What Exactly IS Urban Fantasy and How Does it Fit the Romance Landscape?

Urban Fantasy has crept into our subconscious and our romance reading via the back door.

We started off loving paranormal romance and that is still a huge staple in our diet of romance novels. But many readers (and writers!) aren’t exactly sure what Urban Fantasy is and how it fits with paranormal romance.

It can get confusing, absolutely.

Urban Fantasy is a Hybrid

Part of the problem is that paranormal romance evolved in the romance world.

Urban Fantasy evolved in the Science Fiction/Fantasy genres.

There’s not usually a lot of cross-over between the two genres (romance and SF/F). Romance readers are almost exclusively female, and while there is a huge number of women who read science fiction and fantasy (I’m one of them), the genre is still predominantly male oriented.

But writers like Kim Harrison and Charlaine Harris pushed the paranormal romance envelope, while urban fantasy writers who earned their chops writing hardcore science fiction and classic fantasy, pushed their envelope out towards the middle by using female protagonists and introducing romantic sub-plots, which caught more female readers (there are more female readers of popular fiction than male, and marketers and editors know this).

It was inevitable that romance readers would trip over the urban fantasy titles and writers and latch on with cries of joy — and they did.

Meanwhile, SF & F readers were looking at some of the really good paranormal romance stuff out there — and having Charlaine Harris’s paranormal romance series (the Sookie Stackhouse books) turned into the TV series True Blood really helped readers take a second look at paranormal romance, if not their first taste altogether.

Urban Fantasy is where the SF & F and Romance genres cross paths. That’s why it’s so confusing. That’s why readers, writers and marketers have such a hard time defining it. It’s a slippery sucker at best.

Urban Fantasy is Huge

And therein lies another problem. The Urban Fantasy landscape has become a sprawling, real estate gobbling monster within a handful of years. Writers who thought they were writing paranormal romance suddenly find themselves shelved on the Fantasy shelves at their local bookstore, and reviewers calling them Urban Fantasy writers. (Surprise!)

Science Fiction writers who used to earn a living writing hard SF and now find they can’t, quite, have turned to Urban Fantasy because they just aren’t comfortable with all-out classic fantasy (Lord of the Rings is the primo example of classic fantasy).

So within Urban Fantasy itself there are already factions forming. Sub-genres of the sub-genre.

And to make matters worse, if the book you’re reading or writing falls anywhere within the Urban Fantasy hotspot, when you started out thinking you were reading or writing some other genre altogether, it’s quite possible that the book is both. You can have a book that is both a paranormal romance and an urban fantasy…because urban fantasy has spawned a sub-category called urban fantasy romance that lives simultaneously in the Urban Fantasy genre and as a sub-genre of paranormal romance.

The Shades of Urban Fantasy

Here’s is the way I mentally map Urban Fantasy (for right now, February 2010 — no guarantees for what it will be like in a year’s time, it’s still too new). This may help you get a grip on how Urban Fantasy fits into the popular fiction world, and help you categorize the novels and authors you’re reading. It’ll also help you find more authors and books to read because it’ll give you alternative sources in which to look for previously undiscovered stories.

Because Urban Fantasy is a melding of two genres, the easiest way to “map” UF is to think of it as a spectrum running from hard to soft, or to consider the roots of UF and look at it as ranging from SF/F-inspired to Romance-inspired — basically, the same idea, but more words.

“Hard” Urban Fantasy

I just created this term, borrowed from SF & F’s use of “Hard Science Fiction” to describe SF that concentrates on the science for building and resolving stories.

My agent once described Urban Fantasy to me as (1) Fantasy Creatures in (2) our contemporary world in (3) (preferably) a city setting. (4) The story includes a war between fantasy species and (5) features the interactions of a (generally) human protagonist. This simplistic breakdown is Urban Fantasy as you would see it from the SF & F end of the genre and is a good description of “hard” UF.

Most SF writers who have moved over to UF would tend to work at this end of the spectrum. Romance-genre style storylines and emotionally complex subplots are minimized, and if there is a romantic storyline in the book or series, it is written in anything but standard romance-genre terms. The fantasy elements in the urban landscape are the focus of the story, along with the war. Underworld is a good example of hard UF, even though the protagonist is a vampire.

