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.