I’ve got another book to talk about that I forgot about because I read it just before I got sidetracked by vacation: How to Stop Time, by Matt Haig.

I’d classify this one as mainstream literary fiction with speculative fiction elements. The plot is very sf/f, but I think it’s executed in more of a mainstream way, though I can’t quite put my finger on why I say that. I just think a fantasy author would have given us a very different book based on this premise and with this plot. When I describe it, you’ll think science fiction (or maybe fantasy), but the book itself isn’t quite what you might expect from that description if you’re a science fiction/fantasy reader. If that makes sense.

The main character has a condition that means he ages very slowly. It’s sort of the opposite of the disease that makes children age so rapidly that they die of old age in childhood. I think maybe one of the things that makes this more mainstream than sf is that it never really gets into what causes this — is it something scientific like a mutation or something magical? The main character is more than 400 years old, but he only looks about 40. He works for an organization designed to keep this condition a secret and protect the people who have it from being turned into scientific experiments or from any kind of persecution. In exchange for going on the occasional mission to determine if a person has the condition and to bring that person into the fold to keep it secret — or possibly deal with threats to exposure, if necessary — he gets the funding and documentation he needs to live a reasonably normal life somewhere for about eight years, which is the length of time someone can generally go before the lack of aging becomes obvious.

The story flashes back to various points in his history, including his youth, before he realized what was happening to him and he made the mistake of getting married — they were two young people getting married, but after years went by, it looked like a middle-aged woman married to a teenager. Worse, that was a period of witchcraft scares, and not aging looked awfully suspicious. In the present, he’d really just like to have a normal life. It gets lonely not being able to maintain a relationship with someone who isn’t like him for more than eight years. He thinks he has a daughter somewhere out there who’s like him (he had to separate from his family because of that witchcraft thing), and he’d like to find her.

This was a fairly quick read, and it was quite engrossing and fascinating. I love history, so I enjoyed visiting the various time periods. I did have a bit of cognitive dissonance as a Doctor Who fan, since old person who looks young and doesn’t seem to age, bouncing around in time, reads to me as Time Lord, and so I kept expecting him to recognize major events that were about to happen. Then I remembered that it was only the story that was bouncing around in time. He’d actually experienced these events the slow way, in the proper order (as the Doctor would say).

There were jacket blurbs swooning about how romantic the book was, but as a former romance author who tends to write things with romance in them, I didn’t find it that romantic. It’s Guy Literary Romance, which is basically a young woman being fascinated with a middle-aged (looking) man. So, if you’re looking for something deeply romantic, this won’t scratch that itch.

I’d say this is a great choice if you want to sneak something science fiction or fantasy into your book group that isn’t normally into that sort of thing. It’s also a fun read for Doctor Who fans, if you want to imagine the main character as a Time Lord. It sounds like I’m not really praising it, but I did like it. I just don’t want anyone to be disappointed from expecting it to be something that it really isn’t. And now I’d kind of like to try writing the book that I expected this to be. Because I need more story ideas to add to the list.

I have more books to discuss! Earlier this year, I read the Farseer trilogy by Robin Hobb. After a little break (now that I’m aware of the dangers of binge reading and know it’s wise to put some space between books if I don’t want to burn out on a series), I dove into the Liveship Traders trilogy (starting with Ship of Magic), and I loved it even more. Part of that may be that I’m fascinated with sailing ships and love reading about seaside cultures, but I also loved the scope of the series and the varying viewpoints.

This series is about a community built around a group of seagoing traders who sail on magical ships. The ships are built from enchanted wood that’s particularly sturdy. It also absorbs memories from the people on board, and after a few generations of a family working on the ship, with family members dying on board and having their blood absorbed, the ship “quickens” and becomes sentient. The figurehead becomes a living being who can talk and move, and the ship can just about sail itself. But there are costs, as a family goes into deep debt to get such a ship, and it can take generations to pay off that debt. A bad year can get a family in trouble so that they risk losing everything.

