[LMB] TSK:B reviews from two perspectives

Thu Apr 26 22:42:16 BST 2007

On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Rosa Pedersen wrote:

> > 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".
>
> I think this is just plain not true. For one thing, women's
> writing is way, way more likely to get labeled romance (or
> men's is more likely to be labeled fiction -- look at Nicholas
> Sparks, if you can stand to.)

I don't read Nicholas Sparks, but if you're saying that my point
is invalid because a lot of bad stuff gets labelled literary
fiction, I don't think that invalidates my point.

> Also it has a lot to do with who writes it. You could take a
> plot synopsis of Tar Baby and get it labeled romance (though
> they'd stick it on the "African American" shelf if they had
> one), but nobody's going to put Toni Morrison in a genre label.

I'm not sure what you mean by this.  Did Toni Morrison write a
book that had a plot like that of the Tar Baby story?

> And then you get crazy romance/time travel/historicals like
> Outlander, which I know I've seen shelved in the Romance
> section at the used book store, and which many readers
> definitely consider to be romance.

Yes, that was one of the books I was thinking of when I said that
in my opinion books that get labelled "fantastical/sfnal
romances" as opposed to "romantic sf/fantasy" are generally not
that good.  Diana Gabaldon would definitely be one of those
writers I look at and think, how the heck did this person get to
be so popular?

> This next part really interested me, because I would pretty
> much say the same thing about SF/F in general - for many years
> I haven't picked up a SF book unless it was strongly
> recommended by a friend who shares my taste, because I don't
> have time in my life to wade through all the crap.

A lot of people do feel that way.  But I'm surprised about your
comments about women's writing, because I would say my reading is
95% SF/F, and at least half my favoured authors are female.  I
have always thought of SF as a genre with not just a lot of
female writers but a lot of good ones.

> You can say the same thing about the clumsy attempts at romance
> by writers outside the genre, and you can say the same thing
> about SF written by nongenre authors (did you read Oryx &
> Crake? it made me want to ship a box of SF to Margaret Atwood.)

See, I didn't read that, but I really love Salman Rushdie, who
never gets labelled "fantasy" even though that's pretty much all
he writes.

> > 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*
>
> Well, romance as a genre is as ghettoized as SF or mystery.

Yes, but given that a lot of romance books are formula books and
that a lot of romance writers write to the formula because it
sells and there is a lot of material out there on how to write
romances that sell, I'd say...okay, there's a reason for that.
There is also a lot of formulaic high fantasy that I really don't
like

> But it's no more fair to say people think bad things about
> romance because it sucks than to think people look down on SF
> because it sucks.

But what if I do think most of it sucks?  Not Heyer, not some of
the other greats, but by and large, a pastel paperback with a
pretty woman and a certain kind of guy and the title on it with a
big script font hardly ever contains a story I want to finish
about people I still care about halfway in.

> Haven't you ever had a conversation where
> someone dissed your reading habits because the physics in SF
> isn't ever really real,

Yes, and if that's what matters to them, fine by me, they won't
enjoy SF.  There are SF books for gearheads--Hal Clement comes to
mind--but most SF isn't written for that kind of person.  I've
done a lot of study in RL about history, the occult and
comparative religion and it has really, truly ruined a lot of
fantasy for me because the bar from which my disbelief must be
suspended is much higher.

> or because they read a lot of D&D novels in high school and
> they were repetitive and formulaic and badly written?

Yep, and I agreed with them--most fantasy isn't that great.
(Cripes, most of everything isn't that great.)  But by and large
I have better luck in any aisle of a bookstore BUT the romance
aisle, despite the fact that most of the fiction I write is
strongly romantic/sexual in nature.  Because the romance formula
doesn't work for me.  I think that even though I'm mostly
monogamous and mostly straight and kind of into the whole alpha
male thing, I'm still too queer for most romance.  I'm not going
to pay $7 for a book to get my hormones going when fanfic does a
better job and is (mostly) free.

> So anyway - if romance reviewers think TSK is romance
> with a fantasy setting, are you going to not read it?

I'm not going to KNOW about it, because I don't read romance
reviews.

> Or does the publisher/author convince you it's SF regardless
> and that makes it a good bet?

Not the publisher.  The author.  I haven't read TSK yet.
Honestly, it hasn't grabbed me the way the Chalionverse or the
Vorkosiverse does, plus, it's a series that's much more tightly
"in that order, about all the same people, linked together" so I
kind of want to be able to sit down and read it all in order
instead of being on pins and needles till they all come out.  I'm
not a spoilerphobe, though, and I pay attention to the
discussions, and I will eventually read it because people whose
tastes I trust a great deal all like it.  I expect I will like
it.  I'm not sure it will grab me the way Paladin of Souls did,
but that's just life.

I am pretty critical though.  Lois has my unending loyalty
because she has never yet written a book that I love and also
hate and want to take apart like a clock and put back together
running correctly.  (JK Rowling, I'm looking at you.)  She writes
characters I love, characters I'm lukewarm about and characters I
hate, and it all works for me because there are people I love,
people I'm lukewarm about and people I hate in the real world.
She doesn't try to be funny, she just is sometimes, like life.  I
adore Lois' books because I never have to jump up on a box to get
high enough to suspend my disbelief while reading.

~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