I’m trying to read as much as possible from my To Be Read bookcase so I can clear out the ones that I want to read but don’t necessarily want to keep. And, yes, I have a whole bookcase, plus a couple of boxes. One of the fun things about being a writer is that when you go to writing conferences, they give you free books! Publishers give away books to writers because they know that writers talk about books, so they’re a good way to get buzz going about a book. My first few conferences, I got a bit excited about it and eagerly scooped up All The Books. I eventually realized that most of them went unread, so I tried to limit myself to ones that I thought I might actually read. Even then, I find that there’s a difference between my eagerness to read books I bought for myself and books I got for free (though there are books I bought that are on the bookcase, too). I think part of the reason is that, aside from things like special sales or used bookstore finds and the occasional booksigning for a writer friend, I generally buy a book because I want to read that particular book at that particular time. The giveaways may be things I might have bought, but they weren’t what I was looking for at the time I obtained them.

I’m afraid I’m mostly useless for building buzz because it can take me years past publication to get around to reading an advance copy. I just read an advance copy for book one of a series, and book three is about to come out. I may post something about it, and maybe that will help book three. I’m ashamed to admit that I got an advance copy of A Game of Thrones but didn’t read it until after the TV series came out. Actually, I did start reading it before publication, but I got it at a romance writers conference (not sure why they thought that was a good place to promote that book) and was therefore expecting it to be a romantic fantasy, so it wasn’t at all what I wanted it to be and I put it aside after a few chapters.

But there are some books I don’t remember obtaining. For instance, the book I just finished reading is an old hardcover copy of a book published in 1983. It looks like it was used, but I don’t remember buying it. Maybe someone else bought it and gave it to me. Although it was published in 1983, it eerily reflects some recent events. In fact, if not for the very 1980s graphic design on the cover and the copyright date (and the fact that the author has been dead for more than a decade), if you gave this book to someone to read now, they’d probably think it was a COVID-inspired book.

The book is Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, one of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series. This series straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy. It’s technically science fiction because it’s about a distant world colonized by human settlers. After the colony was established, they learned that every so often the world gets attacked by these spores they call Thread that destroy life. They genetically engineered some of the local life forms to be dragons they could fly around on and shoot down this thread. But because the society reverts to being pre-industrial and there are dragons, it reads like fantasy. If you want to start a debate among science fiction and fantasy readers, throw out the “is Pern science fiction or fantasy?” topic. I read the main part of the series when I was a teenager. This appears to be a standalone prequel. I don’t think I’ve carried this book around since then, but I may have picked it up at a library sale.

This particular book is about an epidemic that hits at a very bad time, and it pretty much sounds like the COVID pandemic with dragons. There’s social distancing, the search for a vaccine, the people who resist the efforts to stop the spread of the disease, the people who think the rules don’t apply to them, the strain on healthcare workers, etc. Even most of the symptoms sound kind of COVID-like. The book is really interesting, up until the ending, which I pretty much hated. It was almost like she’d reached her contracted word count and was nearing her deadline, so she just ended it and then wrote an epilogue to tie up the loose ends without actually resolving anything. It was really abrupt. Since it’s a prequel, it’s possible that this was some element of that world’s history mentioned in the earlier books (which are but a dim memory for me) and that ending was already set in stone.

Anyway, aside from the ending it was interesting reading, and it kind of made me want to revisit that series. I’m not entirely sure I’d recommend it, unless you want to read about fictional pandemics. It will probably go in the box that’s getting donated for the library book sale because I don’t imagine I’ll be reading it again, but I’m glad I did read it.

When I was talking about relationship power dynamics a couple of weeks ago, the example that came to mind while I was mentally processing it was Pride and Prejudice. That whole book boils down to people who are trying to hold on to all their power, which is impossible if you want to start a relationship. There has to be some kind of vulnerability in order to connect with another person. You’ve eventually got to let them know you care. Of course, my brain wouldn’t let it go, since if it’s worth analyzing, it’s worth overanalyzing. So, here’s a look at the relationship power dynamics in Pride and Prejudice. Spoilers ahead, but the book is 200 years old.

To start with, Darcy has a lot of the power, in every sense. He’s got wealth and status and is considered a desirable marriage prospect. He can probably get just about any woman he wants. And yet he has to try to pile on the power by making it clear he’s not interested in any of the local women, especially not Lizzie. His offhand remark about her eyes is a hint that he might actually have some attraction to her, but he’s making an effort to avoid giving up any of the power that having any interest in her would take away.

Meanwhile, Lizzie is well aware that she has zero power here. She may be a member of the gentry, but her family is on the poor end of things, and she’s not going to inherit much. She has no wealth, and while she has status in this immediate community, she’d be a nobody elsewhere. Even in this community, her parents are embarrassing. Someone is going to have to like her a lot as a person or have some other motivation to want to marry her, and she’s acutely conscious of this. She doesn’t even feel like she’s a beauty. It’s her sister who’s considered the pretty one. Her way of clawing back some power in all this is to decide she has zero interest in Darcy, even if he is considered quite a catch. She loses that bit of power when he says he’s not interested in her.

