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Urban Fantasy Dream Team -- The League of Extraordinary Monster Hunters


mattingly

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I had a player who made a rather frightning version of Jenks. Her character had dust that could melt flesh. She was quite a scream.

 

Jenks is my favorite character from the series.  Much as I like Rachel and Ivy, Jenks is endearing.  He isn't just comic relief because he's smart and competent, and yet he's comic relief too.  I'd happily give him and his family my yard for a garden.

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Hrm. I like most of the Dreseden-verse picks. Surprised no one mentioned Ivy (the Archive) from there. A human with all knowledge that has every been written down, who without access to any ley line or other power fended off half a dozen fallen angels (Denarians) magics by herself for several minutes. Or Jared Kinkaid (Hellhound) a centuries old scion of human and demon who has killed several Denarians himself, along with coming very close to offing Harry, who was saved only by the intervention of Queen Mab and a bonded Loci spirit.

 

- E

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Jenks is my favorite character from the series.  Much as I like Rachel and Ivy, Jenks is endearing.  He isn't just comic relief because he's smart and competent, and yet he's comic relief too.  I'd happily give him and his family my yard for a garden.

 

Kim Harrison just wrote a crossover novella between the Hallows and her New Drafter Series. It has Rachel and Jenks visiting the world of Peri and the Drafters.

 

I had forgotten how frightfully powerful Rachel had become in the Hallows. I keep thinking of her as the barely adequate Earth Witch with her PaintBall gun full of sleep spell charms.

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A few from the non-gun toting variety of Urban Fantasy;

 

-Jilly Copercorn from Charles De Lint's Newford series.

 

no powers except an unwavering cheerfulness, but she knows everyone and can sense the Otherworld.

 

-Door from Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere

 

who doesn't want to open all the doors...

 

-Mercy Thompson from Patricia Briggs Mercy series

 

Coyote walker, and a solid mechanic.

 

-The City from John Shirley's City Come A Walkin'

 

Who doesn't need an anthropomorphic San Fransisco ... (other cities also have their own personas)

 

Edit; almost forgot, and since a fighter isn't a bad thing:

 

Sandman Slim from Richard Kadrey's Sandman Slim series.

 

Punched his way out of hell for revenge...

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If Doc Sidhe would have been published a few years later, it probably would have sold much better as part of the Urban Fantasy Genre. When it came out it was really an oddball book(s) that didn't seem to fit anywhere.

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I LOVED Laurel Hamilton's Anita Blake series when I first started reading them.  Yeah she made a LOT of basic mistakes about firearms in her stories (I'm a firearms aficionado and the author CLEARLY "learned" everything she knows about guns from watching TV shows).  But then it was like she lost control of the character.  

 

Every book she would gain a new power or a new powerful ally, and she's have to change her own mythology on the fly.

 

This is what happens when a vampire bites a human.  No, THIS is what happens when a vampire bites a human.  No, wait, SOMETIMES this happens when a vampire bites a human.  

 

And the main character made so many illogical relationship choices that she became utterly unsympathetic, and the only sympathetic character, the main character's love interest, got driven off so the author had to invent a NEW love interest that she basically cut and pasted into the main character's life.  But the first character was already so tied into the plot that it just made everything a hot mess.

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I LOVED Laurel Hamilton's Anita Blake series when I first started reading them.  Yeah she made a LOT of basic mistakes about firearms in her stories (I'm a firearms aficionado and the author CLEARLY "learned" everything she knows about guns from watching TV shows).  But then it was like she lost control of the character.  

 

Every book she would gain a new power or a new powerful ally, and she's have to change her own mythology on the fly.

 

This is what happens when a vampire bites a human.  No, THIS is what happens when a vampire bites a human.  No, wait, SOMETIMES this happens when a vampire bites a human.  

 

And the main character made so many illogical relationship choices that she became utterly unsympathetic, and the only sympathetic character, the main character's love interest, got driven off so the author had to invent a NEW love interest that she basically cut and pasted into the main character's life.  But the first character was already so tied into the plot that it just made everything a hot mess.

 

I found that it was very consistant. I have read the whole series like 4-5 times. What may have been confusing is that there are different kinds of Vampires with slightly different powers depending on what line bit them.

 

She was always Jean Claude's Love and she took awhile to get to where she could love him and love herself. Yes, some of the books in the middle were more Romance than Action Adventure novel, but that balance has changed. The Character of Richard the Werewolf was always kind of whiny and it was hard to believe that someone who hated himself so much could really be the leader of the Werewolves. He was pretty toxic and while he has gotten better, he still has his bad moments.

 

I always loved Anita. I totally get the rage that tends to motivate her. She's incredibly loyal to her friends and will do anything for them (even someone like Richard that she found frustrating in the extreme).

 

Sorry, that you don't like the character or series. I love each and every book in the series. I can't wait for the next one that will hit in late summer.

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I liked the character, I LOVED the setting, and I liked the books to start with.  But it really seemed to me that the author lost control of her own series.  Perhaps she got it back later on, but IMO the series the jumped the shark and lost me as a reader.

