On Supernatural Underground Now: I Wrap Up My Year of Romance in Fantasy
It’s a bit nerve wracking to be wrapping up Supernatural Underground for the year, but it is indeed that time!
On the SU, 2019 has been my Year of Romance (#YoR) in Fantasy Fiction (#RIFF) and for the preceding nine months I’ve focused on a single book.
To wrap up, though, I decided to explore a few different takes on romantic relationships, from Barbara Hambly’s The Ladies of Mandrigyn in 1984, through until more recent times when the spotlight has come onto diversity a lot more.
It’s definitely a “slice of Fantasy” view rather than an exhaustive treatise, but I hope it proves interesting nonetheless:
Romance in Fantasy Fiction: Celebrating Difference
And please do add your favourites and recommendations in the comments: the more, the merrier!
I am currently reading The Tiger’s Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera … and it’s all about two spectacular young women falling in love, despite their respective “heir apparent” roles to a steppe nation and a Chinese-equivalent dynasty. I am about half-way through and thoroughly in love myself.
Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver also offers a very quiet, very cold romance at the heart of this Rapunzel-retold story. It’s about listening and respect and all sorts of wonderful things, in a look-alike Baltic country where “cold elves” live just the other side of the frozen, silver road. It’s all the best of Russian-ish fairy tales and re-imagined stories rolled up together.
I have had several recommendations for Spinning Silver now and you’ve made it sound very interesting. Speaking of Russian-ish tales, have you tried Katherine Ardern’s The Bear and the Nightingale? My US editor loved it and recommended it to me, even though another publishing house beat her out in terms of actually publishing it. (Lol.)
And I don’t think of The Tiger’s Daughter at all, prior to this, so shall look out for it… 🙂
The Bear and the Nightingale books are Very Russian, being spins on Vassalisa the Brave stories … where Vassa is a girl. I enjoyed them thoroughly! They center on the tension between old beliefs and the genii loci and the ever-advancing Orthodox Church. Done very, very well.
Romantic fantasy is just about my favourite sub-genre.
I’ve read the first 2 of Katherine Arden’s Winternight trilogy and both are very good books. Book 2 does NOT stall.
I loved the standalone Heart’s Blood by Juliette Marillier. This is an author that gets beautiful covers for her books, and the covers really suit the story.
Naomi Novak’s Spinning Silver is a very good low-key romantic fantasy. So is Uprooted. These are the sorts of romances a “practical, sensible young woman thinking of her future” would want.
A Song For Arbonne by Guy Gavierl Kaye. Standalone but wonderful.
I’ve always really liked the romantic sub-plot in The Gathering of the Lost.