January 13 Deborah Hewitt– Nightjar – Urban Fantasy? Maybe

New Year, new book. A very new book it was published in 2019 and this is the author’s first novel. I’ve been on the lookout for new fantasy just to see what’s being done now-a-days and the premise seemed interesting, but upon reading further I realized that I might have fallen upon that rare and mysterious genre: Urban Fantasy. I think.

Oh, you say, that! That’s nothing new! In fact, I’m already so bored by it I can’t stand it anymore. Or at least everybody I run into tells me that – yet every writer I run into is writing it. (Why?? if nobody wants to read it…)

But the weirdest thing about this genre is that nobody I talk to seems to be able to define it.

“Well, it’s kind of like William Gibson’s Neuromancer,” I’ll get an answer from someone. Except that’s not Fantasy, that’s Science Fiction.

“Oh, I mean, Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash.” Once again, that is Science Fiction.

“Well, you know magic in the city and the city is very urban and run down and kind of dystopian.” Um, okay, so which stories are those? And all I get is a shrug.

Let me unpack that last statement a bit. First of all Urban Fantasy will always take place in the city, because that’s the definition of the word “urban”, thus calling a city very urban is a little like calling a dog very dog-like. Yes, that is correct, that is what it is.

For some reason, though the words “run-down” or even “dystopian” always enter the mix, because it’s assumed that that’s only what cities can be, because they’re so, you know, urban. But as a city dweller myself, I find that this is not the case. Instead cities are actually really complex organisms with many facets, thus they can’t be described by one or two words. Which neighborhood are you talking about? Which part of the metro area? Which streets? For instance, you can go Downtown, which is counted as its own neighborhood, and find that it isn’t one homogeneous zone, some parts are ritzy and fancy, some are run down and awful.  You turn a corner and it’s the glittery business district, you turn another and you’re now on drug pusher alley, turn another and now you’re in the shopping district, or another and it’s hippy-ville. What’s a city like? That depends, what are you looking for?

I’d love for a writer (of the Science Fiction or Fantasy genre – mystery writers actually do a really good job) to actually try to capture what a city is really like. How it is rich, complex, diverse, and with a lot going on all at once. It’s not just crime and dystopia, and it’s definitely not all rich people living the good life (hey, how come us Middle Incomers are always ignored, we make up the bulk of the city). It’s everything all once all crammed together. That part can be a little overwhelming, but that’s the truth of it.

But instead we go with some version of George Orwell’s 1984 – also a science fiction story – but with magic.

You could say that Urban Fantasy is a form of Noir in which there are fantastical elements. So, the big mob boss who secretly runs the city (he’s paid off the cops and has a City Councilman in his pocket) also has a mage working for him, or something of that ilk. Except I’ve never seen that kind of story before – ever! So, if that is the definition of Urban Fantasy, it has yet to exist, as in, when that story gets published, then Urban Fantasy will be a thing.

Does Jim Butcher’s stuff count? I don’t know. Everybody refers to it as Noir Fantasy, but I read it and think that perhaps it isn’t even really Noir, because the characters often end up in comical situations instead of tragic ones – which is really what Noir is all about. If it isn’t tragic, it isn’t Noir. So, is it Urban Fantasy? Is Urban Fantasy supposed to funny? I don’t know, haven’t heard a solid definition yet. But according to everyone I’ve talked to, it’s not supposed to be.

I do have one example of something that I do think is Urban Fantasy, but it isn’t in novel form, instead it’s a Graphic Novel: the Crow. But that kind of doesn’t count. Graphic Novels live in their own specific genre apart from straight up prose (feel free to argue it with me, but I’ve found that Graphic Novels are able to take liberties that Novels are unable to do – they tell stories in a radically different way and subscribe to very different tropes).

I picked the Crow because it definitely is Fantasy. In fact, its premise is similar to that of Nightjar (knew I’d have to talk about this book eventually). The Crow states that when a person dies, a crow carries their soul to heaven unless that person has unfinished business, then the bird carries their soul back to earth in order to finish up. A Nightjar for the book I’m currently reading is a mythical bird that carries a person’s soul – both into the world and out of it.

The Crow also takes place in a city. Ah ha! The urban part of Urban Fantasy. But this city is fabulized, in other words, the story doesn’t take place in real city, but a fantastical or fairy tale version. It’s depicted as a hellscape that is dark and moody, a place where Hope goes to die (“abandon all hope ye who enter here”), in other words, a Goth fairy tale – you know, where dark and moody is awful in a lovely and glamorous way. (In the movie, they specify that the city is Detroit, but still it is a mythical version of Detroit – which I can verify is not a hellscape. It has some lovely parts as well.)

Now Nightjar takes place in a city, London, but this London is really…just London, a large and multifaceted city neither good nor bad just our backdrop. This means I have to ask if there is a fantasy story that takes place in the city is it Urban Fantasy?

Does the city have to made mythological? Because the main character does escape to an urban version of Narnia. But it’s a place that does not exist in our world, so does that mean that the Wizard of Oz is Urban Fantasy? Because Oz is a city in a fantastical realm.

Maybe the city has to be made fantastical like in the crow, but I can’t think of any story that actually fits other than graphic novels (Gotham for Batman, Metropolis for Superman).

Could it be that the city itself becomes a character in the drama? That would make Sex in the City an Urban Fantasy and that seems wrong.

Okay, I have a radical notion, one that I’m happy to be proved wrong, since nobody can really define what Urban Fantasy is, maybe it isn’t really a genre –  maybe it’s all just marketing.