I recently added Twilight to my Netflix queue and it happened to arrive right around the Halloween / Samhain holidays this year, which Halloween-wise is perfect for watching vampire movies. I’ve never read any of the Twilight Saga novels, and the movie left me wondering why exactly this series is so popular. Of course, I lack the prerequisite of being an estrogen-overloaded and otherwise chemically imbalanced tween female who dreams of being Bella and in twue tween wuv with Robert Pattinson’s alter-ego, the glampire Edward Cullen.
Aside from the overall weak presentation of whatever story may have been in the novel, I was mainly left wondering why exactly Bella and Edward were “in wuv” at all in the movie. There was so little setup or interaction between the two. Even if it was the cliché “love at first sight” excuse, it wasn’t apparent. Perhaps it happened so quickly that I missed it during one of several protracted eye-rolling sessions.
Being a guy, reading or watching romance isn’t exactly at the top of my list. Or middle, even. Probably not on the list at all, truth be told. Sure, sure, I’ll watch a romantic comedy, no problem. I mean, what guy didn’t like The Wedding Crashers, right? 
Fiction-wise (as in novels) in recent years, two series has stood out for me personally. First, I came across Sara Douglass’ wonderful and epic The Wayfarer Redemption, the first book in that series. I will easily put that series among the top few fantasy books I’ve ever read in my life. It has all the standard trappings we’d ever want in a fantasy epic, from skirmishes to all-out war, political and theological intrigue, magic and mysteries but at the same time it’s outstanding in that the author created a wholly unique world and lore, using none of the standard fantasy races (other than humans) or standard concepts of magic, etc. The action is choreographed and depicted on par with a scene R. A. Salvatore might construct. And yes, there are relationships and romance. None of this “love at first sight” crap, though. All the relationships succeed or fail based on the emotional strength, frailty or even momentary weaknesses, which makes them more believable and they are written in a way that is not only approachable as a male reader, but also appreciated.
Next is a series I happened upon completely by accident, C. L. Wilson’s Tairen Soul series. I bought the first book, Lord of the Fading Lands, out of curiosity since I liked the description on the back cover as well as the cover art. I still miss my late kitty Spaz, who was all black and the art had giant black cats with dragon wings flying and breathing fire, so yeah, I bought it despite a reservation causing a mild buzzing in the back of my mind that it was labeled a “fantasy romance.” Sure enough, the romance between Ellysetta and Rain is at the heart of the story, and a good deal of time is devoted to that, though there’s also action, intrigue, magic and villainy aplenty. Wilson does use the equivalent of “love at first sight” here, but gives quite a bit of lore as to why this specific type of “love at first sight” exists with the Fey race on the fantasy world she’s designed. More importantly, it isn’t “we fell in love at first sight and lived happily ever after.” Far from it. The characters have to work for each tiny bit of progress in their relationship. From this male reader’s perspective, it came within earshot of getting “girly” with a few parts of the whole romance thing, but much like the kid from Princess Bride, I started off being a little on the “ewwww kissing?” side of things but by the end it was all good and I was rooting for Rain’s wooing to finally win Ellie over. It never went totally girly and certainly never came close to what I remember of those Harlequin Romance books my mom used to read. Anyway, I enjoyed Lord of the Fading lands so much — romance and all — that I eagerly snapped up the second book, waited nearly a year for the third book and pre-ordered the fourth book (I’ve never pre-ordered a book before) which just arrived and I’m a few chapters into it.
Now, I’ve also read and enjoyed stuff like Laurel K. Hamilton’s Anita Baker novels and the first two of her Meredith Gentry novels, though I felt the last few Anita Baker (and all the Gentry) books were starting to border on soft-core porn when it came to the relationships (if we can call them that) between the main characters and their Lust of the Month. I like Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan books, too, which are more similar to LKH’s earlier Anita Baker novels that tended to be content with staying on the “naughty but sexy” side of things, rather than taking that next step into full chapters of near-porn.
Last week I read Dark Curse by Christine Feehan. I’ve never heard of the author before but the description sounded like the book would be right up my alley. The underlying story probably is, but the characters were rather on the unlikable side. The clincher was the romance. I use the word “romance” as loosely as I can with this one. Once more the “love at first sight” cliché rears its head, more or less. Feehan gave a cursory attempt at some backstory lore but it mostly fell flat. Part of this could be that, as I’ve since learned, this book is but the latest in a whole series of Carpathian “Dark” books, and perhaps the lore has been better explained previously, but Dark Curse served as a poor introduction to the Carpathian race and their way of thinking. The worst was the whole “romance” between Lara and Nicolas. First, Lara is portrayed in a very schizophrenic manner. One paragraph she insecure, then she’s strong and tough, then she’s suicidal. Come to think of it, that does describe an awful lot of women… I kid, I kid! 
Nicolas is essentially a douchebag who, were he not Carpathian, would most likely be driving a pickup truck with a confederate flag sticker on the back window, wear dirty jeans and wife beaters around the house and ordering Lara around with “Get me a beer, woman!” as he spits more chaw into a smelly styrofoam cup.