Alternative sources for Hard UF:

• on the SF & F shelves
• sometimes classified simply as “Fantasy”
• Occasionally, in the suspense thrillers section (if the fantasy elements are downplayed)
• Very rarely in the romance section.
• Sold by publishers who used to specialize in hard science fiction and classic fantasy (Tor, for example)

“Soft” Urban Fantasy

I also created this tag. Soft UF is everything else that doesn’t fit into the next segment of the spectrum or into hard UF. A great many romance, romantic suspense and thriller writers have found themselves in this area of UF. Charlaine Harris teeters on the very edge of it and the next category. Laurell K. Hamilton belongs here as she just doesn’t write typical romance novel romances inside her UF, but she does spend a lot of time on the softer emotions in her books.

Alternative sources for Soft UF:

• on the SF & F shelves
• sometimes classified simply as “Fantasy”
• In the Romance section.
• Occasionally mislabelled as “paranormal romance”
• Occasionally, in the suspense thrillers section.
• Sold by most publishers who publish a range of popular fiction lines – check their SF&F and their Paranormal Romance section, even if they already have a separate UF listing.

Urban Fantasy Romance

This is the true blending of fantasy and the romance genres. The romance plotlines in these books get the full romance treatment as they would in a normal romance novel, or paranormal romance, but the significant difference between UF and paranormal romance is that UF romances can spread across multiple novels, while paranormal romance must deliver a Happy Ever After ending by the conclusion of the novel, if it is to be considered a paranormal romance according to the strict definition of a romance novel.

The fantasy plotlines in these novels also receive the full treatment, and if you look outside the romance storyline, you might find the rest of the novel resembles a hard UF in nature. It’s the treatment of the romance that defines the book here.

Love Romance Passion took a stab at defining it a while back. Their “What is Urban Fantasy Romance?” is a great attempt, but quite a few readers got confused, I think, because they thought the conversation was about UF as a whole, and not this narrow definition in particular.

Alternative sources for Soft UF:

• In the Fantasy section (never in SF)
• In the Romance section.
• Also try “Science Fiction Romance” — it sometimes tips over into there, if the fantasy story line is very hardcore. The SF Rom blogs and review sites will certainly be aware of these authors and books.
• Frequently mislabelled as “paranormal romance.”
• Sold by most publishers who publish a range of popular fiction lines – check their SF&F and their Paranormal Romance section, even if they already have a separate UF listing.
• Many romance publishers publish UF, but often label it paranormal romance. They may also label a lot of paranormal romance as UF. The whole publishing industry is still trying to sort this out.

Erotic Urban Fantasy Romance

Just as erotic romance is a sub-set of romance novels, erotic UF romance is a sub-set of Urban Fantasy Romance. Often, though, you only see it written as “erotic urban fantasy” which can be just a touch misleading unless you mentally add the word “romance” to the end of it, and slot the novel where it should be: right at the very end of the hard-soft spectrum. Erotic UF naturally focuses on the romance and the sex storylines. The fantasy elements play a role in the story (and in the hands of a good erotic UF writer, they should play an indispensable role), but they become a major secondary storyline. Depending on the publisher, the author and the word length of the story, it’s possible for the fantasy elements to be highly compressed while the sexual and romance elements get most of the airtime. This is natural for erotic UF: the primary purpose of the story is to arouse the reader’s emotions and senses, not just to entertain (although it must do that, too), so the author will concentrate on those elements that will deliver the experience the reader expects.

Alternative sources for Soft UF:

• In the Fantasy section
• In the Romance section.
• Frequently mislabelled as “erotic paranormal romance.”
• Sold by most publishers who publish a range of popular fiction lines – check their their Paranormal Romance section, even if they already have a separate erotic romance section. As the definition of “steamy” for romances keeps sliding upwards, what used to be considered an erotic romance is now just a romance. Urban Fantasies with plenty of hot sex scenes might still be listed as just an normal paranormal romance. After all, even Charlaine Harris manages to curl the pages more than once or twice in her novels. (Hands up who immediately thought of the shower scene? I won’t be more specific than that because if you haven’t read all the series yet, you have something to look forward to!)
• Many romance publishers publish erotic romances as a sub-category, so check under this listing for erotic UF. I gave a listing of e-publishers who publish erotic romances a while ago that you might find a useful starting point. They will often label it paranormal romance, so check the blurb. They may also label a lot of paranormal romance as UF. If you like erotic UF, then whether the label says paranormal romance or urban fantasy, if it’s the sort of story you want to read, you’re set anyway.

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And there you have it: a simple way to help you keep all the various shades of Urban Fantasy straight in your own mind and alternative places to find more of it.

Let me know if this helps you sort out the Urban Fantasy landscape a little better.