I’m alternating between two fantasy / romance series, Faith Hunter’s Jane Yellowrock and Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson, trying to understand the appeal and writing styles.
It’s interesting to see how they both approach the classical notion of vampires and werewolves, and twist the readers’ expectations, whilst on the other hand serving them exactly what they want...
Dabbling in romantasy lately, are we?
Well. It's only for scientific purposes. And if the story is half-decent, then why not? I can always skip the random porn inserts that seem to haunt modern day fantasy novels...
First of all, this is a little cynical, so my apologies for that.
Nevertheless, if you step away and study the subject from a distance then you'll find some interesting commonalities between many of the books in this well-selling (sub)genre.
Here are several of the tropes I identified thus far...
Trying to learn more about romance novels, I dipped my toes into the ‘Jane Yellowrock’ series. I think this is the second or third novel from the series. I’m still not sure what the target audience is for these: starving housewives, or males looking for a vampire killing, werewolf kicking biker chick?
