Yes, all of you are right!

-The Winter Prince (Wein)? Yes! Thanks, mistful! Totally lovely. Medraut is Just Awesome; was in love with him from approximately the first chapter). Lleu drove me nuts, but got better. And Lleu Llaw Gyffes is quoted! And dark family issues! And Morgause! Love, love, love. I was smart and also got out the two sequels. The second book was, enh, I didn't like it as much, except for the dreadful scene at the beginning-- which isn't even shown, just told-- where you realize that the happy ending of the first book doesn't mean that history is going to be rewritten (and it's the Welsh version-- Wein really knows her stuff! Yay happy me!!) -- I think for some reason I don't find Goewin a compelling narrator, and I was expecting more Medraut, and, well. The last book in the trilogy, The Sunbird, is again lovely, because the main character Telemakos is so very cute.

-All of you who told me I had to read The Beekeeper's Apprentice (King)? Yes! And thank you (I don't know if this was intentional) for not spoiling it at all so that I could have the shock of opening the first page and going, "...oh!" (Not that I shouldn't've guessed from the title and the subtitle, but what can I say? I'm thick, and have read too many substandard books lately.) I have more to say here (about romance, what else?), but I was not smart enough to get out the second book in the series, so I am currently trying to figure out how I can get it the most quickly :)

How to do a May-December romance so that I won't vomit

Okay, so I spent the whole of Beekeeper's Apprentice wondering why the romance between the two main characters (okay, there's not so much of one in this particular book, but unless you are blind and deaf you KNOW what's going to happen) doesn't bother me very much at all, and definitely not nearly as much as Dag and Fawn's romance.

Because honestly, if someone had described this book to me before I read it I would have run away screaming: MUCH older, wiser mentor starts having feelings for Mary-Sue-like-young girl whom he is teaching and whose personality he is molding, and vice versa! I mean, squicky ick!

Here are the things that save it:

-It goes really slowly. I mean, this book takes place over a number of years, enough for them to get pretty solidly attached *before* any monkey business starts happening. (Though I've been informed that the horrible! horrible! line "I've wanted to do that since the first moment I saw you" is used after their first kiss. I think she was, what, 15 at the time? Eww yuck! I will simply chalk that down to temporary insanity due to kiss-induced hormones and assume that it does not actually mean anything corresponding to their actual relationship.) I can't deal with these love-in-two-weeks things. I really can't, not combined with a huge difference in age.

-Really, Mary's character is supposed to be molded by her mentor/eventual-lover, but I can't really imagine that anyone's going to mold her without her molding the molder right back.

-It's beat home to us during the entire book (although having Mary say it explicitly in the first ten pages is a bit too much!) that there is no one else for either of them. Can be no one else. They won't settle for anything less than an entire, complete partnership, and their minds are sufficiently, well, different, that there aren't too many people who will do.

-This is related to the previous point: they are partners. The last confrontation where they work so tightly together like two parts of a machine? Yes! I will forgive a lot for partners like that. John/Aeryn in Farscape also have that sort of vibe, and I love it.