Love Is in the Air: Romance and Fantasy

1 00:00:04.580 --> 00:00:07.119 Hello and welcome to Mythmakers. 2 00:00:07.540 --> 00:00:12.280 Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to 3 00:00:12.280 --> 00:00:14.500 you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. 4 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:21.020 My name is Julia Golding and today we are in a romantic mood because we 5 00:00:21.020 --> 00:00:26.260 are fast approaching Valentine's Day and I wanted to have a look at the theme 6 00:00:26.260 --> 00:00:29.300 of romance in fantasy. 7 00:00:30.200 --> 00:00:35.480 So recently there's been the phenomenon of the romanticy and it's sort of 8 00:00:35.480 --> 00:00:36.900 reached ridiculous heights. 9 00:00:37.100 --> 00:00:42.400 It's like the main thing published by a lot of fantasy publishers and one of 10 00:00:42.400 --> 00:00:49.320 these sort of titles that really dominated is Rebecca Yarrow's The Fourth Wing 11 00:00:49.320 --> 00:00:51.680 and I think there's a second part as well. 12 00:00:52.380 --> 00:00:55.680 She is following in a tradition that already existed. 13 00:00:55.840 --> 00:00:59.700 She didn't invent the genre but publishers have sort of packaged it as a 14 00:00:59.700 --> 00:01:00.500 particular thing. 15 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:03.459 So why is romanticy so popular at the moment? 16 00:01:03.980 --> 00:01:12.080 Well, it is a blend of the existing love for the sort of kingdom love 17 00:01:12.080 --> 00:01:17.060 affair, the sort of elf prince, human woman. 18 00:01:17.520 --> 00:01:17.980 Sarah J. 19 00:01:18.280 --> 00:01:22.800 Mars has done quite a few books in this area where you get a similar 20 00:01:22.800 --> 00:01:29.100 thing but her romance originally in the 2010s didn't step into quite so 21 00:01:29.100 --> 00:01:30.140 explicit territory. 22 00:01:30.600 --> 00:01:35.860 What happened with Fourth Wing and why there was a new frisson of interest is 23 00:01:35.860 --> 00:01:40.660 that it sort of leaned more into a more explicit depiction of sex. 24 00:01:42.160 --> 00:01:47.700 There is a readership out there, particularly sort of young women who came up 25 00:01:47.700 --> 00:01:53.840 through the Harry Potter reading, The Hunger Games, then Twilight and going on 26 00:01:53.840 --> 00:01:57.260 to the weirdly stepping sideways into the Fifty Shades. 27 00:01:57.600 --> 00:02:02.800 There is a sort of big readership out there for this and romance is a 28 00:02:02.800 --> 00:02:07.500 massive, massive part of the income stream for many publishers. 29 00:02:08.020 --> 00:02:14.380 People will read romances, romanticism one after the other, often as e-books, 30 00:02:14.960 --> 00:02:19.200 though Fourth Wing, of course, is a big paperback book as well. 31 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:25.980 So, they have found a female audience really, I would say. 32 00:02:26.080 --> 00:02:29.720 I'm not saying that men don't read it as well but when you think of 33 00:02:29.720 --> 00:02:34.400 a lot of the sort of hard-edge sci-fi or classic sci-fi, it 34 00:02:34.400 --> 00:02:37.840 doesn't tend to cater so much for a female taste or a female eye. 35 00:02:38.500 --> 00:02:43.220 Romanticism is doing that and women are more book buyers, more readers than 36 00:02:43.220 --> 00:02:46.260 men, so market forces are also behind it. 37 00:02:47.500 --> 00:02:50.020 And of course, the thing that you get is the exotic. 38 00:02:50.780 --> 00:02:53.340 There is plenty of sub-genres in romance. 39 00:02:53.460 --> 00:02:56.480 If you just want to find out how many there are, go and look at 40 00:02:56.480 --> 00:03:03.340 some sort of book aggregate system but you get things like Harem romances and 41 00:03:03.340 --> 00:03:08.400 Arab Sheikh romances and Regency romances and so on and so on and so on, 42 00:03:08.420 --> 00:03:09.380 pirate romances. 43 00:03:10.020 --> 00:03:15.440 So, it fits well into this understanding that the background is going to be 44 00:03:15.440 --> 00:03:22.420 like this set dressing for a story which is powered mainly by a love story. 