More thoughts on romance (inspired by The Sharing Knife/Bujold)

[cahn]

I realized something while reading TSK, which is that I don't like the way Bujold does romance when she's consciously thinking about romance.

What really draws me in, with romance, is-- part of falling in love, really getting love right, is seeing oneself differently. Realizing one might have to be a different person for the beloved. Learning to live with the faults of the beloved, and changing yourself to be the person that can live with your beloved.

The romances I love are all like that. Pride and Prejudice. Perilous Gard. Gaudy Night/Busman's Honeymoon. A Civil Campaign, except for the part where Miles' romance gets short-circuited at the end (which kind of irks me, but whatever). Possession (well, many styles of love are explored... one major one of which is an exploration of what happens when change/compromise does not occur).

The romance in TSK, in contrast, is relatively a bunch of infatuated sighs of "oh, isn't X wonderful?" Which is fine, and certainly a necessary part of romance, but if I want to see that I can just, you know, walk down the hallway and find someone who is engaged. Or read my journal entries about D :) Or, in fact, my journal entries about all my ex-boyfriends, all of whom have many fine and worthy qualities, though not enough-- and not well enough matched to mine, or at least we were unwilling to match them-- to keep us for a lifetime, or even for more than a couple of years. And that's the kicker: just reading about infatuation is rather unconvincing to me. If the author has not sufficiently shown us how the characters are doing the work-- and it can be work, albeit fun work-- of matching themselves together, well, I don't see any reason that I should expect the romance to last any longer than, you know, those of the growing number of people I know who are starting to get divorces.

Now, I'm not saying I don't enjoy the part of romance where the lovers are finding out all sorts of new and lovely things about each other. I really do like that, and I had great fun reading TSK-- and, because Bujold really is a consummate craftsman, it's not quite as cut-and-dried as I've implied here. But... I don't keep going back to it, the way I do to the deeper treatment of the books mentioned above.

Comments

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Yay recs! I will go look up Beekeeper's Apprentice at the first opportunity. Guy Gavriel Kay gives me conniptions (for some reason I've taken a violent dislike to his writing style, which really isn't his fault, but there it is), and I'm sorry, but I could not stand The Summer Tree (I also take a violent dislike to Arthurian fantasy unless the author demonstrates s/he knows at least as much as I do about Arthurian matters, which is I admit a somewhat difficult barrier, and certainly just a personal quirk), but! I did very much like the Sarantium books (Kay demonstrated he knew waaaay more than I did about Byzantium :) ). I'll definitely check it out.

Yeah, I'm hoping that Fawn gets a little more, I dunno, assertive. Or something. On the other hand, I reread Curse of Chalion (my absolute positive favorite Bujold ever!) and paused halfway through, and thought, "wow, if she'd written this book in two parts I would have hated the first part." So I guess we should wait for the second half. But I hate waiting! ;)

[poodlerat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think it's a real shame that her editors or publishers or whoever made her split TSK into two (for reasons that are still not entirely clear to me. I mean, clearly they were economic reasons, but it's not as though this is a common strategy---I'd really like to know who thought it up and why they thought it was a good idea.) Unless Legacy is brilliant, I don't think it will be able to fully redeem Beguilement, because reading the first half by itself exposed a lot of weaknesses that might never have been apparent if the story had been published in one volume.

I think I may understand your point about GGK's style---his writing is very...I don't even know how to put it...thick? Lots of elaborate language and playing on your emotions and...a lot of other stuff that can actually make his books hard to get into.

The Summer Tree and its sequels are actually my least favourite of all his books, mostly because I don't like high fantasy, and the chasm between modern language and high fantasy language is at its most jarring in that trilogy. Even though I'd already fallen in love with his other books, I tried to read The Summer Tree three times before I managed to finish it.

I didn't mind the stuff about Arthur, but since my knowledge of Arthurian legend comes entirely from reading Rosemary Sutcliff's Arthurian novels and the first half of The Mists of Avalon, that doesn't mean much. If you have the time and inclination, I'd love to know some of the places he went wrong or fudged with the legend...

The Lions of Al-Rassan, A Song for Arbonne (my second favourite), and The Last Light of the Sun are much closer to Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors in terms of style and content. If you enjoyed the latter two in spite of his writing style, you'll probably like the others, too. Tigana is sort of a bridge between his high fantasies and historical fantasies, with some elements of both.

[/GGK evangelizing]

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do now wish that I'd waited to read Beguilement until Legacy was published.

It's funny about GGK, because I usually don't have a huge problem with somewhat-mannered writing styles... but occasionally one just rubs me totally the wrong way for some reason. Piers Anthony is the other one I can think of offhand (well, ok, Anthony has maaaaany other issues besides his writing style).

Hm, I don't remember exactly *what* bugged me about his Arthurian-legend stuff, just that I remember ranting to people about it at the time :) My husband likes them, though, and owns a copy, so maybe I'll have to go back and look.

I did like Tigana, though :)