Depending on whom you ask, milestones include Manly Wade Wellman’s occult detective stories in the 1940s, the Chicago-set TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker in the 1970s, the supernatural comedy films Ghostbusters and Teen Wolf in the 1980s, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (film and TV) and the X-Files in the 1990s. In a way, you can track the origins of the urban fantasy category back for several decades. In these stories, the fantastical elements might operate in secret or they might operate out in the open and are known to the public. So- vampires, werewolves, magical beings, and the like.

In a nutshell, urban fantasy is a sub-category of fantasy which infuses monsters or the supernatural into a contemporary or everyday setting. I don’t have ‘Blood So Red’, but I will immediately start ‘Grendel & Beowulf’.Sometimes, it can be a bit tricky to parse whether or not something is a work of “urban fantasy” and/or a related category like horror, paranormal romance, or magical realism. ‘Real fairy tales often had grisly endings.’ ‘Giving the Queen’s agents a wedgie is not going to work!’ Someday, it might save your life.’įave quotes (there actually are tons more, but…): ‘A princess must sometimes do what is good for her people even when they disapprove.’ Humans come in all colors our backgrounds shape our mindset and enrich our lives.

I appreciate the various cultures in this story, including the various ethnic enclaves of Chicago. ‘Morally, was it wrong to tolerate such…such…intolerance?’ Many modern-day ills are mentioned throughout such as natural resources having been stripped, dangers of mine work, TV and other electronic devices tempting children/tweens away from exploring their surroundings. Some of the characters was ready to go since the Fischers ‘convinced us it was always good to be packed’ (they were Jewish, so had ‘a millennia of experience being prepared to leave’). Sometimes, the undead are better allies than our fellow man. The author called out some serious topics: And her Magickal mirror has a view into the house that Jack built.

‘Coexisting with the Fae is only logical’Ĭherie lives in a world ‘where your grandparents were from was where you were from’, vampires aren’t merely a conspiracy theory, and skeleton keys are carved from bone.

Urban Mythic by C. Gockel