Urban Fantasy

Mixing magic and the real world is very entertaining. It take fantasy to a whole other level. Normally, we read fantasy to escape our everyday reality and explore beautiful fantastical worlds. However with these types of books, they bring the fantasy to our world. Now we can imagine having epic adventures and heroic journeys in our own reality! It is a very exciting possibility that I was happy to explore.

Reading about gods and mystical powers in our society also made me think of another book series I've read, which was suggested to me by, yet again, my sister. I believe it was for a younger audience, especially since I read one of the books within two days, but it's called Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Sadly it was made into a horrible movie that, just as another of my favorites, Eragon, did the book no justice at all. Percy Jackson is another book that plays on ancient gods and goddess, playing on Greek myths, versus Anansi Boys, about African culture myths and gods. However both books explore the 'urban fantasy' type genre, where reality and fantasy are heavily intertwined. I always find it amusing when things that we can't explain in our reality are caused by the magic of the other reality. For example, one of the main details in Percy Jackson is that the main character is dyslexic, and this is explained: he is a demigod, and his brain is programmed to read Greek, not English. Even subtle little things like that really solidify a story and fully bring the fantasy into the real world.

There is a bit of difficulty in this genre I would imagine. In fantasy worlds, you have the problem of having to create from scratch a whole new set of rules for the universe. The opposite, if you have a set reality, there are some rules you can't break, otherwise you lose the audience's believability completely. Of course being fantasy you can take liberties, but even then there is a fine line that borders on, 'Oh that's so cool, I never thought of it that way before' and 'Really? Come on, I seriously doubt that would ever happen...'

Upon researching Anansi Boys, I found it appears to be a spin-off of another novel American Gods. When I read the synopsis for that I immediately became intrigued, it sounds exactly like Percy Jackson, only a lot more in depth. In Percy Jackson, the Greek gods and goddesses are modernized, along with several greek figures in history. For example Daedalus is an old, cantankerous architect who's every plan is recorded in his laptop, and Ares is a killer looking biker. American Gods is said to even explore popular culture in american, personifying our greed and other vices, that sounds ridiculously entertaining.