Fantasy Fiction

[Auroranorth]

Anne McCaffrey/Elizabeth Moon/Jody Lynn Nye collaborated on a series called The Planet Pirates, which isn't bad. It's more hard SF than fantasy, though.

[chiqui]

Back to the supernatural demon/werewolf/vampire fantasies, why do almost all of the covers feature a headless, faceless woman in a black leather miniskirt or tight pants?? What a lack of imagination on the parts of the publishers.

[Deleted]

Speaking of werewolf/vampire urban fantasies, I've been reading Carrie Vaughan's series about Kitty Norville, a werewolf who hosts a late night radio show, but inadvertently turns it into a show about supernatural stuff and brings it all out into the open. They're pretty good, if formulaic, in case anyone's after a quick fluffy read.


Ooh, and the cover model is a whole woman.

[smockery]

Feb 22, 2009 17:11:10 GMT -4 chiqui said:

Back to the supernatural demon/werewolf/vampire fantasies, why do almost all of the covers feature a headless, faceless woman in a black leather miniskirt or tight pants?? What a lack of imagination on the parts of the publishers.

Don't forget the tattoo on the lower back. Almost all of them have that as well.

[Auroranorth]

Feb 23, 2009 12:21:35 GMT -4 smockery said:

Feb 22, 2009 17:11:10 GMT -4 chiqui said:

Back to the supernatural demon/werewolf/vampire fantasies, why do almost all of the covers feature a headless, faceless woman in a black leather miniskirt or tight pants?? What a lack of imagination on the parts of the publishers.

Don't forget the tattoo on the lower back. Almost all of them have that as well.

Most of the ones I see have really long hair, too.

[Ripley]

Screw Originality

[comfortablynumb]

Have any of y'all read Kim Harrison's The Hollows series? It started with Dead Witch Walking. A co-worker turned me onto them, so I eventually got the whole series. They're OK, I guess. I think I just read the whole thing because I started it. It had some interesting plots, but the sub-plot of the main character Rachel, and her vampire business partner/friend Ivy gets EXTREMELY tiresome. Enough already!

What made me think of these books were the comments about the covers of books only showing the backs of women with leather outfits, long hair and tattoos.

ETA: HATE HATE HATE Christine Feehan's Dark Series. They are glorified rape fantasy books to me. One of my other co-workers was appalled that I didn't just love them. There are no words.

[Deleted]

Mar 29, 2009 11:42:53 GMT -4 comfortablynumb said:

Have any of y'all read Kim Harrison's The Hollows series? It started with Dead Witch Walking. A co-worker turned me onto them, so I eventually got the whole series. They're OK, I guess. I think I just read the whole thing because I started it. It had some interesting plots, but the sub-plot of the main character Rachel, and her vampire business partner/friend Ivy gets EXTREMELY tiresome. Enough already!

I've read the first two. They were pretty fun reads, but I wasn't compelled to continue with the series. As bad as it is now, most vampire/werewolf urban fantasies pale in comparison to the early Anita Blake series. Then again, it just might have been my frame of mind when I started reading them.

[Deleted]

I just read a book called Acheron by Sherrilyn Kenyon, who apparently writes a whole series of urban fantasy (and allegedly is one of the pioneers of that genre, but I'd barely rate it as urban fantasy - it's got supernatural creatures dressed like Goths in the present day, that's about it). AVOID. I pretty much knew better, because she has those romance-novel looking covers and I see her stuff a lot on the bargain shelves at Walmart and Walgreen's (where I bought my copy), but everything else was straight-up romance and I didn't feel like driving out to the nearest Borders, so I went with it.

The first 400 pages go thusly: In ancient Greece, main character is hated and abused by his family and forced to become a prostitute. (His supernatural powers make everyone past puberty lust after him uncontrollably. All the main characters in these types of books seem to be totally irresistable, but I think this is the most literal example I've come across.) Bad shit continually happens to him, his sister periodically tries to improve his situation, resulting in even worse punishment, after which character emos about how he's nothing but a whore and no one will ever love him. Lather, rinse, repeat. Until he dies. Once we hit the present day, the main character - who is an actual god who's been alive since before recorded history - wears Doc Martens and hoodies with skulls on them and at one point serenades the female lead with a Nickelback song (making her tear up). It's awful.

There's a tiny spark of an interesting idea that ties vampire(-like creatures) to Greek mythology, but it gets all mucked up with the myth of Atlantis and five billion other kinds of supernatural creatures and a demon war, and I'm pretty sure I've seen vampire mythology tied to the sun god Apollo elsewhere anyway. The author also does this really annoying thing where she doesn't write from an omniscient point of view, she writes very specifically from one character's point of view - but then she'll want you to know how another character feels real fast, and she'll just switch to THEIR point of view for a paragraph or two, right in the middle of a chapter, no section break or transition or anything. Even in a not-very-good book, it's weirdly distracting.

[LurkerNan]

I've read all the Kitty Norville books, which I like for two reasons: she actively fights against her werewolf nature, and she has a steady boyfriend she eventually marries. A supernatural nature is no excuse for her to slut around.

And yes... she gets an actual head on the cover. A blond one that looks a lot like Buffy.

I'm still reading the Kim Harrison books, mostly to find out how they are going to resolve her dying-pixies storyline. But I'm tired of her vampire-roommate issues too.