Question

[yendi]

If War for the Oaks were published today, would it be treated as a Paranormal Romance novel (either by publishers or fans)? If your answer is no, please provide a better reason than, "Emma is a better writer than Laurel K. Hamilton," or, "WftO isn't a series."

Same question, incidentally, for Tanya Huff's Vicki Nelson books.

Comments

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, the "Blood Ties" series features a vampire who IS a romance novelist, so I don't see why it SHOULDN'T be a paranormal romance.

It's also a mystery novel. But I don't see why it can't be fantasy, horror, mystery, and romance at the same time.

How are the Sookie Stackhouse books characterized?

[yendi]

I've seen the Sookie books categorized as fantasy, pr, and horror. That said, her other paranormal series was categorized as mystery or pr, when I'd last looked (never read it, though).

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Not enough smut. *g* Paranormal romance fans also seem to find my books disappointing for this reason.

[yendi]

You're one of two folks to mention the lack of smut, but I do wonder how PR fans handle the early, largely smut-free (and viscera-filled) Anita Blake novels.

[nevacaruso.livejournal.com]

I don't think so; the major plot and story in War for the Oaks could still have technically worked even without the romance (that is, if both Willy Silver and the phouka had been present but both their relationships with the heroine had been platonic). The two main intertwining plots revolve around Eddi's band and the faerie wars; her romantic entanglements add to those but don't define them.

It's been a while since I've read that one, though, and your mileage, obviously, may vary.

[yendi]

I see that as one of the major differences (although I'm not sure that the plot would have worked as well without the romance; Emma wrote a damned fine novel).

It's been a while since I've read that one, though, and your mileage, obviously, may vary.

*nod* I take that as a given.

[alexmegami]

I think for the Blood books the focus is more on the mystery than the romance (how much more is up for debate). Never read War for the Oaks.

[yendi]

Never read War for the Oaks.

You should rectify that. It's wonderful.

[alexmegami]

I will add it to my enormous list. :)

+1

[litch.livejournal.com]

move it up your list

Re: +1

[alexmegami]

Happened to be placing an order on Amazon today, so it'll be here hopefully within the week. Fast enough? ;)

[themaskmaker.livejournal.com]

I think because WftO isn't 3/4 graphic sex. As far as I can tell, "Paranormal Romance" is currently defined as "contains (lots!!!) of graphic sex, usually involving pain."

[yendi]

*nod* But what about some of the early Anita books, that aren't about knocking boots (or claws)?

[phantom_wolfboy]

But those aren't "now", they were "then". The question was, what if it were published now? And my answer is that she would probably be required to stretch it out to a six-volume series (which could actually be done without doing major violence to the plot) and add more sex.

But then again, without works like WftO and the early Anita Blakes, we wouldn't have the crap we have now. There would be nothing for it to be based on.

[themaskmaker.livejournal.com]

I didn't think of them as paranormal romances.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

Most books, full stop, have a romance element to them. The question is, I think, if the romance element is the A plot or the B plot. Does the whole story revolve around Who Ends Up With Whom or does it revolve around something else (a faerie war, for example) and there's a strong romantic subplot?

War for the Oaks might fall under paranormal romance like Holly Lisle's excellent Talyn, but it could also very easily be published as straight up fantasy.

[yendi]

I definitely see this (there are a handful of folks in this thread making this point, and it was the first one that came to my mind, as well). But I'm wondering if that's the sole factor. Again, the early Anita Blake books come to mind, and I suspect there are others. I wonder if there's a second factor that could be at work (tone, style, narrative voice, etc).

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

I had a discussion with a friend about this last night. Well, not specifically War for the Oaks but I was trying to make the argument that many books that are classified as "paranormal romance" don't actually have romance in them, or if they do, are incidental to the plot.

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

Both are very much of the Paranormal Romance/Modern Urban Fantasy/Whatever They're Calling It This Week sub-genre...

Though I do tend to think of WftO as part of a Modern Fairy sub-sub-genre along with DeLint's stuff...

