Chapter 6, on Paranormal Romance, details the emergence of paranormal romance (and its affiliate genre, urban fantasy), its critical reception, and its contributions to a change in popular romance aesthetics from the centrality of a stand-alone volume which ends with a decisive HEA for its protagonists to a series aesthetic in which what An Goris calls the “post-HEA” life of romance protagonists—sometimes contented, often vexed—appears as a secondary or even central feature of subsequent novels. As Maria Ramos-Garcia shows in this chapter, the popularity of paranormal romance in the 2000s has been linked by many critics to the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States and the subsequent Global War on Terror; likewise the racial and gender politics of paranormal romance have drawn substantial attention, whether focused on particular texts (the Twilight novels; the Black Dagger Brotherhood books; Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling series) or on distinct paranormal creatures (werewolves, vampires, shape-shifters, etc.). (14)
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The world-building process is complex and time-consuming, requiring an investment for both author and reader that may explain why virtually all paranormal romance is sold as a series of connected novels, although each novel has a different couple at its center. (141)
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In spite of the resistance on the part of literary critics to address these distinctions, the basic differences between paranormal romance and urban fantasy—as the genres are understood by most—create very distinctive kinds of narrative and reader expectations. In paranormal romance, each novel ends with the HEA of one or more couples, therefore the romantic elements consistently play a major role in the narrative; the point of view alternates between the hero and heroine, and occasionally other characters. The covers of these books (at least in this century) tend to depict the male protagonist instead of the couple more typical in other types of romance. That is the case in series such as ones by Larissa Ione or Gena Showalter or the more recent books of The Black Dagger Brotherhood by J.R. Ward. On the other hand, urban fantasy is narrated exclusively from the point of view of the same protagonist across all the books in the series (in the case of the texts relevant for this study, a female protagonist). Quite often the story is told in the first person, and the happy ending of each book is based on the resolution of a non-romantic conflict. The love life of the heroine evolves along with the series, but the story line is not HEA-dependent, and even if/when the heroine finds a romantic partner, the series can go on indefinitely. The amount of the narrative space devoted to her love life varies greatly from series to series and sometimes from book to book. The covers usually depict the protagonist alone. (143-144)
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An even more distinct category is young adult (YA) paranormal, which includes some of the characteristics of both. (145)
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So far, this chapter has centered on mainstream, widely read, paranormal romance and urban fantasy. Most of the series mentioned so far appear in the major bestsellers’ lists. There are also some other types of paranormal that have become successful among smaller groups of readers. Joey Hill’s Vampire Queen (2007–ongoing) and Yasmine Galenorn’s Otherworld/Sisters of the Moon series (2006–ongoing) are major series of erotic paranormal (romance or urban fantasy), characterized by sexual experimentation, BDSM, and/or polyamory. Paranormal has also become a major seller among gay and lesbian romance readers, and gay and lesbian paranormal seems to have taken off about a decade later than mainstream paranormal. (146)
From the introduction to the volume:
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