At the beginning of the series, things start to go horribly wrong. There are newcomers granted land by a distant ruler who come in and want to make changes. A young woman who believed she would inherit her family’s ship when her father died is shocked to learn that her parents decided to give it to her sister, to be captained by her outsider husband, with his young son (who’d rather be a priest) as the family member who needs to be on board to interact with the ship. The new captain, worried about the family’s debts, thinks that transporting slaves is the only way to make money quickly enough. Meanwhile, there’s a pirate captain who hates slavery and believes that if he could just capture himself a liveship, he could take out the slavers and make himself king of a pirate kingdom. And there’s a group of sea serpents with a vague sense that there’s something they need to find that would explain who they are and what they’re supposed to be. All of these story threads, and a few more, gradually weave together.

I would say that this isn’t the best series to read when you’re stressed because it’s very intense. Bad things happen to characters you like. People make bad decisions, and there are terrible consequences. But it’s incredibly satisfying seeing how it all plays out, so it rewards patience. The characters are really complex. There are few who are totally good or purely evil. The good people make mistakes and the bad people do some good things. There’s a character I hated in the first book who goes through some difficult things that result in a remarkable amount of growth, so by the end I’m cheering for her. There’s a character I go back and forth on — he seems terrible at first and is an antagonist, but then in the middle of doing some awful things he ends up making things much better for a lot of people, including a character who really needs to be helped. He does a lot of good while also being vain and a bit of a megalomaniac, but then he does something I can’t forgive (and I’m not asked to), even as I learn some of what made him the way he is and why he’s been doing these things. Depending on whose viewpoint I’m in and where we are in the story, I sometimes want him to be defeated, sometimes want him to prevail.

The multiple plot threads that seem disconnected that all come together is one of my bits of reading catnip, and what I loved here is that the way things fit together is set up well enough that I had the satisfaction of figuring out what was going on just before it was spelled out in the text — not so far ahead that it felt predictable, but giving me just enough time to get excited about what I’d figured out for myself before it was confirmed. There were a lot of “Oh!” moments in the last half of the last book.

Recommended for those who like a deep dive into a fantasy world and enjoy complex characterization and storytelling, but probably not the best thing to read if you’re under a lot of pressure and have a lot going on in your life (unless reading about people who have worse problems than you do relaxes you or is cathartic). This isn’t a cozy read by any means, but it’s definitely worth the torment.

I don’t normally veer into controversial or political territory, but I have something I need to get off my chest.

I think maybe authors, particularly those writing for young people, should call a moratorium on the “jealousy is romantic because it means he cares” trope. Most of the school shooting incidents have been triggered in some way by romantic jealousy — the guy gets so outraged that he comes to school with a gun because either the girl doesn’t want to date him and is with someone else or the girl broke up with him and is with someone else. And yet, this attitude, short of the actual shooting, is shown to be the sign of great passion and romance in way too many books. It’s especially twisted when the jealous, possessive guy is triangled with the supportive friend, whose relationship with the heroine is seen as safe but passionless.

It really struck me in a book I was reading just before vacation. The heroine was already in a relationship with Guy 1, and he was irking me because his point of view chapters came across as very controlling and possessive to me. He thought of the heroine less by name and more by “my girl.” They worked in the same field and had equivalent skill and training, and she had abilities beyond his, but he still tried to keep her out of action and hated when she was doing her job because he wanted to “protect” her. Guy 1 even got the heroine pulled off a mission, in spite of the fact that she was most qualified for it, and lied to her about it because he wanted to keep her out of danger. I was very much in “oh, honey, you do not want to tie yourself to this one” mode.

Then the heroine has to work with Guy 2, going through all kinds of adventures and dangers with him. He respects her abilities and trusts her to be able to handle the situations they’re in. They put themselves on the line to help and protect each other, but in a way that’s more about being comrades and not about “you’re my girl, so I must protect your delicate, fragile self.” I was thinking that the author was going to pull a bait and switch on us, setting up Guy 1, then introducing Guy 2 as a contrast.

