[NigelBarington]

I need your help!!! :( I'm looking for authors that DO NOT churn out love ridden plots. I don't mind the usual cliche plots of farm-boy turns hero but for the love of god please don't somehow turn it into a rescue the love of his life plot.

Here's examples of what I don't want. Authors like Terry Goodkind and his Sword of Truth series. Yes I get it, you're the all mighty but you're still whipped around by your wife... fabulous... I can go over to my friends house and watch him go 'yes dear and no dear'. Or Eddings with the whole neverending circle of family love of the grandfather, aunt, sisters, second cousins third removed and so on. And don't get me started when some idiot author decides to go into great lengths on copulation.

Here's what I like. I'm sure you all know about the desecration of the LotR by the Hollywood civvies just to make sure it appeases the general public but besides that the book was romance-free. (OK enough with the snickering, Frodo and Samwise are just friends!). I read Terry Brooks which is pretty decent, it has its series but there usually is a generation gap in between and most characters are usually decendents and you can start to love each character again without being bored.

So am I being selfish? Am I the only one sick of love-laden-ride-the-success-with-multi-never-ending-series books? Or can someone help me and people like me by listing a couple authors where it's all about heroes and magical swords with ample killings and maimings?

Thanks in advance!!!!!! :D

[Obtuse]

Try The Malazan Book Of The Fallen by Steven Erikson. It is long (10 books planned), but not never-ending. From what I can tell it is right on track with how the author planned it. It does have a wee bit of romance, but I'd say it's 97.635% killing and maiming.

The first book in the series is Gardens of the Moon.

[clockwirk]

You could also try R. Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing series. Any romance in it is either destined for tragedy or used for manipulation. Martins series doesn't have any typical romance either.
I disagree about LOTR not having romance. You've got Aragorn and Arwen, Aragorn and Eowyn, Eowyn and Faramir, Sam and whatshername from the shire...It's just not typical 'save the damsel in distress bullcrap'.

[Mithfânion]

Uh oh. Wait until Leiali sees this thread! ;)

[JBI]

Try The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. No real romance in there. PRetty good book, and very original.

[Yobmod]

I need your help!!! I'm looking for authors that DO NOT churn out love ridden plots. I don't mind the usual cliche plots of farm-boy turns hero but for the love of god please don't somehow turn it into a rescue the love of his life plot.

All th authors and books you mentioned are epic fantasy. Finding romance-free fantasy will be far easier if you look outside this subgenre. Eg: I'd recommend Gormanghast (Peake), BotNS (Wolfe), Beauty (Tepper), Gloriana (Moorcock)...

But within Epic fantasy, The (First) Chronicles of THomas Covenant is one of the few series that is completely romance free. The Chronicles of Amber also has little or no romance that i remember, and is likewise excellent.

[NigelBarington]

This is excellent! Yes all sub genre are graciously accepted with many thanks!!

Completely agree about the little romantic interests that sparks up in LotR but I think the key word here is 'interest'. The reader should understand there is a bond between them to carry on the story. That is all. There shouldn't be long diatribes of how much love is being thrown into the air. Nothing worst than to read about a love-struck hero/ine reminding us how miserable and depressed s/he is all throughout the story.

Again thanks for all the suggestions so far and keep them coming! I hope somebody else might benefit from this thread.

[KatG]

So am I being selfish? Am I the only one sick of love-laden-ride-the-success-with-multi-never-ending-series books? Or can someone help me and people like me by listing a couple authors where it's all about heroes and magical swords with ample killings and maimings?

No, just incredibly lazy. First of all, you're only reading decades old bestsellers. Have you never heard of browsing shelves? Shopping on Amazon? Second, you have not yet slogged through the -- all together now -- Recommendation Thread that we have here: http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8580 (This is a Sticky Thread at the top of the Fantasy Forum directory.)

Not only does this Recommendation Thread have tons of titles with information about them, but it has links to lots of other recommending threads like Supernatural Fantasy, British Fantasy, and fun stuff like that.

Since you asked our sage wisdom politely, we'll let it slide this time. Welcome. Now go to work.

[Randy M.]

No, just incredibly lazy.
But ... but that's why there is an Internet!!!!

