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Hello and welcome to Mythmakers.

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Mythmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to

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you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy.

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My name is Julia Golding and today we are in a romantic mood because we

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are fast approaching Valentine's Day and I wanted to have a look at the theme

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of romance in fantasy.

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So recently there's been the phenomenon of the romanticy and it's sort of

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reached ridiculous heights.

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It's like the main thing published by a lot of fantasy publishers and one of

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these sort of titles that really dominated is Rebecca Yarrow's The Fourth Wing

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and I think there's a second part as well.

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She is following in a tradition that already existed.

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She didn't invent the genre but publishers have sort of packaged it as a

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particular thing.

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So why is romanticy so popular at the moment?

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Well, it is a blend of the existing love for the sort of kingdom love

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affair, the sort of elf prince, human woman.

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Sarah J.

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Mars has done quite a few books in this area where you get a similar

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thing but her romance originally in the 2010s didn't step into quite so

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explicit territory.

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What happened with Fourth Wing and why there was a new frisson of interest is

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that it sort of leaned more into a more explicit depiction of sex.

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There is a readership out there, particularly sort of young women who came up

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through the Harry Potter reading, The Hunger Games, then Twilight and going on

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to the weirdly stepping sideways into the Fifty Shades.

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There is a sort of big readership out there for this and romance is a

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massive, massive part of the income stream for many publishers.

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People will read romances, romanticism one after the other, often as e-books,

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though Fourth Wing, of course, is a big paperback book as well.

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So, they have found a female audience really, I would say.

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I'm not saying that men don't read it as well but when you think of

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a lot of the sort of hard-edge sci-fi or classic sci-fi, it

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doesn't tend to cater so much for a female taste or a female eye.

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Romanticism is doing that and women are more book buyers, more readers than

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men, so market forces are also behind it.

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And of course, the thing that you get is the exotic.

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There is plenty of sub-genres in romance.

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If you just want to find out how many there are, go and look at

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some sort of book aggregate system but you get things like Harem romances and

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Arab Sheikh romances and Regency romances and so on and so on and so on,

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pirate romances.

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So, it fits well into this understanding that the background is going to be

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like this set dressing for a story which is powered mainly by a love story.

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Now, there's a lot else going on in Fourth Wing.

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It's also a coming-of-age story, a fairly sort of typical idea of the

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unregarded character who finds her power through discovering her skill as a

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dragon rider.

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But also, there's a sort of rebellion, that kind of edgy thing where there's a

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system that needs to be corrected.

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So, there's a lot of plot as well.

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So, very enjoyable but you have to also be ready for a certain sexual,

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certainly not younger YA sexual advance in it.

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So, romanticy has found its readership.

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But if we dig back through where this all came from, I remember reading Anne

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McCathery.

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That's the first dragon rider story.

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She has a series called the Chronicles of Pern, first one being Dragonflight,

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which I loved as a teenager.

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Found it in the school library, I think.

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And I went back when romanticy sort of revived.

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I went back and read it and discovered that there, the sexual mores of that

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world are very much of that era.

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I think it was, let me just check here, it was published in 1969.

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There we go.

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So, that's 56 years ago.

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And what we have here is a, I would say that the main female character

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is living in like a harem.

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So, she has all these dragon riders around her.

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It's like a Queen Bee idea.

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It's very 60s.

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So, you can see that the romance element in this fantasy is following the sort

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of ideas of what is sexually exciting in each decade.

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I found it quite difficult to read going back to it.

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What I found exciting and read without comment as a teenager, I now thought,

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oh, these relationships are all a bit skewed.

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So, I didn't enjoy it very much when I went back to it.

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But there are, of course, we can't talk about romance in more recent fiction

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without mentioning Twilight.

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Now, I don't know how old you were when Twilight was around.

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I was a mother of a daughter of the age at which Twilight was sort

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of directed.

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And I remember my daughter was completely besotted by this series.

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So, I went and read it because I thought, why is she walking around the

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house holding Twilight?

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What is going on here?

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What's the secret sauce going on?

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And of course, you quickly see that it is a high school romance.

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It's got that breathless intensity of that crush that you get on the cool boy

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in the years above you.

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Again, aimed at a female readership.

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And it's riveting.

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There's also, because of the vampirism thing, it reintroduces the idea of

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manners.

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So, if you think about a Regency story written like, say, Jane Austen, very

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small gestures have an erotic charge, you know, dancing with somebody.

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Or if you look at the film versions of Jane Austen, being handed into a

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carriage in Persuasion and Captain Wentworth takes one of the naughty little

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boys who's clambering over Anne off her back, relieving her of a load.

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Tiny gestures which speak volumes about what's going on, the subtext of that

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relationship.

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Twilight does that through the metaphor of the vampire.

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How far can you go?

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Because the vampire might lose control because your blood is so tasty.

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And of course, the idea of blood and what have you, it's all very textual.

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And it has that element of danger.

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In modern times when anything goes, each to their own, it reintroduces an

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element of restrictions.

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And restrictions make for a better, tense relationship.

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Because there are taboos and things you can't do and borders that are crossed,

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which are big in the relationship.

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So it was doing that.

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It was doing the high school, using vampire as this sort of coding for romantic

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rules.

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And, you know, there's lots of peril and attacks and drama.

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I can see why a teenage girl likes it.

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However, I do remember watching the film versions, taking a party of school

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kids, I think, you know, daughter's friends.

