idiosyncreant (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
idiosyncreant) wrote2011-06-08 10:40 pm
idiosyncreant) wrote2011-06-08 10:40 pm
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a delicate sauce of ambiance over plot
Today ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sartorias posted about the emergence of genre-blending as acceptable. I was the first to comment, but it wasn't a particularly great insight-- then I struck upon the thing I really wanted to say:
One of the things I particularly enjoy is where a novel has the feeling of a certain milieu and the underlying structure of another. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel is one of the examples I always think of first in this.
Rosemary Clement-Moore's The Splendor Falls fuses the cheeky YA protagonist with a Southern Gothic plot and setting, which felt very exciting.*
One of the big draws for Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief and its sequels, I think, is that it takes place in a world recognizable from Greek and Byzantine history, but doesn't have the distance you might expect from high fantasy, instead much more like the historical novels that take you into every day life and a normal person's view of it. While still having encounters with the gods, high political stakes, and adventure-peril.
Recently I've just devoured Ilona Andrews' Magic Bites series, and it has the urban fantasy variant that really gets me, where the world has become unfamiliar, yet you catch glimpses of something you know. The Criminal Minds style horror of some of the facets of that world are almost too much for me, but it's not as wearing as the steady grind of many other UF books because it's not treated flippantly. The narrator is sorrowful, not cavalier.
For me, really, being "straight up" [insert whatever] is boring--but maybe because I tend to associate that with being one-dimensional. All really good books blend the author's own diverging interests and story-loves, I think.
So something can be the pinnacle, epitome, of a genre, and it's still going to be something with more to offer than just the genre norm.
I am fighting to put two different strains of story DNA into Vigil right now: superhero adventure with paranormal/chick-lit. And yeah, it's kind of a brawl in here. But that's just the kind of thing I'm drawn to in a story.
Is it just me? I am very clever at reading my theories into everything, and when I look at say, The Magic Thief, I can't think of what exactly it blends, I just know it's unlike anything else I've read.
In which case I am quite likely just expanding the criteria into "writer is talented so the book sounds different" territory.
*I have to lay hands on a copy of Texas Gothic, by Clement-Moore--theoretically, the library will hand one to me, but...
sartorias posted about the emergence of genre-blending as acceptable. I was the first to comment, but it wasn't a particularly great insight-- then I struck upon the thing I really wanted to say:One of the things I particularly enjoy is where a novel has the feeling of a certain milieu and the underlying structure of another. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel is one of the examples I always think of first in this.
Rosemary Clement-Moore's The Splendor Falls fuses the cheeky YA protagonist with a Southern Gothic plot and setting, which felt very exciting.*
One of the big draws for Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief and its sequels, I think, is that it takes place in a world recognizable from Greek and Byzantine history, but doesn't have the distance you might expect from high fantasy, instead much more like the historical novels that take you into every day life and a normal person's view of it. While still having encounters with the gods, high political stakes, and adventure-peril.
Recently I've just devoured Ilona Andrews' Magic Bites series, and it has the urban fantasy variant that really gets me, where the world has become unfamiliar, yet you catch glimpses of something you know. The Criminal Minds style horror of some of the facets of that world are almost too much for me, but it's not as wearing as the steady grind of many other UF books because it's not treated flippantly. The narrator is sorrowful, not cavalier.
For me, really, being "straight up" [insert whatever] is boring--but maybe because I tend to associate that with being one-dimensional. All really good books blend the author's own diverging interests and story-loves, I think.
So something can be the pinnacle, epitome, of a genre, and it's still going to be something with more to offer than just the genre norm.
I am fighting to put two different strains of story DNA into Vigil right now: superhero adventure with paranormal/chick-lit. And yeah, it's kind of a brawl in here. But that's just the kind of thing I'm drawn to in a story.
Is it just me? I am very clever at reading my theories into everything, and when I look at say, The Magic Thief, I can't think of what exactly it blends, I just know it's unlike anything else I've read.
In which case I am quite likely just expanding the criteria into "writer is talented so the book sounds different" territory.
*I have to lay hands on a copy of Texas Gothic, by Clement-Moore--theoretically, the library will hand one to me, but...
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Magic Strikes has a nice but not-quite-satisfying ending, but then I went and read the excerpt from this next one and thought, "Ah, shoot! MISTAKE, MUST READ."
I actually met Ilona at the local con, and started following her blog before that, when I was watching the Urban Fantasy writers community on LJ (fangs_fur_fey), but it's been years before I started reading them. I have to be in an unusual mood to pick up Urban Fantasy I haven't already got involved with. You know, where you pick up the next installment whenever it happens to be published.
(Makes mean-eyes toward Spirit Dances, the latest Urban Shaman, that has not appeared yet at the library, though it is SO out now. Also, romantic resolution WILL come someday to that series, I'm sure of it, and I suspect that's the one!)