So, she regains the sense of having the upper hand by first taking every opportunity to snub and insult him, then later by getting the dirt on him from Wickham. When she comes to believe based on Wickham’s stories that Darcy is a terrible person, Lizzie achieves the ultimate in relationship power: she no longer cares what he thinks or if he likes her. That helps her retain the upper hand when she runs into Darcy again. She can easily chat with him and tease him because she just doesn’t care.

Meanwhile, Darcy has realized he’s in love with her, but his first effort at proposing is a total failure because he tries to do so without giving up any of his power. Yes, there’s the vulnerability of admitting he admires and loves her and wants to marry her, but he wraps it up in power displays by pointing out how unsuitable she is, how awful her family is, how she really has nothing going on for her. So, he may like her, but she’s lucky he does so because there’s not a lot there to like.

It’s only when he gets the shock of realizing that she doesn’t find his attitude all that appealing that he finally realizes he’s going to have to give a little if he wants her, and that’s when he writes the letter explaining all to her, making himself utterly vulnerable. He gives her a lot of power over him, since she could ruin his sister if she decided to spread the story publicly.

The next time they see each other, it’s with a very different dynamic. It’s interesting that the 1995 TV version adds even more vulnerability to him when he finds her at his home by having him in his wet shirt after his swim (in that era, a shirt was essentially considered underwear). That’s not in the book, so it’s Lizzie who’s feeling more powerless in having been caught touring his home, with his vulnerability coming from the fact that it’s the first time that he’s seen her since he poured all his thoughts out in the letter. When they come to each other from a place of vulnerability, without trying to cling to their power, they actually manage to connect.

Then he gives up the opportunity to gain power when he rescues her sister from being a shamed social outcast without getting credit for it, which would have made her obligated to him. He’s willing to not take power that he’s owed. She’s the one who finds out and then makes her “offering” of letting him know she knows. There’s give and take, and this is when they’re able to finally get together for good.

I think this is one reason for the enduring popularity of this story. It’s nice to see a story about people getting over themselves and being able to admit they were wrong, and the relationship power dynamics end up being pretty balanced. They both have to give and take, and you get the sense that this relationship is going to work.

I recently found a fantasy book that falls into that “romantic fantasy road trip” category. It doesn’t fit the plot pattern I identified for that kind of movie, but it’s definitely that “people fall in love along the way when they go on a mission/quest through a fantasy world” thing I love.

The book is Mystic and Rider by Sharon Shinn, and it’s the first book in a series. I’d read Shinn’s Archangel in a book group a couple of decades ago, but I hadn’t read any of her fantasy. I really enjoyed this one. The story involves an intelligence gathering mission for a king who’s worried there may be trouble brewing in the kingdom. He sends out one of his top agents, a woman with mysterious powers, and sends two of the king’s Riders, his loyal soldiers, to escort her. Also along for the journey are a young noblewoman with shapechanging powers and her friend with similar powers, and they pick up a young man with mysterious abilities along the way. A lot of people in the kingdom are leery of people with magic, so the mystics in the group and the Riders don’t get along at first, but the chief Rider and the agent gradually realize that they have a lot in common, aside from this difference.

It looks like this series is a hybrid between the romance series structure, in which there’s a different hero and heroine in each book, and the fantasy structure, in which there’s an overarching plot that spans books. There’s the big-picture plot about the scheming going on in the kingdom, but each book seems to focus on a different romantic couple.

I loved the characters in this book and I definitely want to spend more time with them. The romance is very subtle and slow-burn, so it’s more fantasy novel romance than romance novel romance. The main focus is on the mission and how this group learns to work together and use their various abilities as a team. It’s mostly a fantasy adventure story with a subtle romance that gradually comes to the foreground.

The only problem I have is that I got this book from the library and my library system doesn’t have the second book (it does have the rest of the series). I’ll have to put in a request for them to add it to the collection and fill out the series. This is exactly the sort of thing I’ve been looking for.

A book I’ve been rereading reminded me of something I love in fiction. I don’t know if it specifically counts as a trope, but I love it when an author forces me to change my mind about a character. This isn’t about the character changing. It’s not a growth or redemption arc. It’s about my mindset changing, often because of new information or even just getting to know the character. Often this comes about because the viewpoint character changes their opinion. If there’s a character I initially find offputting, but then the author forces me to change my mind without the character changing, then I become ride-or-die for that person.

It’s hard for me to come up with good examples without spoiling big revelations, but one that comes to mind is Donna Noble from Doctor Who. In her initial appearance, she was loud, obnoxious, and abrasive, and the Doctor found her incredibly annoying, so the audience was also supposed to find her annoying. But then when she joined the series full-time and we got to know her better, all those negatives became endearing. She did go through some growth as her horizons changed due to her experiences, but she was still essentially herself. Her growth just made her more herself. We did see that some of her traits were defensive mechanisms and we got to know her better behind the bluster, and that made us love her.

