WEEK 8 assignment : N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms reminded me of a collection of novels I read back in middle school called ‘Last Fantasy’. This reading also led me to an awareness of a genre Mythic fiction and Contemporary urban Fantasy which I’ve had experiences with but never able to explain why there was a certain eccentric charm that divide it distinctively from High Fantasy. 

There are several similarities I’ve found in HTK and Last Fantasy. Although both were products of authors who came from completely different cultures the spirit of this genre inhabited in their works are strangely alike. In comparison to High fantasy, Contemporary urban fantasy that I’ve experienced reading resonated much less mythological feeling and much more political and tragedy feeling. However, there is a certain kind of magical tone to them that’s more tragic, bitter, cinematic and adventurous. Sometimes I get a similar feeling reading works in this genre and playing role playing games that mostly based on fantasy stories by contemporary writers. It doesn’t transport me as an audience to another ethereal world like Tolkien’s works but it provided a different kind of escape and we tend to get more sympathized with characters’ dramatic mentality.

Both High Fantasy world and Urban Fantasy world are full of elaborated details at every corners. Although, lives in Urban Fantasy seems to express more intimate backstory in an individual level. I can think of a lot of Urban Fantasy works that has a similar characteristic in Anime culture. Some of them might be Fullmetal Alchemist and Bounen no Xamdou. Although, they seems to have a stronger Mechanical theme (that somehow managed to co-exist with magical stuffs).

This topic raised questions about urban/contemporary fantasy writers. From the experience reading The Hobbits I found several uses of terminology that’s odd for fantasy but appropriate for Tolkien’s time such as gunpowder and other things that gave audiences idea of scale by comparing to contemporary objects. Time might be a big factor that separate characteristic essence of each Fantasy works. It’s possibly impossible for contemporary authors to write mythology that has the same tone as Tolkien as different generation inhabited different perspective of the world. Although, unique tone in habited in individual works also record the spirit of it’s era and that alone make them attractive.