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I think it was the third film.

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I noticed that in the cinema, I and an adult, my dad, who'd come with

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their family, were both laughing at very different things from the girls.

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Because I found it all a bit satirical.

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And I sort of laughed at a meta level, which I think wasn't really noticed

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at that stage by the audience.

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So if my daughter watched it today, she would pick up on those same signals.

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So what is a fantasy romance?

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Well, I think we first of all have to say it's not a fantasy with

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a romance in.

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So obviously, Tolkien, we all love Tolkien.

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There are romances in Tolkien.

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There's Aragorn and Arwen, Faramir and Erwin, Beren and Lúthien.

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These are romances, love stories, but they don't make Lord of the Rings a

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romance, because the main driver of the plot is that of friendship and

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sacrifice.

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So it's not romantic love, it's filial, it's the love of comrades, the love for

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your country, it's that kind of love, the sort of love of the soldier fighting

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for what's right, or the person putting their life on the line.

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So exclude that.

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So if you're looking for a good romance in fantasy for reading over Valentine's

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Day or giving to somebody, I'm not into the very explicit version of this that

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you get in some romanticy.

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So I would not pick that myself, each to their own.

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But there are some writers who've been around for a few years that I would

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recommend.

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So she's an older writer now, but I very much enjoyed Elizabeth Vaughan's War

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Prize trilogy.

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It starts with a book called War Prize.

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This one is the last in the series, Warlord.

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And it's really a story of what happens between a colonizer and a colonized and

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looking at how two cultures come together.

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And the romance is a way of showing that.

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Again, I would say it's a sort of YA upwards title.

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But I very much enjoyed that.

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And I would recommend that.

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Again, it's an older book.

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So published in the early part of this century.

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And she's done others as well that sort of expand her world.

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And I very much enjoyed those.

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Another writer writing around the same time is Maria V.

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Schneider.

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The book I've got in my hand is Magic Study, but it starts with one

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called Poison Study, which has one of the best openings of any book, in my

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view.

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It starts with the main character, Yelena, who is in prison on Death Row.

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And she is dragged out after this awful experience.

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She's dragged out and given the choice.

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You can either go to the noose, or you can become the food taster for

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the general who's in charge of this world.

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But of course, there's a high chance you'll die of poison.

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And I love that story.

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And it has a sort of slow burn romance that runs through the series.

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And the series expands from the first country in and goes into other nations,

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which is absolutely fascinating.

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So I would recommend that if you haven't read them already.

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And again, the world expands into other series alongside it.

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Another series I like is Trudy Canavan's The Magician's Guild, which is a sort

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of tragedy.

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Sorry to spoil the end.

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But there's a tragic vein in this about Sonia, who's a trainee magician.

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Perhaps this is one of those ones which is evenly balanced, because in fact,

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the love story doesn't dominate.

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There's some other points of view.

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So it may actually be on the cusp, but it does definitely have a romance

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in it by the time you get to the second and third parts of the

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trilogy.

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I haven't actually really liked as much Trudy Canavan's other books in and

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around this one, but this first three I've really liked.

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So I would recommend that.

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And of course, there is a huge world of books, which are primarily the sort

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of digital download Kindle world.

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Absolutely.

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Part of the landscape, which is chock-a-block with titles.

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There's a fascinating husband and wife duo who write as Elona Andrews.

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They have some very good books in that series, and the Kate Daniels series.

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And I've actually enjoyed some of the books she's written after, because

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normally you would expect romance to finish at wedding bells, but actually

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she's carried on, or they have carried on after.

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And that's very enjoyable.

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It's quite a huge area.

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Talking about Mammoth series, another one, which is actually a detective story,

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is the J.D. Robb in-death series, which has a central couple who really

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are sort of the heart of it.

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But I think it's now into about 56 parts.

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And I have actually read all of them or listened to them over the years,

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but it's been running since the 90s.

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So yeah, I think they do about one or two a year.

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So if you like a sort of slightly futuristic cop romance, that's a good series.

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Though they do have the problem that when she started writing, it's actually

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Nora Roberts is the underlying writer.

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There was, you know, 2050 felt a long way off and now we're catching up.

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So I don't know what she's going to do.

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Plus it's taking a very long time.

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J.D. Robb, life of the characters is going much more slowly than real life.

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So you keep wanting them to move a little bit further on with their

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relationship.

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So it's taking a while, that series, but enjoyable.

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The detective plots are always very entertaining and set in a futuristic New

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York.

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So yeah, catnip.

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So I've also written fantasy versions of romances.

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And my first series writing as Joss Sterling was the Finding Sky series, which

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stretched to six books, which did very well for me back in the 2010s.

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And what I was thinking about was I was writing that is I wanted a

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sense of that intense finding the right person because often actually

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that's the heart of it.

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And this is where I'm going to rest on it is when you find the

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right person and you click together, that is such a big payoff.

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That is what we want.

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We want Elizabeth to find her Darcy.

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In my case, you want your Sky to find her Zed.

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And that clicking together is why people read romances because it promises, and

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this perhaps is where it might be a bit of a fantasy, it promises there

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is someone out there for you if you just find them.

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So I hope this Valentine's Day that you have found that right person who clicks

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together with you, or if you've had one that didn't click that you're able to

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go on and find that person.

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So happy Valentine's Day and do pick up a good romantic fantasy and have some

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fun.

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Thank you very much for listening.