45 00:03:23.080 --> 00:03:25.080 Now, there's a lot else going on in Fourth Wing. 46 00:03:25.580 --> 00:03:30.420 It's also a coming-of-age story, a fairly sort of typical idea of the 47 00:03:30.420 --> 00:03:36.940 unregarded character who finds her power through discovering her skill as a 48 00:03:36.940 --> 00:03:37.560 dragon rider. 49 00:03:37.800 --> 00:03:45.580 But also, there's a sort of rebellion, that kind of edgy thing where there's a 50 00:03:45.580 --> 00:03:46.860 system that needs to be corrected. 51 00:03:47.020 --> 00:03:48.320 So, there's a lot of plot as well. 52 00:03:48.640 --> 00:03:55.120 So, very enjoyable but you have to also be ready for a certain sexual, 53 00:03:55.660 --> 00:03:59.820 certainly not younger YA sexual advance in it. 54 00:04:00.420 --> 00:04:03.460 So, romanticy has found its readership. 55 00:04:04.520 --> 00:04:09.660 But if we dig back through where this all came from, I remember reading Anne 56 00:04:09.660 --> 00:04:10.260 McCathery. 57 00:04:10.480 --> 00:04:12.240 That's the first dragon rider story. 58 00:04:13.360 --> 00:04:18.120 She has a series called the Chronicles of Pern, first one being Dragonflight, 59 00:04:18.540 --> 00:04:19.920 which I loved as a teenager. 60 00:04:20.180 --> 00:04:21.820 Found it in the school library, I think. 61 00:04:22.340 --> 00:04:25.720 And I went back when romanticy sort of revived. 62 00:04:25.840 --> 00:04:30.500 I went back and read it and discovered that there, the sexual mores of that 63 00:04:30.500 --> 00:04:33.720 world are very much of that era. 64 00:04:33.920 --> 00:04:38.180 I think it was, let me just check here, it was published in 1969. 65 00:04:39.940 --> 00:04:40.440 There we go. 66 00:04:41.420 --> 00:04:44.080 So, that's 56 years ago. 67 00:04:45.000 --> 00:04:50.920 And what we have here is a, I would say that the main female character 68 00:04:50.920 --> 00:04:52.220 is living in like a harem. 69 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:55.920 So, she has all these dragon riders around her. 70 00:04:55.980 --> 00:04:57.520 It's like a Queen Bee idea. 71 00:04:58.280 --> 00:04:59.060 It's very 60s. 72 00:04:59.740 --> 00:05:05.320 So, you can see that the romance element in this fantasy is following the sort 73 00:05:05.320 --> 00:05:08.460 of ideas of what is sexually exciting in each decade. 74 00:05:09.280 --> 00:05:11.540 I found it quite difficult to read going back to it. 75 00:05:11.640 --> 00:05:18.100 What I found exciting and read without comment as a teenager, I now thought, 76 00:05:18.160 --> 00:05:20.500 oh, these relationships are all a bit skewed. 77 00:05:21.320 --> 00:05:23.940 So, I didn't enjoy it very much when I went back to it. 78 00:05:24.680 --> 00:05:32.240 But there are, of course, we can't talk about romance in more recent fiction 79 00:05:32.240 --> 00:05:34.400 without mentioning Twilight. 80 00:05:34.760 --> 00:05:38.580 Now, I don't know how old you were when Twilight was around. 81 00:05:38.740 --> 00:05:44.560 I was a mother of a daughter of the age at which Twilight was sort 82 00:05:44.560 --> 00:05:45.120 of directed. 83 00:05:45.960 --> 00:05:49.920 And I remember my daughter was completely besotted by this series. 84 00:05:50.760 --> 00:05:53.600 So, I went and read it because I thought, why is she walking around the 85 00:05:53.600 --> 00:05:54.620 house holding Twilight? 86 00:05:55.320 --> 00:05:56.340 What is going on here? 87 00:05:56.460 --> 00:05:58.100 What's the secret sauce going on? 88 00:05:58.520 --> 00:06:02.160 And of course, you quickly see that it is a high school romance. 89 00:06:02.340 --> 00:06:07.080 It's got that breathless intensity of that crush that you get on the cool boy 90 00:06:07.080 --> 00:06:08.980 in the years above you. 91 00:06:09.420 --> 00:06:11.940 Again, aimed at a female readership. 92 00:06:12.700 --> 00:06:17.290 And it's riveting. 93 00:06:17.290 --> 00:06:23.690 There's also, because of the vampirism thing, it reintroduces the idea of 94 00:06:23.690 --> 00:06:24.230 manners. 