2009 Reading #73: Moon Called

[snurri]

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.
Books 41-50.
Books 51-60.
Books 61-70.
71. The Elephant's Secret Sense by Caitlin O'Connell.
72. Bloom County Babylon: Five Years of Basic Naughtiness by Berke Breathed.

73. Moon Called by Patricia Briggs. I'm trying to grok the contemporary urban fantasy phenomenon, which seems to be on the verge of taking over the genre, at least in terms of sales. I don't know that this book helped much. I like Mercy as a character pretty well, but she too often feels like a minor player in her own book, and there's a lack of urgency to the story despite the kidnappings and near-deaths. I can't decide if I'll be trying more urban fantasy soon or not, though I'm open to recommendations. (Preferably books without werewolves and/or vampires, if possible. I particularly don't grok the appeal of the werewolf thing.)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Two points. First, it's being marketed like urban fantasy, from the ad copy to the cover, they're target market is pretty clear. Second, this is one of those things where we don't like to put a work into a certain genre category just because it happens to be written very, very well. Without knowing it, we've become those people who say Well, that's not science fiction because...

I have a kind of broad understanding of the sub-genre, anyway. I think the main market for that will branch out into works lilke Norse Code and American Gods with relative ease, in the same way that hard core epic fantasy readers can branch into Joe Abercrombie's stuff without much trouble. It's a spectrum, yo.

[timakers.livejournal.com]

Gah, stupid explorer. That's me.