What really made me think we were meant to switch loyalties to Guy 2 was when Heroine and Guy 2 had been in terrible danger and were hiding out, then Guy 1 found them, and his first instinct was to reach for his weapon in a jealous rage because “his” girl was with this other guy. Never mind that he knew they’d been on the run together and he’d been looking for them to get them to safety. He doesn’t actually act on the rage, but he does go into a massive snit until the heroine has a chance to explain the situation to him. Guy 1 was dead to me at this point and I was sure that she’d end up with Guy 2.

Nope. Guy 2 was just a good friend and Guy 1, the one with all the jealous rages, possessiveness, lies, and control, was her true love. And I nearly threw the book across the room.

This pattern shows up time and time again in young adult fiction, and it’s a terrible model to present for romance. It’s not even about the “bad boy” vs. the “nice guy.” In this case, both of the guys would have probably been considered on the “nice” side. Neither was dark and dangerous. Both were sort of boy-next-door types. But the relationship that struck me as reasonably healthy was rejected in favor of the relationship that was a gun away from a school shooting.

Of course, fans are going to fan, and no matter what the author does there will be a big Team Jerk faction, but the author doesn’t have to stack the deck. Why can’t heroines swoon over guys who trust and respect them and be turned off by jealousy and control? Why show a relationship based on mutual respect and trust as being only worthy of friendship, not romance? If you can’t make a healthy relationship romantic and exciting, you need to work on your writing skills. The jealousy is just a crutch for a way to convey passion and deep feeling. It’s a shortcut, an easy out.

If you moved your romantic hero into a present-day high school and the counselors would red-flag his behavior as a potential shooter, the guy who’d snap if the girl he liked dated someone else, you’ve got a problem, and maybe you shouldn’t be presenting this to impressionable young people as something positive.

While I was on vacation, I managed to get through some of my e-reader backlog, finishing one book I’ve been reading on airplanes for a while (it’s a collection of short stories, so it’s not as though I’ve been stopping a novel mid-way and forgetting about it until the next flight) and reading three others. One of them was a bit of a disappointment (and based on the reviews of the sequel, I won’t be bothering with it unless I can get it from the library), the other was so-so, but one I can actually recommend — Matchmaking for Beginners, by Maddie Dawson.

I know “chick lit” is kind of a naughty term in publishing now and no one wants to be associated with it, but I think this really does fit the pattern of the British kind of chick lit — after her life gets upended, the heroine finds new hope in a new place among a quirky cast of characters. Only this is set in the US and she finds her new life in Brooklyn, as opposed to the British books where the heroine ends up in a village. But, really, this probably would best be described as magical realism chick lit.

An elderly woman has become quite the matchmaker because she has the ability to actually see love, as though it’s a physical force. Not only can she tell which people are made for each other (or not), but she can see the things people need. Now she’s ill and dying but still has some projects left unfinished. Then she meets her great-nephew’s fiancee and can tell that this young woman is like her — and not meant for the great-nephew.

When her relationship falls apart rather spectacularly, this young woman first tries to move on in a very conventional, safe way, until she finds out that her ex’s great aunt left her a Brooklyn brownstone containing a number of people who need her to use her gifts.

This was a really sweet, fun romantic comedy full of endearing characters. It’s a very cozy book, just right for a vacation read. I know this kind of book often gets sneered at for being “fluff,” but I always find it inspiring, making me think about choices I’ve made in my life and what I could do to make my life more fulfilling while bringing joy to others. After reading it, I found myself wanting to be nicer to people and really pay attention to the people I encountered.

I think people who like my Enchanted, Inc. books would like this. It’s not outright fantasy with wizards and such, but there is a touch of magic along with the slow-burn romance and fun secondary characters.