95 00:06:24.790 --> 00:06:30.850 So, if you think about a Regency story written like, say, Jane Austen, very 96 00:06:30.850 --> 00:06:36.710 small gestures have an erotic charge, you know, dancing with somebody. 97 00:06:37.090 --> 00:06:41.090 Or if you look at the film versions of Jane Austen, being handed into a 98 00:06:41.090 --> 00:06:46.890 carriage in Persuasion and Captain Wentworth takes one of the naughty little 99 00:06:46.890 --> 00:06:50.870 boys who's clambering over Anne off her back, relieving her of a load. 100 00:06:51.090 --> 00:06:57.250 Tiny gestures which speak volumes about what's going on, the subtext of that 101 00:06:57.250 --> 00:06:57.870 relationship. 102 00:06:59.250 --> 00:07:02.990 Twilight does that through the metaphor of the vampire. 103 00:07:03.550 --> 00:07:04.830 How far can you go? 104 00:07:05.290 --> 00:07:09.190 Because the vampire might lose control because your blood is so tasty. 105 00:07:10.030 --> 00:07:13.610 And of course, the idea of blood and what have you, it's all very textual. 106 00:07:14.850 --> 00:07:18.010 And it has that element of danger. 107 00:07:18.250 --> 00:07:25.310 In modern times when anything goes, each to their own, it reintroduces an 108 00:07:25.310 --> 00:07:27.130 element of restrictions. 109 00:07:27.610 --> 00:07:30.990 And restrictions make for a better, tense relationship. 110 00:07:31.990 --> 00:07:38.030 Because there are taboos and things you can't do and borders that are crossed, 111 00:07:38.030 --> 00:07:39.770 which are big in the relationship. 112 00:07:40.670 --> 00:07:41.950 So it was doing that. 113 00:07:42.070 --> 00:07:48.550 It was doing the high school, using vampire as this sort of coding for romantic 114 00:07:48.550 --> 00:07:49.130 rules. 115 00:07:49.810 --> 00:07:53.850 And, you know, there's lots of peril and attacks and drama. 116 00:07:54.850 --> 00:07:58.890 I can see why a teenage girl likes it. 117 00:07:59.270 --> 00:08:04.730 However, I do remember watching the film versions, taking a party of school 118 00:08:04.730 --> 00:08:06.630 kids, I think, you know, daughter's friends. 119 00:08:07.350 --> 00:08:08.530 I think it was the third film. 120 00:08:09.010 --> 00:08:14.070 I noticed that in the cinema, I and an adult, my dad, who'd come with 121 00:08:14.070 --> 00:08:18.450 their family, were both laughing at very different things from the girls. 122 00:08:18.870 --> 00:08:20.990 Because I found it all a bit satirical. 123 00:08:21.530 --> 00:08:26.830 And I sort of laughed at a meta level, which I think wasn't really noticed 124 00:08:26.830 --> 00:08:28.410 at that stage by the audience. 125 00:08:28.510 --> 00:08:32.370 So if my daughter watched it today, she would pick up on those same signals. 126 00:08:33.510 --> 00:08:37.070 So what is a fantasy romance? 127 00:08:37.350 --> 00:08:40.409 Well, I think we first of all have to say it's not a fantasy with 128 00:08:40.409 --> 00:08:41.250 a romance in. 129 00:08:42.049 --> 00:08:45.270 So obviously, Tolkien, we all love Tolkien. 130 00:08:45.870 --> 00:08:47.910 There are romances in Tolkien. 131 00:08:48.270 --> 00:08:53.470 There's Aragorn and Arwen, Faramir and Erwin, Beren and Lúthien. 132 00:08:53.470 --> 00:09:00.470 These are romances, love stories, but they don't make Lord of the Rings a 133 00:09:00.470 --> 00:09:05.790 romance, because the main driver of the plot is that of friendship and 134 00:09:05.790 --> 00:09:06.270 sacrifice. 135 00:09:07.110 --> 00:09:12.930 So it's not romantic love, it's filial, it's the love of comrades, the love for 136 00:09:12.930 --> 00:09:18.810 your country, it's that kind of love, the sort of love of the soldier fighting 137 00:09:18.810 --> 00:09:22.370 for what's right, or the person putting their life on the line. 138 00:09:23.390 --> 00:09:25.290 So exclude that. 139 00:09:27.290 --> 00:09:34.150 So if you're looking for a good romance in fantasy for reading over Valentine's 140 00:09:34.150 --> 00:09:42.670 Day or giving to somebody, I'm not into the very explicit version of this that 141 00:09:42.670 --> 00:09:43.770 you get in some romanticy. 