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I forget: did I make everyone read this in high school? If not, hopefully you've read it by now?
Besides having a totally awesome problem-solving heroine, and being set in Mary/Elizabethan England, which is one of my favorite time periods ever, it has basically the best romance I know of in a fantasy work. (That is, if it is really a fantasy work, which it is probably not... alternate history, or historical fiction, might be a better way of putting it. Which is another very cool point in its favor.) I've been reading a couple of complaints lately (e.g. here) that fantasy has very poor romance, and, well, they've got a point. Tolkien *really* sucked at romance, LeGuin's romance in Earthsea only came with a feminist tract attached, Susan Cooper's kids are too young for romance. Bujold rushes things too much for my taste. Mercedes Lackey, hee-- I actually like her early books in the same way I like Velveeta Cheez, but even when I was, like, 10, I understood that lifebonds were utterly dumb, and what's more, cheating.
The only other half-decent romances I can think of offhand are The Once and Future King, which probably doesn't count, and Aerin and Tor in The Hero and the Crown (though not Aerin and Luthe, which I always thought was both icky and annoying). Though Aerin and Tor have the advantage of being best friends their whole lives.
To me, Kate is believable, has believable flaws and virtues, and so does her love interest. And their relationship develops over the course of the book, and they are totally shown as learning things about each other, sometimes very subtly, and learning how to get along without killing each other. Yes, there's the obligatory misunderstanding, but even that is very believable to me, and something that has been carefully developed in her character. And the last chapter just rocks.
Besides having a totally awesome problem-solving heroine, and being set in Mary/Elizabethan England, which is one of my favorite time periods ever, it has basically the best romance I know of in a fantasy work. (That is, if it is really a fantasy work, which it is probably not... alternate history, or historical fiction, might be a better way of putting it. Which is another very cool point in its favor.) I've been reading a couple of complaints lately (e.g. here) that fantasy has very poor romance, and, well, they've got a point. Tolkien *really* sucked at romance, LeGuin's romance in Earthsea only came with a feminist tract attached, Susan Cooper's kids are too young for romance. Bujold rushes things too much for my taste. Mercedes Lackey, hee-- I actually like her early books in the same way I like Velveeta Cheez, but even when I was, like, 10, I understood that lifebonds were utterly dumb, and what's more, cheating.
The only other half-decent romances I can think of offhand are The Once and Future King, which probably doesn't count, and Aerin and Tor in The Hero and the Crown (though not Aerin and Luthe, which I always thought was both icky and annoying). Though Aerin and Tor have the advantage of being best friends their whole lives.
To me, Kate is believable, has believable flaws and virtues, and so does her love interest. And their relationship develops over the course of the book, and they are totally shown as learning things about each other, sometimes very subtly, and learning how to get along without killing each other. Yes, there's the obligatory misunderstanding, but even that is very believable to me, and something that has been carefully developed in her character. And the last chapter just rocks.
