The whys and wherefors of urban fantasy shelving remain a mystery to me.
At Library A, Patricia Briggs (weres, vamps and witches) can be found under SF/F, but Kim Harrison (witches, vamps and weres) is filed under Fiction.
At Library B, Terry Brooks (huge fantasy author) is shelved as Fiction, Patricia Briggs (weres) is also Fiction, but Jocelyn Drake (vamps) is in SF/F. Anne McCaffrey (dragons) is also in the SF/F aisle, but according to Library B’s online catalog, Naomi Novik (dragons) is shelved as both SF and Fiction, it just depends on which library branch you go to.
At Borders, I started to think sanity had been restored as Urban Fantasy was not only in the SF/F aisle, it had pretty much taken it over. And then I noticed Kim Harrison is in the Horror section and a book of UF short stores – including one by Patricia Briggs that starts off her second werewolf series – is in the Romance aisle. The rest of that Patricia Briggs series, naturally, is in th SF/F section.
ARGH.
Now it’s probably not going to kill me to walk a couple extra miles each year between the various sections of bookstores and libraries, but shouldn’t we make life a little easier for the casual browser? Can’t we get Kim Harrison snug up against Charlaine Harris and Patricia Briggs and Terry Brooks in the same book hemisphere, at least?
Just think how happy we could make the book lover who discovers these authors for the very first time…
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