142 00:09:43.950 --> 00:09:47.370 So I would not pick that myself, each to their own. 143 00:09:48.170 --> 00:09:51.730 But there are some writers who've been around for a few years that I would 144 00:09:51.730 --> 00:09:52.250 recommend. 145 00:09:53.850 --> 00:10:00.170 So she's an older writer now, but I very much enjoyed Elizabeth Vaughan's War 146 00:10:00.170 --> 00:10:02.330 Prize trilogy. 147 00:10:02.530 --> 00:10:03.810 It starts with a book called War Prize. 148 00:10:03.910 --> 00:10:07.010 This one is the last in the series, Warlord. 149 00:10:07.690 --> 00:10:16.670 And it's really a story of what happens between a colonizer and a colonized and 150 00:10:16.670 --> 00:10:19.390 looking at how two cultures come together. 151 00:10:20.150 --> 00:10:23.010 And the romance is a way of showing that. 152 00:10:24.490 --> 00:10:28.310 Again, I would say it's a sort of YA upwards title. 153 00:10:28.810 --> 00:10:30.430 But I very much enjoyed that. 154 00:10:30.510 --> 00:10:31.330 And I would recommend that. 155 00:10:31.470 --> 00:10:32.930 Again, it's an older book. 156 00:10:33.350 --> 00:10:38.550 So published in the early part of this century. 157 00:10:39.110 --> 00:10:43.810 And she's done others as well that sort of expand her world. 158 00:10:43.870 --> 00:10:45.090 And I very much enjoyed those. 159 00:10:45.090 --> 00:10:49.330 Another writer writing around the same time is Maria V. 160 00:10:49.510 --> 00:10:49.990 Schneider. 161 00:10:50.310 --> 00:10:54.450 The book I've got in my hand is Magic Study, but it starts with one 162 00:10:54.450 --> 00:10:59.690 called Poison Study, which has one of the best openings of any book, in my 163 00:10:59.690 --> 00:10:59.930 view. 164 00:11:00.250 --> 00:11:05.690 It starts with the main character, Yelena, who is in prison on Death Row. 165 00:11:06.830 --> 00:11:10.950 And she is dragged out after this awful experience. 166 00:11:11.570 --> 00:11:13.910 She's dragged out and given the choice. 167 00:11:14.010 --> 00:11:19.590 You can either go to the noose, or you can become the food taster for 168 00:11:19.590 --> 00:11:22.090 the general who's in charge of this world. 169 00:11:22.690 --> 00:11:24.990 But of course, there's a high chance you'll die of poison. 170 00:11:26.070 --> 00:11:27.270 And I love that story. 171 00:11:27.450 --> 00:11:32.950 And it has a sort of slow burn romance that runs through the series. 172 00:11:33.070 --> 00:11:38.830 And the series expands from the first country in and goes into other nations, 173 00:11:38.830 --> 00:11:40.150 which is absolutely fascinating. 174 00:11:40.150 --> 00:11:44.690 So I would recommend that if you haven't read them already. 175 00:11:45.350 --> 00:11:50.270 And again, the world expands into other series alongside it. 176 00:11:51.630 --> 00:11:58.070 Another series I like is Trudy Canavan's The Magician's Guild, which is a sort 177 00:11:58.070 --> 00:11:58.630 of tragedy. 178 00:11:58.990 --> 00:12:00.550 Sorry to spoil the end. 179 00:12:00.790 --> 00:12:07.670 But there's a tragic vein in this about Sonia, who's a trainee magician. 180 00:12:08.670 --> 00:12:13.110 Perhaps this is one of those ones which is evenly balanced, because in fact, 181 00:12:13.210 --> 00:12:15.370 the love story doesn't dominate. 182 00:12:15.530 --> 00:12:16.790 There's some other points of view. 183 00:12:17.430 --> 00:12:21.330 So it may actually be on the cusp, but it does definitely have a romance 184 00:12:21.330 --> 00:12:25.950 in it by the time you get to the second and third parts of the 185 00:12:25.950 --> 00:12:26.210 trilogy. 186 00:12:26.770 --> 00:12:31.790 I haven't actually really liked as much Trudy Canavan's other books in and 187 00:12:31.790 --> 00:12:34.150 around this one, but this first three I've really liked. 188 00:12:34.870 --> 00:12:36.290 So I would recommend that. 189 00:12:37.950 --> 00:12:42.650 And of course, there is a huge world of books, which are primarily the sort 190 00:12:42.650 --> 00:12:44.770 of digital download Kindle world. 191 00:12:45.870 --> 00:12:46.430 Absolutely. 192 00:12:48.170 --> 00:12:52.430 Part of the landscape, which is chock-a-block with titles. 