![]() ![]() ![]() Tristan is sort of…bland? I’ll be honest in this book I didn’t HATE it but near the end and into Heart of Flames it becomes unbearable. I want more books that prioritise friendships and sibling relationships over romance. THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE ABOUT VERONYKA AND HER SISTER. ![]() I don’t like that the romance seems to swallow the protagonists character whole when it would have been more interesting to focus on her sibling relationship. I don’t like that it’s a classic love triangle between pretty lawful good boy and rugged chaotic neutral boy. Maybe I just don’t like the way Kagawa writes romance. This honestly feels like a straight paranormal romance instead of the fantasy book it should have been. It doesn’t really affect the overall plot of the series that much. Valerie and a troll meet and fall in love. This whole book is shoved awkwardly in a series about other characters entirely so the whole book feels pointless. For credit, I do like the dynamic here better because Yumeko at least balances her partner but…with so many demons and cool fights and magic…there wasn’t time for them to connect. Both are assassins who were abused and don’t know how to love uwu. The male love interest in this book is almost identical to the male love interest in We Hunt the Flame. Imagine exactly those tropes and that’s the romance. Lily barely gets a personality aside from the chosen one and her TWO love interests are pretty one and dark one. I think this book is all around bad but the romance is particularly insulting. Zafira should be in mourning but no, a hot guy. The whole story takes place over a few days so there is LITERALLY NOT ENOUGH TIME for love. We also have a subplot with the other character having some romance. I’m not sure who wanted to read page after page of two strong, silent characters staring broodily at each other but it wasn’t me. There’s really no time to get attached to him and it’s worse because I don’t think it’ll mean anything in the sequel. To be honest I thought it was in his late thirties until he and the protagonist wanted to jiggyjiggy and then I realised he had to be younger. This is a book with an extremely unclear magic system and a romance with a character who I can’t figure anything out about. I didn’t feel anything for either of the characters because they were honestly pretty stock so the romance felt like a waste. I don’t know WHY a romance was put in a book that could have been just a cool story about a rebellion. There’s a lot going on in this book but the pacing feels excruciating because of the romance we have to take breaks for. Six of Crows was in an already somewhat developed world, I have no idea how all this weird magic shit works in The Gilded Wolves. This could have been an amazing concept if they had saved the romance for book two. This book clearly is aiming for the same target audience as Six of Crows but doesn’t really bother to get us invested in their gang of misfits before throwing ships and tragedy at us. The world has a lot of rules that we don’t really get to understand deeply enough because we have to set up several different romantic subplots. to start this series off let’s take a look at why you should include a romantic subplot at all? Do you actually need one.This book is all over the place plotwise. The romance can be very slight, to the point where the attraction is barely hinted at and the characters don’t even kiss, to being a fully fleshed out romance that runs alongside (but is still secondary to) the main story. Most of these can benefit from having a romantic subplot added to the story. Of course there are lots of sub-genres within Epic Fantasy (grim-dark, high, Arthurian, heroic, sword and sorcery just to name a few). Once you know how romance works, and what the key ingredients are to making it shine, it’s a lot easier. Actually … it’s only hard if you’re fumbling blindly ahead of you. This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, as I’ve had a few Epic Fantasy writers contact me via this blog asking for advice.Īnyone who has never written romance before and then tries to incorporate it in a story often gets a shock (as I did initially) about just how hard it is to get right. I’ve embarked on this five-post blog series to help Epic Fantasy authors who are interested in adding a bit of romance into their stories, but aren’t sure how to approach it. ![]()
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