Archives for 2024

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Dorothy is here tonight with a set of reviews for another 3 book categories.  Welcome Dorothy!

Romance, Romantasy & Fantasy

by Dorothy A. Winsor

As jackals may recall, I set out to read a book from each of the 15 categories Goodreads uses in its Best Book of the Year contest. This post covers categories four (Romance), five (Romantasy), and six (Fantasy). Wait! Don’t run away. See what you think of the books I read and maybe give us the lowdown on your own reading.

Romance: Love, Theoretically

Love, Theoretically – Kindle edition by Hazelwood, Ali. Contemporary Romance Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

First, my Romance confession: Even though Romance is the best seller of any category of fiction, I don’t usually read it. But on principle, I don’t diss romance novels. I believe it’s as hard to write a good romance novel as it is to write a good book in any other genre. I think the disrespect commonly shown for romance is a sign of disrespect for its largely female readers. Actually, I’d say the same thing about disrespect for the YA category, especially since women writers dominate YA. I recently saw a discussion on Reddit that implied YA was great until it got girl cooties.

In this category, I chose Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood. Elsie, the central character, is an adjunct professor of physics at U Mass and other Boston universities. Let me just explain that adjuncts are hired year to year in non-tenure-track positions. The pay is so bad that, like Elsie, they teach at multiple places at the same time. Elsie supplements her income by working as a girlfriend-for-hire.

But as the book opens, things are looking up for Elsie because she’s one of two finalists interviewing for a tenure-track job at MIT. Elsie’s job hunt is complicated by the presence of an existing faculty member with whom she has history.

My major reservation was with the male lead. In my opinion, Jack is a cliche. He’s desirable at first sight but slightly mysterious. To quote the book: He has “a dash of bad boy…a hint of mystery…a dollop of smoothness.” And in the next paragraph, he’s “distant. Uninterested. Effortlessly confident. Charismatic in an intriguingly opaque, inaccessible way.”

Additionally, the tension in this story dropped way off for me in its last third. By that point, the plot problems raised at the book’s start are all resolved, and we’re left with Elsie’s internal issues and the romance. Sadly, the man is the one who guides Elsie to self-knowledge, a move I thought undercut her and her growing strength.

Romantasy: Fourth Wing

Amazon.com: Fourth Wing (The Empyrean Book 1) eBook : Yarros, Rebecca: Kindle Store

Romantasy is a combination of Romance and Fantasy. The category is new this year because so many submissions combined these two genres that they’d have crowded everything else out.

Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yarros, is the story of characters training in a fantasy battle school that, among other things, requires them to bond with a dragon. The central character is Violet, whose brittle bones were supposed to send her to train as a scribe rather than as a combatant. But plans have gone awry.

I was engaged enough in this book that I picked it up whenever I had a free moment. I wanted to find out what happened. So that’s a good sign about the plotting. I’m also a sucker for found family stories and that comes into play here, as the cadets at the battle academy form friendships and struggle through trials together. There are some action scenes, including a long battle scene at the climax, and a couple of hot sex scenes. So, if those are your jam, they’re here.

I was, however, skeptical about the world building, and remained so throughout. I was never sure exactly why they were at war or even who they were at war with. There’s an acceptance not only of death but of murder not just of external enemies, but also of their classmates. Generally, societies don’t act that way. They might murder groups they see as “Other,” but not their own kind, at least not routinely as something they see as good. Also, people witness death over and over, and seem to suffer no trauma.

Fantasy: Tress of the Emerald Sea

Amazon.com: Tress of the Emerald Sea: A Cosmere Novel (Secret Projects Book 1) eBook : Sanderson, Brandon, Lyon, Howard: Kindle Store

In this category, I chose to read Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson. Tress lives on an island in a sea of dangerous spores. She’s a window-washer by trade and has never imagined leaving home. Then the man she loves is taken captive, and Tress sets out to rescue him. The plot is full of twists that require Tress to grow and change. It’s not particularly tense, and I could put it down when I had to. But I always picked it up again because Tress’s company is enjoyable.

Sanderson calls the book a “grown-up fairy tale,” and it does have that tone. In some ways, the narrative voice reminds me of Neil Gaiman’s stories. Here’s an example of the description of a character: “Imagine him as the answer to the question: ‘What if that gunk from your shower drain were to come to life?’” I only gradually realized that the narrator is a character in the story. Unraveling his identity eventually becomes part of the plot.

The book is often humorous, but it treats serious, heart-felt matter. One of my favorite parts is when a tertiary character is killed, and the narrator stops to tell us more about this character, turning him into a person, rather than an anonymous red shirt.

Sanderson says the idea for this story came from watching “The Princess Bride.” His wife noted that Buttercup scarcely appeared. She wondered how the story would change in the princess was the one to set off to rescue the person she loved. Sanderson originally published this book on his Kickstarter as part of a project of his own called “Secret Project.” For a long time, Sanderson and his wife were the only readers. I like secret projects. In writing, I think they’re particularly useful because they provide a place the writer can play without worrying how anyone else will judge them.

How about you? Are there genres you don’t read? Do these books sound appealing? What have you read recently that you want sound off about, no matter the category? Have you ever had a secret project?

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