The little Carpathian lore that was passed along in Dark Curse makes it clear that Carpathian men enjoy sex. Hey, what guy doesn’t? The problem here is that Dark Curse goes into that realm of equating sex with love. The insecure Lara essentially feels that because Nicolas wants to have sex with her, therefore he loves her and therefore she apparently loves him back. Oh, sure, Nicolas tells her that she’s his “lifemate” (which she accepts all too readily, and the concept of lifemate is never explained other than being left as another way of meaning “soulmate”) and tells her that he loves her but there is never any true demonstration of emotion other than primal and raw lust. I’m being nice when I say Nicolas has sex with Lara. Really, the entirety of their relationship is Nicolas fucking Lara. And when he fucks Lara, Feehan devotes practically the entire chapter to describing it in full borderline porn detail. Lara comes across as if she feels Nicolas loves her because he wants to fuck her. The harder or more hardcore he fucks her, the more he must love her. The Carpathian way of life is described as being nearly Neandertholic, with women practically nothing more than the men’s playthings, yet at the same time they are supposedly extremely protective and devoted to their women because they “love” them so much. Lara is so insecure that apparently this is fine with her. The second time she and Nicolas are “together” she performs oral sex on him. It’s her first time doing oral, ever, but rather than being loving, patient or understanding, Nicolas decides to up the ante into forcibly making her deepthroat him. A few chapters later, Lara had been awake for untold hours, had used her newly strengthened “magic” powers to help save infants in the womb who were being attacked by mages and was so exhausted at the end she passed out. The ever-loving and understanding Nicolas decides to wake her up by biting and pulling on her nipples then practically raping her as she’s waking up. But hey, he wants to fuck her so it’s all good because fucking is love, right? He wants to fuck her a lot so he must love her a lot, right?
Sorry, but there is a huge difference between sex and “making love.” There is a difference between sex and fucking as well.
Maybe it’s that — no, not maybe, I’m quite positive it’s because I grew up with (and work with) so many girls from the Midwest region who were equally insecure and clueless to think just because some guy wants in her pants that he “loves” her, so she loves him and wants to get married, have kids and do the whole house with a white picket fence thing. Look, hon, he just wants to get laid. That ain’t love. It’s not even in the same ballpark. In Dark Curse, perhaps if only one character had been this way and some exposition described how the relationship actually matured, maybe I’d be OK with that. But it was not only the two main characters, but also the other characters in the book, which has caused me to transfer this misguided “sex = love” concept from the characters to the author herself, which in turn causes my opinion of Feehan as a woman to lower dramatically. Is that fair? Probably not, but there it is anyway. I can’t really say I have any interest in picking up one of the earlier Carpathian books because Dark Curse made such a poor, nearly offensive, impression.
As I’ve mentioned, I’m a guy who can be quite callous and shallow at times and can easily separate the acts of hardcore fucking from the intimate emotional bonding and sharing during “making love” (I really need to find a better phrase for that, it sounds so old-fashioned) with a woman I’m in love with and committed to, so the irony that I was nearly offended enough by Dark Curse to write this is not lost on me. Then again, I’ll refer you to my blog’s title… 
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Oh, so you also Sara Douglass. Have you ever wondered if the Fleshreavers and Margonites in Guild Wars might not have been somewhat inspired by her series?
I also recommend you reading David Gemmell – especially his Drenai series, the novels with Druss the Axeman, I enjoyed them a bit more than Troy. If you want a good stand alone novel by Gemmell, try “Dark Moon”. It is Heroic Fantasy at its best. You might also give Paul Kearney’s “The Monarchies of God” series a try. It is set in a world where gunpowder is discovered and crusades are in a hot phase, while “America” is discovered and unfortunately the natives are vampires.
I like a good romantic scifi/fantasy/horror book every once in a while.
Charline Harris The Southern Vampire series, the one that True blood is based on is full of sex and romance, but it’s mostly a detective story. I’d have to say that a good many of the vampire/werewolf stories you find are 9 out of 10 times found in the romance section, which can be embarrassing to a man in his 40′s. lol Still, they are very entertaining and fun to read.
I really enjoyed the Terry Goodkind series, which is based on the “Love at First sight” is full of sex, bondage, S&M and lets not forget Lesbians, which was a first for me in a Scifi Fantasy novel. But none of it was over powering as to devote an entire chapter to anyone one in particular. Just enough to keep you interested in what the author might do next. I really loved the first 4 books in the series, but then as so often happens, the author just regurgitates the plot points from the first few novels and the newness wears off.
But it’s very rare for a fantasy novel to have a lot of romance. Sure the hero gets the girl, but that comes between tons of lines where he is fending off bad guys and dragons. Robert Jordan’s series has some romance in it, but not till the third book if I recall correctly, because it wasn’t a major point of the plot at that time and its really nothing too involved.
I haven’t read Sara Douglass or C. L. Wilson, I’ll have to add those to my Amazon wishlist.
In revenge for having my too read list grow so much, I’d recommend Patricia Briggs. She has both fantasy and urban-fantasy novels, all of them are good and chock full of great characters and interesting relationships.