Guest Post: Why Sidekicks Can Make It or Break It

When Kimi graciously invited me to guest post here on TaleChasing, I immediately said Yes without thinking.  Then it hit me and I thought, what am I going to write about?  My blog is all about the reader’s experience, and since I know nothing about writing novels, I asked Kimi for some ideas.  She said the writers here would like to hear what fans want to find in great urban fantasies.  That I can do, and I’m particularly inspired at this moment to riff on sidekicks. 

You’d be surprised how often the right sidekick can take a good story and push it to the next level for me.  I see it as the author’s opportunity to make a serious impression on the reader, because a funny, mean, horny, cute, or sarcastic sidekick is often the thing I remember most about a book.  Here’s an example of how the right sidekick can make even an untried urban fantasy standout from the crowd…

Over at Dirty Sexy Books we have an online book club.  Each month we tackle a new genre, we nominate books within that style, and then we vote on a single winner.  Our theme for February happens to be urban fantasy, so we put together a list of eight contenders.  The list is great, if I do say so myself, but it’s never easy for us to pick a winner.  We’re often flying blind, and while we appreciate good reviews, we rely on the covers and blurbs heavily.  I think it’s safe to say that our February winner was picked in large part because of the sidekick. 

Our winner is Spellbent by Lucy A. Snyder.  The cover is particularly striking, but what’s even more rare is that it shows the sidekick, a ferret named Palimpsest.  Isn’t he cute perched on the dragon-snake-thing?  This is not the first ferret sidekick I’ve encountered in an urban fantasy (Kat Richardson’s Greywalker series comes to mind), but showcasing the ferret on both the cover and the blurb has piqued our curiosity.  It seems like such a small thing, but in this case it made the difference. 

While most books don’t feature their sidekicks quite so prominently, they can make mundane scenes magical.  Take Midian in M. L. N. Hanover’s Unclean Spirits.  He’s a cursed vampire who resembles a rotted corpse, he chain-smokes, and he cooks like a gourmet French chef.   I enjoyed his grumpy and gruff observations so much that when he did not make an appearance in book two, Darker Angels, the sequel felt flat by comparison. 

Sometimes a good sidekick can even be an inanimate object.  I particularly enjoy UF series where the heroine wields a weapon with its own name.  Kate Daniels has Slayer, and Dante Valentine has Fudoshin.  This tradition goes back to Tolkien’s The Hobbit when Bilbo acquired Sting (or even farther back if we include Excalibur).   Even when the sword doesn’t have a name, such as Merit’s katana in Some Girls Bite, I like it when the heroine treats it with respect.  I’ll never forget when Merit received her red lacquered beauty, and the way she introduced herself to it with a little speech.  I find that sharp steel is a girl’s best friend in many urban fantasies.

While animals or supernatural beings make particularly excellent sidekicks, boring humans need not apply.  If they’re present, I figure they serve the same purpose as the red-clad crewmembers on Star Trek; they’re dead men walking. Even the most beloved characters are never completely safe though, and sometimes it enhances the story to kill off the sidekick.  I know, it sounds cruel, like taking a pot shot at Bambi, but it injects emotional drama, danger, and a sense of purpose into the plot. 

These kinds of decisions should never be made lightly, and this is why I read stories instead of writing my own.  There’s always a risk that you’ll alienate the readers if you remove one of their favorites, but that can also happen when trying to introduce new characters too.  I recently finished White Witch, Black Curse by Kim Harrison, which is the lowest rated book in the wildly popular Hollows series.  After I finished the book, I read back through the Amazon reviews, and a lot of hot, angry criticism was directed at the introduction of a ghost character who had a shared history with the heroine.  It’s interesting that Ms. Harrison introduced another new character in the same book that met with the opposite reaction.  Nearly everyone loved the small, cute gargoyle, but the ghost guy was persona non grata. 

Now personally, I have seldom met a sidekick I didn’t like, but Ms. Harrison’s latest book shows that there are exceptions to every rule.  If I could conjure the perfect sidekick it would be funny, fierce, and otherworldly.  I don’t care if the humans bite the dust, but when the trusty sword breaks, or when the faithful sidekick is slain, I’ll shed a few tears and wonder who will take their place.

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Rebecca runs the blog Dirty Sexy Books and is a book lover who has taken her fascination with sublime storytelling and pushed it to new and unhealthy extremes.