I’m currently writing urban fantasy about a dysfunctional but powerful woman who must fight demons both literal and figurative in a dystopian future London. I say currently because the epic trilogy is a work in progress, but it’s been progressing for the last decade – which is the entirety of my adult life.
Over the years, my vision of the story I want to tell and the characters who inhabit that world have inevitably been influenced by the fiction I’ve come into contact with. Below I discuss just a few of the most notable examples.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Faith
However, it was the character Faith that intrigued me most. The idea of the slayer gone wrong, the anti-heroine, a figure of good corrupted, not by magic, but by insecurities and temptation, was an irresistible source of inspiration for my writing. From the first episode featuring the rebellious slayer, I never wrote a heroine with a clear conscience again.
The character’s descent into ‘evil’ and subsequent journey to redemption that crossed over into the show’s darker counterpart, Angel, captivated me. To this day, I’m drawn to characters who fall from grace and then struggle to atone.
Gaia Moore
This one is slightly less well known. The Fearless series, by Francine Pascal, is a twenty-plus book Young Adult saga that tells the story of a genetically modified teenage girl who can’t feel fear and has enhanced physical abilities. To help her stay safe, her father trains her in martial arts, but then abandons her.
Throughout the series, Gaia Moore becomes embroiled in in the machinations of her murderous uncle, an American spy, and balances an angst-filled social and love life with vigilantism.
She is strong, reckless and fierce, but socially awkward, riddled with insecurity and the pervasive loneliness of never quite fitting in. Where Faith was always confident, brazen even, Gaia taught me that heroines could be pensive and unsure of themselves too.
She is strong, reckless and fierce, but socially awkward, riddled with insecurity and the pervasive loneliness of never quite fitting in. Where Faith was always confident, brazen even, Gaia taught me that heroines could be pensive and unsure of themselves too.
Anita Blake
Anita Blake is, in my opinion, the first heroine of modern ‘urban fantasy’. I discovered the books by Laurel K. Hamilton as a teenager and it felt like my eyes had been opened for the first time.
Anita’s world is brutal and often genuinely disturbing, but she weathers any storm she’s thrown into not with (at least in the early books) any special powers, but with good training, experience, and an unflinching trigger finger. In many ways, she is comparable to Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider games, another inspiring female character.
Anita’s world is brutal and often genuinely disturbing, but she weathers any storm she’s thrown into not with (at least in the early books) any special powers, but with good training, experience, and an unflinching trigger finger. In many ways, she is comparable to Lara Croft of the Tomb Raider games, another inspiring female character.
I also really appreciated Anita’s style as a character (again, mostly the early books). Where most TV shows and books had beautiful, glamorous women in lead roles who wore the latest fashions and styled their hair and makeup just so, Anita had wild hair and wore sneakers and t-shirts.
To this day, I prefer a heroine who wears sensible footwear and doesn’t go out to confront the big bad wearing leather and a crop top. There’s something about a female character who not only kicks ass, but does so in designer heels that makes me…well, jealous.
Parrish Plessis
If you haven’t read the books, they are a blend of harder sci-fi with fantasy in a dystopian Australia, which makes them a little different from most urban fantasy out there. I’m far from a sci-fi fan, but Pierres’ prose is so sparse, yet so evocative, so unique, so hard-hitting, that the books swept me into her world and didn’t release me until the end of the third book.
On the other side, the main character, Parrish, stayed with me. Ballsy to the extreme, she is not a delicate female, being neither slight of build nor very pretty, but she kicks some serious arse (and she does it with an ‘r’ – yes!!). Some of the concepts in the book blew my mind, and since reading them I have always tried to pack more punch into my prose.
Jill Kismet
In my humble opinion, there are no better written urban fantasy books than the Jill Kismet series by Lilith Saintcrow (Night Shift, Hunter’s Prayer, Redemption Alley, Flesh Circus, Heaven’s Spite, & Angel Town).
I love urban fantasy, but some of it can be a bit fluffy, with superficial Mary Sue characters and prose that relies more on snark than thoughtful language choices. The Jill Kismet books break the mould in terms of how dark and gritty the content and characters are as well as in terms of the writing style.
Saintcrow’s prose is lyrical and mesmerising at times, visceral and devastating at others. The main character wrestles with demons and her conscience throughout the series as she helps the local police department fight supernatural crime.
She's gloriously conflicted with a fairly screwed up past, but she always manages to do the right thing, and in the process finds a partner who stands by her through all the horror and gore. And there is a lot of gore. The stories are so vivid, bleak and compelling that I even forgive her the leather pants.
She's gloriously conflicted with a fairly screwed up past, but she always manages to do the right thing, and in the process finds a partner who stands by her through all the horror and gore. And there is a lot of gore. The stories are so vivid, bleak and compelling that I even forgive her the leather pants.
If I could write a book that comes even close to being as stunning as those featuring Jill Kismet I will consider myself very successful.
What all these characters have in common, apart from being physically strong/powerful, is that they are all a somewhat damaged, disturbed even, constantly straddling that fine line between good and evil, right and wrong, and while they always manage to save the day, they cannot always save themselves.
The darkness within us all excites my muse in a way straight-laced heroes like Superman never will. We all know conflict is the driving force of all fiction, but it is inner conflict, complex and unpleasant though it may be, that makes a good story great.
As always, if you liked what you read, why not leave a comment or follow me on Twitter @H_Y_Malyk
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