Yesterday, I meant to write about urban fantasy versus supernatural fantasy, but instead went off on a tangent about why I stopped reading epic fantasy. (I also think it’s interesting that both Erin and I have made a similar shift in reading.)

So as I’ve said, I’ve been reading much more supernatural and urban fantasy, but–for me at least–there is a distinction between the two.

When I think of urban fantasy I think first and foremost of Charles de Lint and then Nina Kiriki Hoffman. In most of his writing, there is magic in the world, and it has always been there, but most people remain unaware of the magical world, or unable to sense/interact with the magical world. And sometimes even those who do see magic don’t always believe what they’re seeing.

Supernatural fantasy (at least for my classification), tends to focus on magical creatures or individuals with magical talents living in the modern world. That world may or may not be aware of these supernatural beings, but those beings have a strong influence on the world. A big theme seems to be either supernatural beings coming out of the closet or the world at large changed by supernatural beings.

It also tends to be more open to genre bending and combining. I love mysteries, and supernatural fantasy has a lot of series that are both fantasy and mystery. (Simon R. Green, Jim Butcher, and Kat Richardson all do this extremely well.) This combination expands the traditional mystery, not only because the detective or investigator has extra abilities, but because you then get to look at the idea of what constitutes a crime when the victim is undead, or when the battle for pack leader involves a fight to the death?

However, supernatural fantasy also tends to have a fair amount of boinking. There is often a strong romantic and/or sexual element. These supernatural or magical creatures are either super sexy or use their magical powers to make themselves super sexy. That’s my least favorite part of supernatural fantasy. I just don’t care to learn the details of supernatural noogie and how much hawter it is than regular human to human boinking.

I’m not saying they’re badly written sex scenes, I’m just saying I’d rather have more world building than boinking.

And that is one thing the good supernatural fantasy books tend to do very well, they have excellent world building, and have taken our world and twisted it just enough that it’s close to our world, but not quite the same, but those small differences are very well done.

But both types of fantasy are very good, and I’ve been enjoying reading both kinds, although supernatural fantasy is way more common right now. Will you find these distinctions in a book store? Unlikely. I’ve seen the term paranormal fantasy bandied about, but it seems to be used primarily for fantasy books with a lot of boinking. What if you want one and not the other? My recommendation is to check the covers. Sexy women (or men) on the cover tend to designate a fair amount of boinking. But it’s not a hard and fast rule (Charlaine Harris‘ Sookie Stackhouse books are an exception, although I’ve noticed that the reissues are going for the sexy covers).

And you can always check my reviews. I do try to note if there is a large amount of boinking in a book.