Towards the end of yesterday’s post about the rising popularity of urban fantasy, we wondered out loud about the overlap between what gets classified as “urban fantasy” and what gets classified as “paranormal romance,” because we’re curious about how readers are coming to these novels. So we considered three of the top names in the field, based on last year’s sales: Jim Butcher, Laurell K. Hamilton, and Charlaine Harris.
All three authors are in the midst of multi-volume epics, with multiple bestsellers; of the three, Harris and Hamilton’s novels have the explicit romance components, while Butcher’s Dresden Files series is more of a mashup of hardboiled mystery and magic—Mickey Spillane meets Solomon Kane, if you will. Of course, Harris’ Southern Vampire Mysteries has acquired substantial crossover appeal as the source material for the HBO series True Blood. The single season of The Dresden Files on the Sci-Fi Channel may have given those books a concentrated boost as well, but we’d hypothesize that more readers (women, specifically) who ordinarily wouldn’t refer to themselves as fantasy fans have gotten hooked on the exploits of Sookie Stackhouse and Anita Blake, vampire killer, than those of Harry Dresden.
“Urban fantasy and paranormal romance have been pretty distinct categories now for a few years,” Pocket Juno Books editor Paula Guran emailed us yesterday, looking to draw a clean line between the two genres. (Guran edits fantasy.) “There is confusion more among sf/f community, media and reviewers than among readers and those of us editing it… In sum, paranormal romance novel plots are more about romance than the other elements and tend to adhere to the expectations of the romance genre (a plot about the love relationship with a positive, satisfying ending in which the reader is assured the couple will remain together).” By that standard, even the Harris and Hamilton series wouldn’t be classified as paranormal romances, because the relationship dynamics in their stories are spread out over multiple novels and are often far from resolved.
But that’s one take. Where would you draw the line? Or would you even bother?