I think I first encountered this trope in the old gothic romantic suspense books — those “girl in a nightgown running from a castle with a lamp in one window” books. Usually, there were two men who were possible romantic prospects. One was super friendly and polite, and you were inclined to like him. The other was moody and surly, and the reader and the heroine didn’t trust him. But then we’d find out that the “nice” guy was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, while the moody one was going through some stuff and had good reason to be moody, but was actually a decent guy, and he’d be the one to help save the girl from the one who was a pleasant snake.

It’s tricky to pull that off as an author. If you know what’s really going on with a character, you already love them, so it’s hard to withhold all those nuances so that readers may find the character annoying at first. Maybe it’s easier for pantsers who don’t know when they start that this person will turn out to be endearing, so they can write them as annoying and then reveal more as they get to know the character better.

One common way this kind of twist works is by presenting the character as a stereotype at first — the stuck-up rich girl, the shallow playboy, etc. — and then letting us see past the stereotype to the real person beneath it who is more nuanced. A lot of it has to do with the way the viewpoint character sees this person.

I think I respond well to this in fiction because I’ve had it happen so often in real life. I’ve had so many good friendships develop with people I was initially inclined to dislike. I assumed things about them at first sight, then got to know them and realized these people were pretty cool and we had more in common than I thought we would. I think there’s also an element of valuing the things we have to work for, so if it’s a process to come to like a person, once you do like them, you like them more than you would have if you’d just liked them from the start.

I don’t know what I’d call this trope, maybe “they aren’t so bad, after all.” I guess it could be similar to the “jerk with layers,” but in that case, the person actually is a jerk, even if there’s more going on, and he usually does have some kind of change or redemption arc. With what I’m talking about here, the change is in the viewpoint character/audience.

My reading has really slowed down this year. I’m behind on my usual pace of books read, and I’ve been in the odd position of having to renew novels at the library because it takes me more than three weeks to read them. But I did have one book that took me less than two weeks to read recently, Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson. I haven’t read Sanderson’s main series (though I have been on convention panels with him), but this book was a lot of fun. It’s one of the ones he wrote just to entertain himself, as a gift for his wife, during the pandemic.

He said the spark of the idea came from watching The Princess Bride and thinking about what would have happened if Buttercup had gone out looking for Westley when she heard he was attacked by pirates instead of just sitting at home and mourning. That’s basically the story of this book: A young woman’s best friend (who she’s realized she loves) goes missing while on a voyage, and she stows away on a ship to go out and find and rescue him. She ends up attacked by pirates, then joining a pirate crew, where she has to figure out how to save the crew (and herself) from the captain’s schemes before she can even begin to come up with a plan to rescue the man she loves from the sorceress holding him captive.

I enjoyed this book enough that I’ll need to buy a copy to keep because it makes for a good “comfort food” book, the sort of thing you read when you need something to make you smile and feel good. The heroine is utterly delightful, the kind of person who succeeds by being good and clever and kind (I also relate to the descriptions of her unruly hair, which makes me wonder if Sanderson remembers those convention panels …). The characters have excellent growth arcs, which makes for a satisfying read because you feel like they’re all ending up better than they were before. The narrative style is interesting because it’s first-person narration, but by a secondary character who’s witness to the events, but who also seems to have omniscient knowledge of all these events (I get the impression that he’s a character from Sanderson’s other series. This book apparently takes place in the universe of those books but is unconnected). The narrator is sarcastic, funny, and maybe a bit nuts. The tone of the narrative kind of reminds me of Terry Pratchett. The book is a nice mix of exciting, romantic, and funny. It’s also reasonably short, but I think I would have read it fairly quickly even if it wasn’t.

My most recent read was a really fun book that combined a few of my favorite things. The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis is a science fiction road trip romantic comedy. Think ET meets It Happened One Night, with a touch of The X-Files. Though, given the title, she may be referencing the Hope/Crosby “Road” movies (but I’m not as familiar with those).

A woman visiting Roswell for her college roommate’s alien-themed wedding gets carjacked by an alien that looks like a sentient tumbleweed and ends up on a weird, random journey through the southwest, as the alien seems to be looking for something. Along the way, the alien grabs others who run across them, including a handsome hitchhiker, a conspiracy nut, a little old lady with a casino addiction and a retiree obsessed with old Western movies. They end up in the retiree’s RV as they figure out that the alien needs help and try to find a way to communicate so they can help.

I think Connie is one of the best at conveying what it’s like to be a reasonably level-headed person who’s surrounded by utter chaos and trying to make sense of it. Even though this story involves aliens, structurally it’s very much a classic screwball comedy. Much of the early part of the story involves the humans trying to figure things out and work together. As it goes along, it gets deeper into the science fiction aspects as they work on communication and then deal with the alien’s mission and the consequences of that mission. At heart, I think this is ultimately a book about kindness and empathy, about caring enough to be willing to look past the surface and understand what’s going on with someone.

Although it feels like a rom-com, the romantic element is very subtle and slow burn. It’s the kind of romance I like in a book, something that develops naturally along the way between people who are having to work together on something and who learn about each other as they go through a crisis together. For those who are worried, the heroine’s romance is not with the sentient tumbleweed alien. It involves one of the other abductees.

I think people who like my books might enjoy this for the wackiness, humor, heart, and dash of romance.