57 pages 1 hour read

Jim Butcher

Storm Front

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2000

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Background

Genre Context: Urban Fantasy

Storm Front is part of a subgenre called urban fantasy, which borrows many conventions from traditional fantasy and applies them to a modern, real-world setting. Known for embracing typical elements such as supernatural creatures, mythic quest narratives, and battles of good versus evil, the urban fantasy genre explores the ways in which these tropes interact with other popular genres such as mystery or suspense. Often, these modified fantasy tales take on a gritty, cynical worldview and speculate on the ways common fantasy themes such as vampirism, lycanthropy, or magic might be incorporated into the social patterns and bureaucracy of a modern world. In some cases, the existence of magic and supernatural creatures may be a known fact for the humans in the narrative, as in Ilona Andrews’s Kate Daniels series, or a hidden facet that only a select few know about, as in Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files or Patricia Briggs’s Mercy Thompson series.

The subgenre of urban fantasy has its origins in the sensationalist gothic fiction of the late 19th century, most notably Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the many works of Edgar Allan Poe, which depict intrusions of dark supernatural forces into the mundane world (Ekman, Stefan.