 

Look at the Dresden Files.  Harry has grown as a character.  But for everything he gained, he also lost something.  That was part of the charm of the character - He just gets the shit kicked out of him by life to such a huge extent, yet keeps getting back up and doing what he knows is right.  Now ever since he died and has become the Winter Knight you can say that that series has ALSO jumped the shark.  I felt the last book was weak, and the next book will decide if I keep reading.  

 

But that's the risk you have to take when you have character development - The character changes, so the status quo has to change.  I felt Butcher did a good job letting Harry change and grow yet remain the lovable character we meet in book one.  Now he's gone through major changes, and Harry's world burned down around him along with his apartment building.  I don't know if I will like the direction the author goes in, but at least it's not like The Hardy Boys where every book ends with Frank & Joe exactly the same as they started on page one of book one.

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"I found that it was very consistant."

 

And I'm sorry, Tasha, but I honestly don't know how you can say that.  Hamilton changed her own mythology from book to book.  I get it that she has the right to compose her own mythology, but at least apply it consistently.  Rowling said she had to rewrite the first Harry Potter book four times before she finally worked out exactly what, in her world, magic can and can not do.  Hamilton didn't do that, she changed things on the fly, and she HAD TO.  Every book Anita got a new power or a new powerful ally, and finished the story as the baddest 98-pound vampire hunter in the tri-state area.  And that meant that in order for Anita to be challenged in the next book then the author had to make a change in her mythology.

 

Sorry again, Tasha, but this, plus all the gun mistakes (simple, basic, gun mistakes that scream "This author knows literally NOTHING about the topic she's writing about!!!"), turned me off to Hamilton.

 

THAT, and she is clearly trying SO HARD to BE Anne Rice.  I mean, have you read her other series?  It's soft core porn, FFS!

 

OK, I need to go walk around the block a couple times....

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"I found that it was very consistant."

 

And I'm sorry, Tasha, but I honestly don't know how you can say that.  Hamilton changed her own mythology from book to book.  I get it that she has the right to compose her own mythology, but at least apply it consistently.  Rowling said she had to rewrite the first Harry Potter book four times before she finally worked out exactly what, in her world, magic can and can not do.  Hamilton didn't do that, she changed things on the fly, and she HAD TO.  Every book Anita got a new power or a new powerful ally, and finished the story as the baddest 98-pound vampire hunter in the tri-state area.  And that meant that in order for Anita to be challenged in the next book then the author had to make a change in her mythology.

 

Sorry again, Tasha, but this, plus all the gun mistakes (simple, basic, gun mistakes that scream "This author knows literally NOTHING about the topic she's writing about!!!"), turned me off to Hamilton.

 

THAT, and she is clearly trying SO HARD to BE Anne Rice.  I mean, have you read her other series?  It's soft core porn, FFS!

 

OK, I need to go walk around the block a couple times....

sorry that you let little things ruin your experience. Never got the feeling that she was emulating Anne Rice at all. The first few books seemed to be a deconstruction of the whole Vampire Genre. It's what drew me to them at first. The fact that Anita was actually hunting the Vampires. Not a gun geek, so any mistakes she made in those early books didn't effect me at all.

 

I have read the Faerie Series as well. I love that series as well.

 

Basically both book series are a sub genre of Romance. In many ways the beginning of a new sub genre of Romance. These books are about the relationships between the characters and the Friendships and relationships they make. There are powerful foes that she and her friends must fight every book, but that's secondary. It's all about relationships. I think that the early Anita books fool guys into thinking they are going to be like the novels from a million other male authors which are about male power fantasies. Hamilton's books are female power fantasies. She's small, she's highly feminine, she's also the most powerful person in the books, she's always in charge and knows what needs to be done. I love her for it. I love the Character of Merry Gentry (lead of the Faerie Court Series). They are both very powerful characters.

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I must have missed that.  I'd take either one of them, but I have to agree that Ivy is just plain dangerous.

 

Racheal could be just as dangers as Ivy if she wanted to. 

 

She just chooses to limit herself so not to acquire too much smut on her aura.

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Racheal could be just as dangers as Ivy if she wanted to. 

 

She just chooses to limit herself so not to acquire too much smut on her aura.

She's decided that it doesn't matter. She doesn't see why "good" curses would penalize a caster so much. Also Rachael has come into so so much power that she makes Anita Blake seem like a wimp. Rachael has the full power of a "Demon" and she will use that power. She also has more imagination to use that power than her surviving people.

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She's decided that it doesn't matter. She doesn't see why "good" curses would penalize a caster so much. Also Rachael has come into so so much power that she makes Anita Blake seem like a wimp. Rachael has the full power of a "Demon" and she will use that power. She also has more imagination to use that power than her surviving people.

 

Exactly.

 

Although there was a point in one of the books, can't remember which one off hand, where she didn't do what I thought she was going to do.  Especially after she made that declaration.

 

I'm not 100% sure I'd say she makes Anita look like a wimp but I would say that a fight between those two would most likely look like the fight between Zod and Kal-el in Man of Steel.

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Exactly.

 

Although there was a point in one of the books, can't remember which one off hand, where she didn't do what I thought she was going to do.  Especially after she made that declaration.

 

I'm not 100% sure I'd say she makes Anita look like a wimp but I would say that a fight between those two would most likely look like the fight between Zod and Kal-el in Man of Steel.

 

Though it would look alot like Day of the Dead vs a reality rewriting goddess.

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