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Fantasy/sci-fi books with central love stories?


Altherion

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There are a few approaches to incorporating a romantic storyline into a work of fantasy and science fiction. The most popular by far (especially in film) is of the "token love interest" variety: there is a character who may or may not play some other role in the plot, but it is fairly obvious that her (and it is usually "her") principal purpose is to be the love interest of the protagonist. I personally don't find this too entertaining. On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are works where the love story is the main plot in the same sense as, say, in Pride and Prejudice. That is, there is a plot separate from the love story, but it's fairly clear that this is just to give the lovers some obstacles and/or bring them together. This is more rare in fantasy and science fiction and it can be done well (see, for example, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold), but it's not what I'm looking for in this thread.

Do you know of any fantasy or science fiction books or series which have a main plot (and a good one) separate from the love story, but there is nevertheless a love story involving the main characters? Some examples:

  • To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
  • The Black Company series by Glen Cook
  • The Morgaine Cycle (or Stories or Saga) by C.J. Cherryh
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Walter Jon Williams' Dread Empire's Fall series revolves around the relationship between Caroline Sula and Gareth Martinez.  Both Sula and Martinez are fully-realized characters with independent story arcs and motivations that drive their stories.  The story line brings them together and apart, and although their relationship is an important part of both of their respective tales, the plot is not necessarily about their relationship.

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All three of Vance's Lyonesse have important romance plotlines, most important in the first one "Suldrun's Garden".

Edit: And at least some of them are fairly conventional, at least compared to the examples Wilbur mentions below!

Also McMaster Bujold's Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls.

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The Dying Earth has a couple of stories of unrequited or unexpected love, including Etarr and T'sais when Pandalume sends T'sais out of the plane of Embelyon; Shierl and Guyel of Sfere when they are forced into the Museum of Man by the Saponids; and Lith and Liane the Wayfarer near the ruins of Kaiine.  Keep in mind that this is a Jack Vance story, so the relationship may be...different...from what you expect.

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And if we are going to talk about Jack Vance, then you have a long list of books were the protagonist's love or infatuation for another character drives him or her to take on the key action of the story.  Some examples include:

Sessily Vader - Glawen Clattuc - Wayeness Tam in the three books of the Cadwal Chronicles (Araminta Station, Ecce and Old Earth, and Throy)

Adam Reith and Zap 210 in four books of The Planet of Adventure (The City of the Chasch, The Servants of the Wankh, The Dirdir, and The Pnume)

Jorjol/Muffin/The Grey Prince, Elvo Glissam and Gerd Jemazse in a love quadrangle with Schaine Madduc in The Gray Prince

Jubal Droad and Mieltrude, daughter of Nai the Hever in Maske: Thaery

Keep in mind that Jack Vance's romances are the polar opposite of Lois McMaster Bujold's relationship stories.  In a Vance novel, the love between X and Y will cause X to board a space ship and become a janitor in a museum in a civilization of ambulatory trees, where X will discover a plot against a sea-faring nation of religious kangaroos and fight a duel to preserve the savings X has accumulated so he or she can return home and marry.  However, upon his or her return home, X will find the object of his or her original desire, Y, has become a strident nationalist monk, and will discover he or she actually loves the bank teller who originally loaned him or her the money to emigrate

I exaggerate for effect, but still the outline above will STILL not be as weird and roundabout a tale as you will find in any Jack Vance novel.

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18 hours ago, Wilbur said:

Walter Jon Williams' Dread Empire's Fall series revolves around the relationship between Caroline Sula and Gareth Martinez.  Both Sula and Martinez are fully-realized characters with independent story arcs and motivations that drive their stories.  The story line brings them together and apart, and although their relationship is an important part of both of their respective tales, the plot is not necessarily about their relationship.

Thanks! I've started reading the first one and it does indeed fit the bill.

5 hours ago, Wilbur said:

And if we are going to talk about Jack Vance, then you have a long list of books were the protagonist's love or infatuation for another character drives him or her to take on the key action of the story.

...

Keep in mind that Jack Vance's romances are the polar opposite of Lois McMaster Bujold's relationship stories.  In a Vance novel, the love between X and Y will cause X to board a space ship and become a janitor in a museum in a civilization of ambulatory trees, where X will discover a plot against a sea-faring nation of religious kangaroos and fight a duel to preserve the savings X has accumulated so he or she can return home and marry.  However, upon his or her return home, X will find the object of his or her original desire, Y, has become a strident nationalist monk, and will discover he or she actually loves the bank teller who originally loaned him or her the money to emigrate

I don't think this counts as a love story: it's not enough for characters to get together or do something based on a stated love, there must be significant interaction between them.

11 hours ago, Jo498 said:

All three of Vance's Lyonesse have important romance plotlines, most important in the first one "Suldrun's Garden".

Edit: And at least some of them are fairly conventional, at least compared to the examples Wilbur mentions below!

Also McMaster Bujold's Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls.

I'll take a look at Lyonesse next. And indeed, Bujold does this a lot -- the third book in the same world (The Hallowed Hunt) is an even more clear example.

aceluby and williamjm, thank you for the suggestions.

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You might also consider the Vatta's War / Vatta's Peace novels by Elizabeth Moon, wherein the romance between Kylara Vatta and Rafe Dunbarger drives a lot of the tension in the story, as corporate and military forces, familial social influencers, and government agencies all frown on the love between a space admiral and the CEO of the interstellar communications monopoly.

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Uh, The Name of the Wind might have romantic* elements but I definitely wouldn’t call romance the driving force...