Trust me. I know this. I work in a university library.
First of all, you're only reading decades old bestsellers. Have you never heard of browsing shelves? Shopping on Amazon? Second, you have not yet slogged through the -- all together now -- Recommendation Thread that we have here: http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8580 (This is a Sticky Thread at the top of the Fantasy Forum directory.)

Not only does this Recommendation Thread have tons of titles with information about them, but it has links to lots of other recommending threads like Supernatural Fantasy, British Fantasy, and fun stuff like that.
Yeah, but I find that more useful when not looking for anything specific. Your attempts at classification not withstanding, those threads usually start with a broad question or a far too narrow question, and then we all chirp up, more or less blindfolded (or at least with our glasses off), tossing at it whatever comes to hand that feels roughly right.

In those sub-threads there's a lot of, "If you mean [this], then what you'd like is [this]. But if you mean [that], then I think you'd be more interested in [that]." Speaking of which ...

How about we throw a curveball?

Nigel, is your gripe with all romance or with particularly sappy romances?

If the latter, try these from Jonathan Carroll,
The Land of Laughs
Voice of Our Shadow
Bones of the Moon (show forebearance at the beginning and you'll soon get to the good stuff)

The interactions sketched out in those books between men and women are not sappy, and are certainly clear-eyed about the worst that men and women bring into their relationships as well as the best.

There's also Christopher Moore,
Personal Demonkeeping
The Stupidest Angel

Here the romance is of the romantic comedy type. Think Cary Grant-like movies, but current and in writing.

Sean Stewart's Resurrection Man features a couple who are somewhat attracted to each other, but that's not a main point of the book and it's refered to without getting exactly romantic.

It's been awhile since I read Fritz Leiber's Our Lady of Darkness but while there's a relationship, as I recall, I don't think there's much in the way of romance. Oh, and his Conjure Wife features a married couple, so no danger of romance there. (Do I really have to insert a smiley with this?)

Cold Skin by Albert Pinol is sort of William Hope Hodgson meets Joseph Conrad, and verges on horror. There are two men and a female in the story, but whatever happens between them, it's not romance.

If you want no romance at all, maybe Robert E. Howard. And H.P. Lovecraft's writings are entirely romance free. Okay, there is "The Dunwich Horror" but, hey, look at the title, and besides that I doubt Lavinia thought of it as romance and, too, her beau is pretty much off-stage, there are absolutely no hints of candle-light dinners and violins, and no witty dialog since, really, even if HPL had included any, how could you tell if it was witty with all those consonents?

Lastly, seconding Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake, which has only the vaguest outline of the ghost of a possible romance but it's brief and doesn't really take center stage.


Randy M.

[KatG]

Well, if we refer back to our completely out of control discussion of magic realism, then we know that all fantasy works are considered romances by the academics. So the answer to are there any romance-free fantasy authors would be no, there aren't. :)

But if we limit romance to the strict definition of the mushy-gushy stuff, then I cannot off-hand think of a single author who doesn't have it. Maybe in an individual title, but certainly not in a series.

For instance, Nigel brings up LOTR and says that the book(s) had virtually no romance. This is patently untrue in my opinion. While the movies did play it up more than time is given to it in the books, Aragorn's romance is of critical importance to the main plot. And the movies cut out my favorite romance in LOTR, in which the young horsewoman, cruelly spurned in her schoolgirl crush on Aragorn and wounded from sneaking into battle as a man, recuperates with the not so handsome anymore prince whose crazed dad tried to burn him alive, chats about the future and falls in love. Nigel might not have noticed that part, but me being a girl, I certainly did.

Even Scott Bakker's brutal series and Steve Erikson's cynical series have important, heartfelt romances in them. China Mieville's dire political epics are bursting with romantic angst, both straight and gay. Scott Lynch's main character in his debut novel longs for his lady love, though she isn't present, and the story has a loving pair of nobles in a very equalitarian marriage. Nor is Thomas Covenant immune. The contemporary fantasies are rampant with romances, the comic ones too. It's sort of hard, though perhaps not impossible, to get away from. Horror might be your best bet, since occasionally they don't bother with romance.

If, though, Nigel just wants something where the romance isn't always central and there isn't a lot of sentimental family stuff, I'd second Bakker and Erikson. Though the soldierly comraderie in Erikson might give one pause.