Everyone knows what chick-lit is, a book about a woman's obsession with men. If it's not about that, it ain't chick-lit. You can usually spot pure chick-lit by it's cover, something girly set over a pastel background.
And many of you should know what urban fantasy is, fantasy set in a modern environment, an environment far different from high fantasy and it's ilk, set in the ancient days of knights and damsels, nor is it set in the far off future, like science fantasy, which is completely different again (unless you're Star Wars, which still contains knights and damsels).
Now, chick-lit is usually about a certain kind of character (this is more based off the blurbs on the back, than an actual read-through, I don't read chick-lit, perhaps because I'm not a chick), a twenty something woman who's struggling to meet the demands of her career while simultaneously trying to find the perfect man.
Urban fantasy, on the other hand, tends to be more about the main character (usually, but not exclusively, male) who does his or her best to protect the citizens of whatever city they happen to be in from whatever form of monster or mage that takes the author's fancy.
The obvious combination of these two is a twenty something woman who's looking for the perfect man and fights monsters in her spare time and this is the almost inevitable result of such a merger. The other result is that the perfect man tends not to be a man at all, as such, but rather a member of the supernatural community.
It's my belief that this type of fantasy is the reason for the pop culture image of vampires, who are generally portrayed as supernaturally handsome/beautiful with a tendency to be amazing lovers, perhaps the only reason they drink blood is due to it's requirement for horizontal activities.
Now, perhaps you believe I'm being unfair to the urban fantasy chick lit genre and I will concede that there is the occasional book that is a good read despite itself. Kim Harrison's The Hollows series, although maybe they're the exception the proves the rule.
In the other corner we have the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series and the Merry Gentry series by Laurell K. Hamilton and the Dante Valentine series by Lilith Saintcrow. Anita Blake and Dante Valentine are both strong female characters who fight monsters for a living, Anita being the licenced vampire executioner for her area and Dante being a bounty hunter. Both of them wind up falling in love with supernatural monsters and both of them gain supernatural powers due to this.
Granted, the Anita Blake series originally focused a lot more on Anita as a lone agent and judging by my own reaction was a lot more readable to male readers. Unfortunately, Anita gets infected by this thing called the ardeur and has spent every novel since participating in more and more gratuitous sex. I stopped reading several novels after the whole ardeur thing started, but by the time I stopped reading, she'd collected an entire harem of supernatural lovers (Anita claims that she's deeply in love with all of them, but she seems to not have much of a grip on reality anymore, I blame constantly being beaten up by vampires, werewolves and the occasional zombie.)
Dante Valentine doesn't really have much of an excuse for being like she is. Despite being able to deal with pratically anything short of a demon, she's needy and whiny and when she should be acting independent, she's obsessing over a lover. A sorrier excuse for a hero I've never come across and I could wish I hadn't come across her in the first place.
Merry Gentry, being the character I haven't much spoken on, is an elven princess. Unfortunately, like Anita, she's obsessed with sex and all her magic comes from sex. Also like Anita, she has a drooling male harem, presumably because Hamilton wasn't satisfied with living vicariously through Anita. Unlike Anita, however, she doesn't have the excuse of the ardeur and tends to think of sex as pretty much the solution to every problem.
Oh, I'd also have liked to bring up Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, but I haven't read it and I hope that I never will. Based upon reviews and passages from the book, I can say with some authority that only young teenage girls could possibly find the series entertaining. Then again, that's teen chick-lit urban fantasy and the mixing of that many genres could never turn out well.
In conclusion, if you enjoy chick-lit, that's (not really) fine and if you enjoy urban fantasy, bravo. But for goodness' sake, do not try and mix 'em, because you'll end up with something that's less than the sum of it's parts.
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