A section for urban fantasy might well work out well because there's so much of it these days, (some might say the entire teen section counts) but then you'd possibly end up with people going "but why isn't there a section for....?", leading to a gazillion little sub-sections. And it's all over the place.
Then there are the Laurell K. Hamilton books. Are they horror or urban fantasy, or something else? They're shelved in Horror, as are the books of Kelly Armstrong. And Kim Harrison. Sometimes I've seen her books shelved in Fantasy, and sometimes in Horror.
But, as Anassa pointed out, once you start, where do you stop? There's a lot of paranormal romance out there now too: Sherrilyn Kenyon, Lara Adrian, J.R. Ward and a whole lot of others are writing romances that could easily count as urban fantasy, depending on the definition used.
Initially, I'd just planned on posting the link to Anassa's post, and then commenting there, but the response turned into this, a whole post of it's own.
4 comments:
I've certainly been seeing a lot of "urban fantasy" or PNR sections that are pulled out seperately, and everything else seems to just be shelved under science fiction/fantasy. So many titles are mixing genres these days, even if you did go too far with separate categories, you'd drive yourself crazy trying to decide what should go where.
That is all too true, redhead. Thanks for the comment.
Urban fantasy is indeed all over the place. I think that's part of the problem in shelving it. And there are different types of it, and authors who write in UF and other genres. As you pointed out. (Janet Evanovich has a UF out. Does it go in fantasy or mystery?) With the messiness of that and the issue of other subgenres, I totally get why we don't have a separate section for UF in most bookstores. Who really wants to do all that thinking and explaining to customers?
Still, I think from a browser's (and seller's) point of view, having UF separated out (along with, say, steampunk and space opera and some of the other larger categories), might be a good idea. When I want a new urban fantasy series, I'd rather not look at the epic fantasy, you know?
I still retain hope that someday the lines between UF and non-UF will be drawn more clearly. It's my genre. I'm allowed to dream, right?
I can think of another case where that happened too. I remember the first time I was hunting down Mercedes Lackey's novel Sacred Ground at the library. Where all her other hardcovers were shelved under fiction, that one was in the mystery section.
Of course you're allowed to dream. Sometimes that's the only way changes happen.
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