The Perilous Gard (Pope) and romance in fantasy

[cahn]

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.

Comments

[ase.livejournal.com]

If you hate clunky short sentences, run away from C. J. Cherryh very, very fast. (Not that this will stop me from trying to make you read Cyteen for long.)

I read the Anne of Green Gables books as a kid, and liked them. I'll give The Blue Castle a shot the next time I'm at the library.

On the Mercedes Lackey front - tangenting back a bit - if she'd ever done a proper lifebond romance, where two people are stuck with each other and have to figure out why, it would have been a great story. A mystery and a romance! (She is a snotty young nobleman! He is a herald-trainee! By the end of the story, they discover a shared passion for ... I don't know, cheese - as well as how their partner inspires them to be a Better Person (tm).)

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Huh. I actually don't mind Cherryh, though I will admit that her style is not my favorite. I think it's because she uses actual sentences and not fragments. So Cyteen, huh? I've had good luck with her short stories ("Pots" and "The unshadowed land" were just... like being punched. But in a good way. I now have the Collected Stories, which vary greatly in quality, and I think I'd read all the best ones alrady) but bad luck with her novels. I think it's because (at least in Downbelow Station and Fortress of something-or-another) she tends to focus on relatively minor stories that you have to extrapolate for yourself have an actual impact on the bigger world-- you're not actually shown that impact. I'm not that smart :)

Yeah, I should've added that you ought to like Montgomery to start with, as she does write in a particular sort of style. But fortunately you do. Blue Castle is definitely on the fluff side, but romantic fluff! Oh, Possession is also exceedingly wonderful, if you haven't read it, though it really qualifies more as a romance in the archaic definition than the modern one.

You know, it's funny you say that about Lackey-- and great idea!-- because I've wondered, TSK being called "beguilement" and all, whether maybe some of the Fawn/Dag attraction isn't... externally imposed. By their, I don't know, essences mingling in the sharing knife or something, I haven't figured that out yet. And at some point they figure this out and have to deal with it.