Genre of the Month Overview #2

This will make sense when you read the end of the post, promise.

It was good getting back to fantasy in April. I say it's my favourite genre (tied with YA currently), but I hadn't read much since about 2008. I know. I used this time to brush up on some of the classics of the genre (Pawn of Prophecy) and to try something new (The Anvil of the World). Probably I won't continue the David Eddings -- it was so classic that it's become cliched -- but I do still want to read the sequel to The Drowning City, although only now that I'm thinking about it.
But the best fantasy I read this year (that isn't a subset of YA, anyway) was Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear. The man makes 1000 pages feel like light reading. My only worry is that he's two books into a proposed trilogy and there's still so many dangling threads. We know the highlights of Kvothe's history from the back cover of the first book, and we've seen almost none of it so far. It'll be interesting to see whether Rothfuss can write a fast-paced final book without making it feel rushed, or if he'll have to do the unthinkable and admit there's still too much story to tell, even for a 1000 page book.* He's earned my trust though, so I'll be with him whatever he decides to do. And I'm sure George R. R. Martin's Dance with Dragons would be on the list too if I'd read it yet. More on that to come later in the month/in early January.

Sci-fi had mixed results. I loved Fahrenheit 451. I'll say it again-- the writing was so good. Dune didn't grab me the way I thought/hoped it would. (Sidebar: (Girl of) Fire and Thorns reminded me slightly of Dune because both had the prophet coming to the desert people and turning them into an army.) Hitchhiker's was good, but since I'd already seen the movie I tend to remember that instead of the book. And Fat still has one of my favourite beginnings, along with Fahrenheit 451. Like, paragraphs of awesome I typed up and wrote comments about to figure out what it was I loved so much.

Reading romance pretty much confirmed what I already knew-- I love romantic subplots in stories, I don't like romances. The emphasis on the relationship isn't enough to keep me entertained, especially when you know they're going to end up together. Especially especially if you think the hero is an abusive jerk the heroine should run quickly away from. To be fair, the hero of one of the romances (more like romantic comedy) inspired the creation of a character I love but have no story for-- yet. I still think I Married a Pirate is a great example of how to do a dysfunctional relationship right, not to mention making what should be an abusive hero into a loveable guy. Probably because unlike all the other heroes he never actually physically harms the heroine-- seriously, what is with all the viselike grips on arms and the shoving?

Of course, I realised that I don't like how lacking in plot romances are after finishing writing a YA contemporary romance. Turns out I like writing character-driven stories, but  not reading them, and that maybe I should have been learning how to plot instead of indulging myself. So hey, that was a learning experience. Yay...

*In a striking coincidence, Fantasy Faction just posted an interview with Patrick Rothfuss where he says he doesn't regret pinning himself down to a trilogy, so I think it's safe to assume he'll be sticking to three books.