Unclaimed by Courtney Milan

[rowyn]

Unclaimed is the sequel to Unveiled, which I reviewed last week. And now I've read two romances in a row and I need to stop reading romance for a while again.

There are a lot of things that I love about the romance genre, and a lot of things that drive me crazy about it. A given book in the genre may hit on both the good and bad, or neither. I generally liked Unclaimed, but it did some of both.

Michelle Sagara wrote a wonderful blog post about romance. It's specifically addressing the concept of the "alpha male", but she has good thoughts on the genre. This quote in particular resonated with me: It’s a balance: the romance and relationship has to be emotional, and it has to fit the narrow, narrow wedge of my own emotional needs. It’s not, therefore, about the books, but about me.

One of the habits I've long had with romance novels is that I'll go back to re-read key emotional scenes. Sometimes these will be the ones at or just after the climax, but sometimes they're in the middle of the story too. These are the scenes where the characters break down the barriers between them and bare their feelings in their rawest, most powerful state. This is what I want most in romance. After I finished Unclaimed, I kept flipping through it, trying to find scenes that resonated with me in this fashion, but really couldn't. It was weird, because I generally enjoyed the book while I was reading it, and thought it was romantic, and thought the resolution was solid. But the "d'awww, that's so sweet" moments weren't there when I tried to find them. I think part of this is that the characters kept making out when I wanted them to be coming to terms emotionally. Usually I don't mind sex scenes but there were some cases where they were just intrusive or felt wrong for the context.

But Unclaimed does many things well. The male protagonist embodies those alpha-male qualities Sagara described in her post: secure, self-confident, competent, indifferent to the whims of society, etc. Further, he lacks most of the annoying qualities that sometimes get packaged with "alpha male": he's not a bully, he never coerces the female protagonist into doing anything, he's careful about letting her make her own choices and confident in her ability to fight her own battles if need be. (In one case, literally and ahistorically, but hey. Point made.)

And while there's a lot of gosh-we're-so-attracted-to-each-other in the text, the characters obviously fall in love with each other for their personalities and deeds, not because they're overpowered by lust.

Overall, I was right that I liked this book better than Unveiled, but not as much better as I expected. I'll give it an 8.5.

But I want to ask -- does anyone else regularly do the "re-read your favorite bits" thing right after finishing a romance, or is that just me? Or re-read the best bits with non-romance novels, for that matter?

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I re-read the sex scenes...

(but yeah, occasionally I'll go back and read particular scenes that were impressive out of a story without rereading the whole thing. Not often though)

[rowyn]

I don't re-read sex scenes very often, but that may be because the romances I read have pretty vanilla sex scenes and they're ... more monotonous than erotic, really. :/ (I get bored re-reading the sex scenes I wrote in RA, for that matter.)

I re-read some scenes I particularly liked out of the last couple of Sanderson books I read, after I finished them. I don't usually do that with non-romances, so I was surprised that I wanted to.

[ankewehner.livejournal.com]

I've done re-reading favourite bits of non-romance novels, though it's not a regular occurence. I don't have a habit of reading romance. I've read quite a bit of the In Death series, which had going for it that there still was a mystery plot when the Alpha guy did creepy stuff like forcing medicine down the throat of the female lead that she did not want.

Alpha males make me uncomfortable, mostly because from what I've read, the only reason they are not plainly abusive stalkers and rapists is that the female leads fall for them, too.
I don't like it that every time I've read or seen a guy shut up a woman he's been nothing but arguing with by kissing her, it turns out that that's what she really wanted; it romanticises assault. And it makes no sense to me for people who so far have done nothing but bicker would fall for each other.

ETA: I think I can sum it up. What I don't like is the "Man knows better than Woman what Woman wants, or what is good for Woman" that in my limited reading came packaged with the alpha male trope, because it casts Woman as stupid.

[rowyn]

Alpha males make me uncomfortable, mostly because from what I've read, the only reason they are not plainly abusive stalkers and rapists is that the female leads fall for them, too. I don't like it that every time I've read or seen a guy shut up a woman he's been nothing but arguing with by kissing her, it turns out that that's what she really wanted; it romanticises assault. And it makes no sense to me for people who so far have done nothing but bicker would fall for each other.

Yep, I hate all of those tropes too. I like these two books because the male protagonist do pretty much none of these things. In the beginning of Unveiled, the male protagonist makes it clear that he's interested in the female. The female tells him to get lost and stop bothering her.

So he does.

It was pretty funny. :) The female protagonists in these books are reasonably assertive about what they want, and the male ones are good about backing them up rather than overruling them. The closest it comes to "won't take no for an answer" is when the female lead in Unclaimed keeps telling the male that she's not good enough for him and he insists that she is.

[rowyn]

Yes, the reason I particularly liked Sagara's take on the "alpha male" trope was that she did a good job of pointing out what's genuinely appealing (the self-confidence, competence, and independence) as opposed to the stalker/jerk elements that often get tacked on and are annoying to me too.

[archangelbeth]

*nodnodnodnodnod* Same here.

Oddly, it made me wonder if the "beta hero" that I'd thought I'd written was actually a lot more alpha than not, if... usually in an understate way. >_>


(As for the other bit: I totally re-read bits, though usually not just after finishing a book. Generally I do that with Bujold books, sometimes Hambly ones, and, er, mine. >_> In all cases, though, re-reading bits can suck me into re-reading whole chapters, or finishing the book from wherever it was I started. ...oops.)

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

What beta hero are you thinking of? Surely not from the Alchemist books?

[archangelbeth]

The duology, yup! I had been too indoctrinated in the idea of "alpha = 'marmoset'*," I guess?


* (As per an older slang meaning of marmoset, via Twitter, and MRK... ^_^ )

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

In no way shape or form did I perceive the Lord Alchemist as a beta male. :,

[archangelbeth]

Well! Yay, then! O:D Though, seriously, I did not set out to write him "alpha" (at least, not by the definitions that I'd been going by at the time...).

Now I'm going to wonder what "beta" is in the Sagara definition, though!

[rowyn]

This is a good question. Perhaps more likely to be reflective, indecisive, and/or insecure -- Hamlet: beta male? More negotiator than assertive? Cooperative rather than competitive? I think "beta" has lots of good qualities too, but I'm not pinning down the distinction at the moment.