 

*romantic in quotations here because Kvothe and Denna is pretty unpleasant and not really romance imo 

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On 1/22/2018 at 2:25 AM, Traverys said:
Spoiler

Hmmm... I see where you're coming from regarding The Black Company, but I personally find that one tricky... Most of the book is more about Croak obsessing/fantasizing about The Lady. Not so romantic... it just turns out at the end she reciprocates those feelings when she drops her Ice Queen mask at almost the very end. I guess what I'm saying is that romance isn't really the "main plot."

 

Spoiler tag this shit.

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14 hours ago, aceluby said:

Spoiler tag this shit.

 

14 hours ago, Argonath Diver said:

Yeah, that was a mild bummer, I am still enjoying the series, and my eyes hit "it just turns out in the end" and it was impossible to not see the next couple words. Not going to ruin the fun for my read through, but still. 

  1. I do apologize if anyone felt I ruined the book for them! However, the original post stated The Black Company was a fantasy romance novel... which is incontrovertibly a spoiler. There's only two female characters in the book that are consistently mentioned. So unless the main character is engaging in romance with a child...
  2. Deleted everything (instead of just The Black Company bullet) but the link to fantasy romance books... mostly because I don't care to participate in the thread anymore.
  3. @aceluby: You quoted exactly what you felt should be hidden as spoiler... so make sure you edit that out. Seems like an odd choice on your part...
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5 hours ago, Traverys said:

 

 

  1. I do apologize if anyone felt I ruined the book for them! However, the original post stated The Black Company was a fantasy romance novel... which is incontrovertibly a spoiler. There's only two female characters in the book that are consistently mentioned. So unless the main character is engaging in romance with a child...
  2. Deleted everything (instead of just The Black Company bullet) but the link to fantasy romance books... mostly because I don't care to participate in the thread anymore.
  3. @aceluby: You quoted exactly what you felt should be hidden as spoiler... so make sure you edit that out. Seems like an odd choice on your part...

It probably won't ruin the book, but there's an obvious difference between "the book has a romantic element to it" and "at the end of the book... blah blah blah".  It's just polite (and also the forum's spoiler policy) to not discuss plot points of a book without a spoiler tag, unless the thread specifically says that it will contain spoilers.

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On 1/22/2018 at 3:25 AM, Traverys said:

This is an interesting list -- it looks like a mix of the kind of stuff I'm looking for with books where romance (or, in some cases, just sex) is more obviously the focus. Robin Hobb's Liveship Trilogy is definitely something worth reading.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've finished reading several of these now and rather than starting a new thread, I'll resurrect this one to comment on them:

On 1/14/2018 at 10:53 PM, Wilbur said:

Walter Jon Williams' Dread Empire's Fall series revolves around the relationship between Caroline Sula and Gareth Martinez.

I would rate Dread Empire's Fall as "good, but not great." I liked the prose less than nearly all of the other books I've read recently (to be fair, I'm mostly picking books from the Hugo Award for Best Novel list and then reading other stuff by those authors). The relationship is exactly what you say it is and it's alright.

On 1/22/2018 at 3:25 AM, Traverys said:

I've already said that the Liveship Traders Trilogy is worth reading, but after finishing it, I'd qualify that by also putting it into the "good, but not great" category. There are actually several love stories here and all of them are reasonably well done, but the books are simply too long for their own good. In my experience, it is very rare for an 800+ page book to be outstanding -- there are some that are great despite being even longer (e.g. A Storm of Swords), but even the best of them have a lot of pages where I wish the author would simply get on with the parts I care more about. All three of these books are more than 800 pages long and none of them is as good as A Storm of Swords. Also,

Spoiler

Kennit spends the first two and half books being an internally unpleasant character who finds that the surest path to his goal is to be very nearly heroic... and then suddenly crosses the moral event horizon at the speed of light. I can't say that it comes out of nowhere, but wow, I did not see that coming.

 

On 1/15/2018 at 11:27 AM, aceluby said:

Endymion and the Rise of Endymion seem to fit the bill here.  It's the sequel duology to Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion.

Hyperion is a genuinely excellent book -- the best of all of those I mention in this post and not by a small margin. It's a kind of science fiction Canterbury Tales and some of the tales have internal love stories. It ends on a cliffhanger and continues in Fall of Hyperion which is not as great, but still very good. Unfortunately, there is a significant drop off in quality from there to Endymion and another one to Rise of Endymion (i.e. the books get progressively worse). Since they start from so high up, even the last one is not bad, but nor is it very good. There is a lot of retconning here and hanging a lampshade on it does not make the reader any less confused. Also, the last one is probably too long by 30% or so -- I think at some points it reached Robert Jordanesque levels of descriptiveness.

As to the central love story in the third and fourth books... to be honest, I'm not sure whether it qualifies because, in an absolutely bizarre turn of events,

Spoiler

 

it's not obvious to me that the narrator actually has agency. That is, from his perspective, Raul certain appears to act independently, but everything he does is within the boundaries set by Aenea. Even his battle with Nemes is highly scripted -- a monster that can easily shred a platoon in powered armor brought down to a level where an unarmed man has a chance. I kept hoping that Raul would say "Screw destiny!" at some point and derail the utterly predictable Christ plot, but no, he complains about fate without ever actually doing anything about it. As far as I can tell, his main purpose in the plot is for the sake of the love story (well, that and to have things explained to the reader).

Speaking of Christ plots, it really, really does not work without the Resurrection. That is, it is possible to have a Christ plot without the Resurrection in a dystopian universe, but not in one where there are supposedly empathetic and demonstrably extremely powerful beings. The Resurrection serves an obvious purpose and that "briefly living on time borrowed from the past" trick (which, incidentally, was also utterly predictable, though not with all of the context) does not qualify. It doesn't make much sense unless, I suppose, she ascended to the same state that the Lions and Tigers and Bears are in (which is what I would have thought would happen based on the first pair of books, but the last one makes such a big deal of death being final that I have no idea what's going on with the rules anymore).

 

 

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