[LMB] TSK:B reviews from two perspectives

[Azalais Aranxta]

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Ruth Frey wrote:

>   Lois McMaster Bujold wrote:
> >Alternatively: "Romance: threat or menace?"
>
> The more I've been looking around at things, the more I think
> people's biggest problem with romance per se is the definition
> of the term. Namely, a large segment of the public thinks
> "romance" consists exclusively of those awful interchangeable
> Harlequin things, or something similar.  It's similar to the
> way a lot of people have inaccurate understandings of "fantasy"
> (= Conan the Barbarian) and SF (= rayguns, BEMs, and an
> intended 12-year-old audience).

There's an additional problem, though.  When you think about it,
most "literary" fiction is in some way related to sex, romance,
love, mating, marriage, divorce.  Most of the stories we like to
tell as a species are about human relationships.  Literary
fiction that doesn't involve romance is quite often about parents
and children.

So when you get a good romantic story that doesn't have fantasy,
sfnal, spy/thriller, mystery elements that places it firmly in
another genre, it gets labelled "fiction", not "romance".  The
"romance" section of a bookstore is mostly full of stuff that I
just. don't. want. to. even. go. NEAR--there's a formula, or
rather several formulas depending upon how much sex there is in
the book, about when the characters meet, how they meet, how far
they will go and there's no suspense whatsoever about whether
they will end up together.  Most-but-not-all of the "romance"
labelled stuff with elements of the supernatural or sfnal or
fantastic isn't very well done on the genre end and the
historicals are mostly abysmal.

I adore Heyer, but I didn't start reading her until she was
recommended to me by friends who knew my tastes, because I really
haven't liked most of the historical romances I've read.  I can
pick them to bits and I wasn't even a very GOOD history student.
It's possible to write characters that are historical and still
sympathetic to the modern reader, but *most* romance writers are
still stuck on the spunky misfit who has mysteriously
internalised 21st century ideals trope.

The book "Winterfair Gifts" was in?  The only story I liked in it
was Lois's.  I can't stand Asaro and the other two stories were
just not up to snuff sf/fantasy wise.  The amount of bad recycled
neopaganism in fantasy-labelled worldbuilding is bad enough, I've
seen a lot more of it in books with a romance label.

Basically, it seems to me that most books have romance as a plot
element somewhere, but the ones that are really well-done tend to
end up in whatever genre the rest of the story falls into, the
ones that are more clearly emotional/sexual fantasies fall into
romance, and sadly, my emotional/sexual fantasies for the most
part don't fall in with that formula.  *shrug*

~malfoy :)

****************************************************************
Azalais Aranxta (~malfoy)
ataniell93 on LiveJournal and Vox
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/malfoymadness

"I know the true world, and you know I do. But we needn't let it
think we all bow down." --Christopher Morley