193 00:12:53.250 --> 00:12:57.650 There's a fascinating husband and wife duo who write as Elona Andrews. 194 00:12:58.690 --> 00:13:04.110 They have some very good books in that series, and the Kate Daniels series. 195 00:13:05.710 --> 00:13:09.950 And I've actually enjoyed some of the books she's written after, because 196 00:13:09.950 --> 00:13:14.750 normally you would expect romance to finish at wedding bells, but actually 197 00:13:14.750 --> 00:13:19.150 she's carried on, or they have carried on after. 198 00:13:19.870 --> 00:13:21.110 And that's very enjoyable. 199 00:13:21.250 --> 00:13:22.310 It's quite a huge area. 200 00:13:22.690 --> 00:13:26.750 Talking about Mammoth series, another one, which is actually a detective story, 201 00:13:26.910 --> 00:13:34.090 is the J.D. Robb in-death series, which has a central couple who really 202 00:13:34.090 --> 00:13:35.950 are sort of the heart of it. 203 00:13:36.010 --> 00:13:38.170 But I think it's now into about 56 parts. 204 00:13:38.710 --> 00:13:42.010 And I have actually read all of them or listened to them over the years, 205 00:13:42.010 --> 00:13:43.490 but it's been running since the 90s. 206 00:13:43.650 --> 00:13:46.190 So yeah, I think they do about one or two a year. 207 00:13:47.130 --> 00:13:54.670 So if you like a sort of slightly futuristic cop romance, that's a good series. 208 00:13:55.390 --> 00:14:00.570 Though they do have the problem that when she started writing, it's actually 209 00:14:00.570 --> 00:14:02.810 Nora Roberts is the underlying writer. 210 00:14:03.830 --> 00:14:07.650 There was, you know, 2050 felt a long way off and now we're catching up. 211 00:14:07.730 --> 00:14:08.770 So I don't know what she's going to do. 212 00:14:09.110 --> 00:14:10.570 Plus it's taking a very long time. 213 00:14:11.490 --> 00:14:19.790 J.D. Robb, life of the characters is going much more slowly than real life. 214 00:14:21.030 --> 00:14:23.950 So you keep wanting them to move a little bit further on with their 215 00:14:23.950 --> 00:14:24.710 relationship. 216 00:14:25.210 --> 00:14:29.010 So it's taking a while, that series, but enjoyable. 217 00:14:29.590 --> 00:14:35.150 The detective plots are always very entertaining and set in a futuristic New 218 00:14:35.150 --> 00:14:35.370 York. 219 00:14:35.690 --> 00:14:37.710 So yeah, catnip. 220 00:14:39.170 --> 00:14:44.870 So I've also written fantasy versions of romances. 221 00:14:45.430 --> 00:14:51.310 And my first series writing as Joss Sterling was the Finding Sky series, which 222 00:14:51.310 --> 00:14:58.290 stretched to six books, which did very well for me back in the 2010s. 223 00:14:58.430 --> 00:15:03.030 And what I was thinking about was I was writing that is I wanted a 224 00:15:03.030 --> 00:15:12.670 sense of that intense finding the right person because often actually 225 00:15:12.670 --> 00:15:14.010 that's the heart of it. 226 00:15:14.090 --> 00:15:17.730 And this is where I'm going to rest on it is when you find the 227 00:15:17.730 --> 00:15:22.650 right person and you click together, that is such a big payoff. 228 00:15:22.910 --> 00:15:23.750 That is what we want. 229 00:15:23.830 --> 00:15:26.290 We want Elizabeth to find her Darcy. 230 00:15:26.710 --> 00:15:30.010 In my case, you want your Sky to find her Zed. 231 00:15:30.950 --> 00:15:37.410 And that clicking together is why people read romances because it promises, and 232 00:15:37.410 --> 00:15:40.550 this perhaps is where it might be a bit of a fantasy, it promises there 233 00:15:40.550 --> 00:15:43.610 is someone out there for you if you just find them. 234 00:15:43.710 --> 00:15:49.950 So I hope this Valentine's Day that you have found that right person who clicks 235 00:15:49.950 --> 00:15:54.570 together with you, or if you've had one that didn't click that you're able to 236 00:15:54.570 --> 00:15:56.110 go on and find that person. 237 00:15:56.470 --> 00:16:03.890 So happy Valentine's Day and do pick up a good romantic fantasy and have some 238 00:16:03.890 --> 00:16:04.150 fun. 239 00:16:04.750 --> 00:16:06.270 Thank you very much for listening.