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.

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 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. :)