[yendi]

Yup -- I absolutely put WFTO in the same boat as Moonheart. And they were (iirc) treated similarly when they were first released. I just wonder if that would happen today.

No, it's not paranormal romance

[litch.livejournal.com]

How about because the intention and expectations of the writer, publisher, and readers were not to publish a paranoprmal romance?

Or maybe a different tack: No because that would come close to some heinous sexist shit where is it's written by a man it's fantasy and if it is written by a woman it is PR

Re: No, it's not paranormal romance

[yendi]

How about because the intention and expectations of the writer, publisher, and readers were not to publish a paranoprmal romance?

Well, sure, and the intentions of Poe, his editors, and his readers were not to publish detective fiction back when "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" came out, for exactly the same reason (the genre didn't exist). That's why I'm asking about today.

Or maybe a different tack: No because that would come close to some heinous sexist shit where is it's written by a man it's fantasy and if it is written by a woman it is PR.

So it's not that way already? I'm asking honestly here -- I'm insanely out of the loop when it comes to current PR/UF writers.

Re: No, it's not paranormal romance

[litch.livejournal.com]

not at good bookstore

[rowancat.livejournal.com]

The romance in WftO is not critical to the overall story.
They could have just been close friends and the story would still work just fine.

This whole "romantic fantasy" thing is just people feeling it necessary
to pigeon hole everything in nice neat categories and LKH's books are a
sub sub genre in that sort of thinking.

[yendi]

*nod* That last part is why I asked the question as it applied to both fans and publishers.

[rowancat.livejournal.com]

I read the Tanya Huff's Vicki Nelson books.
At the time together with
the Diana Tregarde books by Mercedes lackey
and the Bast Mysteries by Rosemary Edgehill,
i thought of them as a slightly more specialized form
of supernatural urban fantasy.

Mixing in mystery and sometimes continuing relationship
elements in an ongoing (then) series.

But still very much what i broadly viewed as "Urban Fantasy".

I think i would view them the same way today...

Later LKH books, what i've seen of them,
just blur the boundaries into i guess what
some would call Supernatural Erotic Fiction
(read porn with supernatural elements,
sort of like the Non-Human category at Literotica ;)

[tablesaw]

I can't speak to the specifics of the series in question, but radiotelescope's talk about genre has some useful stuff.

The first thing I noticed was that these books [romance novels with speculative elements] spent a lot of time describing the characters, and not just objective descriptions—the author wanted you to know whether to like this person. The love interest is strong, sexy, fascinating, mysterious, etc; the antagonist is cruel, petty, tortures kittens. And you don't just get that once; the book comes back to these passages over and over. Clearly the audience for these books really wants that stuff. And I don't. I want to have a sense of these characters, sure, but I have a completely different idea of how the book should convey it, and how much time to spend on it.

Obviously a science fiction novel has its own set of expectations. When I try to analyze SF, I'm kind of a fish analyzing water—that's why I had to read books I hated before this started to come clear. But SF and fantasy spend a lot of time describing fantastic landscapes, for example; and strange social customs, and bits of technology or magic. Those are the passages that appear over and over, and I can only imagine that the dedicated romance reader skims through them thinking "But where's the good stuff?"

Notice that we've shifted our ground here. We started thinking about genre in terms of what's in the book; but now we're thinking in terms of how the reader deals with the book. What does the reader want? Is his expectation satisfied? Is it satisfied in a simple way or a subversive way? Are the book and the reader playing the same game?

This certainly is supported by my own reading, especially when thinking about the progression of how "good" the Anita Blake novels were.

[ketzl.livejournal.com]

I think it probably would be treated as a paranormal romance by a publisher. Did you know the early Anita Blake books were shelved in Horror? A lot of the genre distinctions come down to marketing decisions, it seems to me. Could it have sold as many copies shelved in the vampire/werewolf/urban fantasy/romance stuff as it did in Science Fiction/Fantasy? That's the only decision criterion that matters.