Bear with me if this is a little rambling but I'm still thinking this through myself and was interested in getting the opinion of others.
I recently finished reading Vicious Circle by Mike Carey, which is the second in the excellent Felix Castor series. For those who haven't heard of it, Felix Castor is an exorcist who lives and works in London and who is drawn into investigations that usually involve the darker side of humanity and which bring him into contact with the supernatural (ghosts, loup garou, demons, succubi etc).
In the UK, these books are published through Orbit's horror division and I've often seen them described in trade press/newspaper reviews as horror rather than fantasy (let alone urban fantasy). Yet the key characteristics of these books are supernatural goings on that go on in an urban environment. In fact, London is as much a character in the books as Castor is (and if you want a masterclass in use of location, check them out for that alone).
The only thing I can possibly think of as justifying the "horror" tag is that children don't always come out of the books unscathed and there are some particularly nasty and sticky ends that happen to key characters and side characters.
However on checking out the horror shelves in my local Waterstones (and making allowances for the sometime crapitude of Waterstones), I've found that it's where all the Laurell K. Hamiltons tend to wind up (which again, I'd have thought would fall within either urban fantasy or paranormal romance/erotica).
It's all set me to wondering if there is some kind of genuine line that separates an urban fantasy book from a supernatural horror book and if so, where people think that this line is drawn.
Alternatively is this all just due to the randomness of book marketing and promotion which sees publishers having to make a decision on where to shelve the book and working out where the biggest fan base is likely to be?
Or is it more the case that urban fantasy is a wide label that incorporates anything supernatural that touches within the real world?
Given that there is a strong trend towards darkness in fantasy (and urban fantasy) generally, it's just something that interests me and I thought it might be interesting to have a specific thread in the hopes of getting some of the Horror forum peeps to give a view.
MM
I recently finished reading Vicious Circle by Mike Carey, which is the second in the excellent Felix Castor series. For those who haven't heard of it, Felix Castor is an exorcist who lives and works in London and who is drawn into investigations that usually involve the darker side of humanity and which bring him into contact with the supernatural (ghosts, loup garou, demons, succubi etc).
In the UK, these books are published through Orbit's horror division and I've often seen them described in trade press/newspaper reviews as horror rather than fantasy (let alone urban fantasy). Yet the key characteristics of these books are supernatural goings on that go on in an urban environment. In fact, London is as much a character in the books as Castor is (and if you want a masterclass in use of location, check them out for that alone).
The only thing I can possibly think of as justifying the "horror" tag is that children don't always come out of the books unscathed and there are some particularly nasty and sticky ends that happen to key characters and side characters.
However on checking out the horror shelves in my local Waterstones (and making allowances for the sometime crapitude of Waterstones), I've found that it's where all the Laurell K. Hamiltons tend to wind up (which again, I'd have thought would fall within either urban fantasy or paranormal romance/erotica).
It's all set me to wondering if there is some kind of genuine line that separates an urban fantasy book from a supernatural horror book and if so, where people think that this line is drawn.
Alternatively is this all just due to the randomness of book marketing and promotion which sees publishers having to make a decision on where to shelve the book and working out where the biggest fan base is likely to be?
Or is it more the case that urban fantasy is a wide label that incorporates anything supernatural that touches within the real world?
Given that there is a strong trend towards darkness in fantasy (and urban fantasy) generally, it's just something that interests me and I thought it might be interesting to have a specific thread in the hopes of getting some of the Horror forum peeps to give a view.
MM
