Posts Categorized: Feature Article

Feature Article

Article | Ruminations on ‘Urban’ Fantasy

By Aidan Moher August 26th, 2008

Over at Grasping for the Wind, John rounded up some bloggers (myself included) and posed them a question:

In recent years, there has a been a rise in interest in the urban fantasy genre, even prompting some publishers to republish older urban fantasy works, such as Pyr’s recent publication of Stalking the Unicorn by Mike Resnick. What is your explanation for the recent rise in the popularity of this subgenre?

Secondly, since the rise and fall in popularity of fantasy and SF subgenres tends to be cyclical, what subgenre of fantasy do you predict will see an upsurge in its popularity once urban fantasy is on the wane?

I felt it would be prudent to post my reply, along with further expanding on the thoughts with regards to some of the reactions, particularily Larry’s.
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Feature Article

Article | Fantasy Oversaturation?

By Aidan Moher August 20th, 2008

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was starting to feel a little oversaturated with Fantasy. As someone who runs a blog centred around the genre, and also an aspiring writer working in the genre, this could be a rather distressful type of comment. One of my readers, Sean, thought so, too:

“Burnt out on fantasy…..uh oh….aren’t you halfway through writing your own fantasy book?”

I responded:

That’s a good question, a very good question. I suppose I should have qualified that statement by saying that I’m feeling burnt out on ‘Epic’ or ‘Secondary-world’ fantasy, rather than the genre as a whole. What I’m really craving and enjoying at the moment seem to be novels with a more modern spin to them and, most importantly, a modern cadence and flow to the dialogue.

Science Fiction (especially set in the near future, like Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, which I’m reading now) and Urban Fantasy (I’m itching to read some more Gaiman at the moment) are some of the obvious sub-genres of speculative fiction that fill this itch.

How is it impacting Through Bended Grass? Well, not really, as far as I can tell. It’s set in a contemporary setting, as you know and that allows me to play around with a modern language (it also helps that it’s written in first person) and Rowan views the Fey world through the eyes of someone everyone of our generation can relate to. I think, in many ways, writing Through Bended Grass is responsible for how my tastes are shifting at the moment, rather than the other way around.

And then James at The Accidental Bard picked up on the idea:

Aidan Moher recently commented that he was getting a bit “over-saturated” on fantasy, a feeling I can definitely understand. Even putting aside personal fatigue, the genre as a whole is in transition right now. Publishing houses are emphasizing urban fantasy to the extent that epic and high fantasy have been sidelined and newly classified as “traditional” and “old-fashioned.” Authors producing epic fantasy of the type that dominated the marketplace even a few years ago are scrambling just to get published in the current climate.

I thought this would be an interesting subject to turn back to and might help me better understand why I’ve been turning away from the typical Epic/Secondary World Fantasy for the last several weeks. Read More »

Feature Article

Article | Pile o’ Shame Round 2

By Aidan Moher August 7th, 2008

My first edition of Pile O’ Shame was well received, even spurring a few other blogs to follow the trend and post their own Pile O’ Shame‘s. Prompted by my dissatisfaction for Paul Kearney’s The Ten Thousand, a novel that (based on the buzz) I was greatly looking forward to, I came up with an idea for the second edition of the feature: Books I should like, but don’t.

You know the type. The names get tossed around recklessly at every Internet forum: George R.R. Martin, Steven Erikson, Tad Williams, Gene Wolfe, Robin Hobb, Jack Vance, China Mieville, Neil Gaiman, Joe Abercrombie, R. Scott Bakker, Guy Gavriel Kay, Neal Stephenson. The list goes on and you start feeling that little niggling sense of guilt – you know you’re supposed to like them… but you just don’t!

So, to that end I’ve rounded up some of those authors that I know I’m supposed to like, but they just didn’t do it for me!
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Feature Article

Article | Blogger Standards?

By Aidan Moher August 2nd, 2008

My article on reviewing sparked a lot of interesting discussion from bloggers, authors and readers alike. One of the more interesting ideas thrown around was from Robert Walker.

Thus, maybe it *would* be a good time for the blog-reviewers themselves to set some standards. And no, there really isn’t anything wrong with that, because what that allows is progress based on common vocabulary. That’s a hallmark of any important issue/discussion.

…

By setting this kind of standard, I think that you can free yourself from feeling any guilt, or worry, about writing whatever you want. Just call it what it is. It’s actually kind of a simple solution. A lot simpler than trying to re-define what a review is, which is a pretty slippery slope. One I don’t think needs to be taken.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Robert’s argument, the ideas he suggest and the repercussions it could/would have on the blogosphere. I’ll admit that the argument is well founded; our entire civilization is founded on the idea of having a sustainable set of standards by which humans should live. It’s called a government; but as we all know, a government (no matter what country you live in), while generally a good thing, is hardly perfect.

What Robert’s suggesting could bring some order to the blogosphere, of course, but I can’t help but feel that it would also leech out much of the life and vivaciousness, two of the major factors that make blogs such an organic and exciting medium as compared to other forms of mass media. There’s been much todo about bloggers developing or ‘finding’ their voice, something that sets them apart from others and makes their blog worth picking out from the mass and subscribing to. Any set of standards, no matter how positive they may be in another light, would stilt the bloggers ability to add their own flavour to the blog.
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Feature Article

Article | To Review, or Not to Review? That is the Question

By Aidan Moher July 30th, 2008

Paul Kearney didn’t like my review of The Ten Thousand. Shock, I know. I felt like I fairly judged the novel, weighing its pros and cons in an objective and honest way. Kearney, however, had a different problem.

If you don’t read a book to the end, you aren’t in a position to review it. Period.

Erm. Alright, I didn’t realize that an opinion couldn’t coalesce until the last page had been turned, but, well… okay.

Graeme, from Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review responded with:

What makes a review a review? Aidan’s basically telling us what he thought about what he read, even though he didn’t make it to the end. He can’t say much, if anything, about the book as a whole (for obvious reasons!) but I’d say he’s in as good a position as anyone else to comment on what he did read. Does that count as a review though? Kinda, I think…

Wait. Yeah, what he said!

To be honest, though, I expected to see some critics rear their heads when it came to light that I hadn’t actually finished The Ten Thousand and still decided to write a review about it. In fact, I debated with myself for quite some time whether I even would write the review, knowing that the situation was a bit of an ethical dilemma. In the end, though, I knew that, whether I had finished the novel or not, I had to write the review.

“Why,” you ask?
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