Help! I'm in such a slump. I love romances (solid on the romance, please, happy endings!), of any kind, though sci-fi and romantasy are my favs. My biggest issue is the FMC. I can't stand ingenues (clueless, naive, carried by everyone around her), or the emotionally stunted I-want-what-I-want bulldozer types who completely lack introspection/no EQ (think Catniss Everdeen). I think these make interesting side characters, I just can't get behind them as main characters. For instance, I prefer Charlaine Harris's character Harper Connelly to Sookie Stackhouse (though I read both series). I can't help it, I root for the wall flowers and ugly stepsisters and the actually unexpected FMC, as opposed to the "She's not like anyone else" trope.
I like savvy FMC's. It's okay if they are in new situations where they don't have all the answers, as long as they showcase some actual personality, sense of self, street smarts, EQ, a dark past, plot-twisting secret – SOMETHING!
FMC takes a calculated risk even though it might hurt her based on actual REASONS? Yes, please.
FMC does what she is determined to do regardless of facts, experience, common sense when there are twenty other ways to accomplish something? My eyes start crossing.
For instance, I liked Poison Study (most of Snyder's work, actually). I liked Cinder (Melissa Marr). I also like Shelly Laurentston and even Suzanne Wright (though insta-love can go from well done to lazy really fast, IMHO). I liked Robin Mckinley, though romance is usually a side theme for her. Lilith Saintcrow writes interesting books, though her characters can border on "bulldozer". I even like some Regency and Gothic – Pride and Prejudice is a masterpiece.
Nora Roberts usually bores me.
I adore fairy tale retellings. I loved Entwined.
YA, NA, Adult, all's fine with me as far as rating, as long as "adult activities" aren't inserted everywhere there should be actual plot ( I see you, Laurel K Hamilton). I love world-building, and unique cultures and mythos are interesting to me in a book, so no restrictions there. I don't mind morally gray characters if written well. I don't care if the work itself is newer or older. I also don't mind debut works from authors who still need a little polish, as long as the work is basically solid.
Thanks for reading my ridiculously long wishlist/rant.
by WestStorage2459
1 Comment
Sarah Beth Durst’s two books are perfect for this. The Bone Maker is more fantasy than romance, but I found the romance quite compelling: it’s about a band of heroes who saved the world in their youth, but have to come together again when the evil necromancer might not be dead. The romance is between a married couple who are part of this band, and it explores how their relationship has evolved and continues to evolve. The main character is part engineer, part witch, and she absolutely kicks ass.
The Spellshop, by contrast, is a Hallmark movie in book form. The main character is a wizard librarian who flees the capital with as many spellbooks as she can pack when the streets erupt in violence and arrives at the remote farming island where she was born. She definitely has things she’s not good at, but she kicks ass at spellcasting and solves a ton of problems on her own.
I can also recommend This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. It’s a sci-fi sapphic epistolary romance between two kickass time-traveling agents of two organizations that are at war. They’re both *extremely* good at what they do, and watching their battle of wits through the book is SO good.
I also liked The Surviving Sky by Kritika H Rao: about half fantasy/sci-fi and half romance, but it’s an enemies-to-lovers story where the couple starts out married, which I found very compelling. The main character is an archaeologist married to an engineer, and while society may not see them as equally important, the book very much positions them as intellectual equals.