a movie in 2018. The novel follows a lovely young woman called Kit who’s mother is re-marrying. She is sent […]
One of the pleasures of exploring the genre of Urban Fantasy is discovering just how many other genres incorporate UF within. Not to mention the great surprise when encountering a western novel that includes UF in it. Recently I posted about UF in the realm of Peter Pan by way of John Leonard Peilmeier’s, Hook’s […]
I held off on buying Monster Hunter Memoirs: Grunge for quite some time. It came out back in August, just as I was settling into the homeward stretch on War Demons. So I made myself wait. I promised myself that I would read it when I finished my own novel, as a reward. When I […]
Early on in the film Shaun of the Dead, there’s a hilarious scene where a hungover Shaun stumbles into the local convenience store to grab a soda. The repeated sight gags are all the signs of the ongoing zombie apocalypse that the character doesn’t recognize. There are smears of blood on freezers, citizens fleeing in […]
A newly-orphaned boy comes to live with his uncle. Along the way, he learns that magic is real and that terrors thought long-dead roam the night. It’s not Harry Potter, actually, but John Bellairs’ The House with a Clock in Its Walls. First published in 1973, the novel follows the adventures of Lewis Barnavelt and […]
I’m angry at Shayne Silvers over Obsidian Son, book one of The Temple Chronicles. I’m angry because I spent a night reading this book when I should have been working. I have too much of my own writing to do to go down this rabbit hole. Still, I greatly enjoyed Obsidian Son. First of all, […]
Proposition: The backstory of one Captain James Cook – a.k.a. Captain Hook – in the realm of Peter Pan is an Urban Fantasy tale. Now, before you extend the plank and send me off to Davy Jones’ locker, allow me to present my case. Exhibit “A” for the defense is the definition of what qualifies […]
As I said in reviewing ‘Super Sales on Super Heroes,’ I love Urban Fantasy and superhero stories. It is always fun to imagine yourself saving this world, not some strange and alien land. In superhero fiction, the heroes are good, and the villains are bad. You don’t see any deep mysteries, because the villains are […]
