Contemporary Fantasy

Have you ever wished for a touch of magic or fantasy in our world? Maybe there is. Perhaps you can find it in a subgenre of Fantasy. The Fantasy genre has exploded in recent years, fragmenting into many subgenres. One of the fastest growing subgenres is Contemporary Fantasy. This subgenre has attracted many excellent authors that give readers great tales of wonder.

Contemporary Fantasy books contain fantasy elements that exist and occur in a modern day city or place in our world. The object of these books is to make home exotic. They can be of three types: (1) Where radically different realms coexist. (2) A portal fantasy where a crossover between two different realms happpens regularly. (3) The mundane world is overlaid on a higher spiritual truth. Some of the places are borders between the worlds that are unstable and allow strange things to happen. Another name for this subgenre is Urban Fantasy. Many books fit in these three areas.

Tom Deitz writes fantasise where the realms of Fairy and our world meet in Georgia. In various books, David Sullivan and other characters must deal with the Sidhe and problems with other creatures from Fairy. The contrasting scenes between rural Georgia and Fairy show this world in a new light. These books are a loosely connected series starting with Windmaster's Bane. The rest of the series are: Fireshaper's Doom, Darkthunder's Way, Stoneskin's Revenge, Sunshaker's War, Ghostcountry's Wrath, Dreamseeker's Road, Landslayer's Law and Warstalker's Track.

Bedlam's Bard by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon is an omnibus of two books. These are fantasies where Elves and magic exist in Los Angeles and San Francisco. There is the usual struggle between the forces of Good and Evil.

Charles de Lint is a versatile creator of Contemporary Fantasy. His Newford stories and other books bring a strong sense of wonder to the urban settings of his stories. For further information on this author and his books see my previous article.

Elizabeth Hand's Waking the Moon is a contemporary fantasy involving a secret society. It is about a group trying to keep a goddess from reviving her matriarchal society. Most of the fantastic elements are of the supernatural variety. This book won a World Fantasy Award. She has other books with similar settings.

An example of a fantasy where our world is overlaid on a higher spiritual truth is Roger Zelazny's Amber series. In these books, our world is a mere shadow of a greater universe. Readers will find great adventure and magic in these books.

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