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5.0étoiles sur 5
SF and romance, Janv. 21 2004
I've never understood some of these romances where the conflict between the man and woman is so artificial as to be laughable. Stories where the woman is a spoiled brat who heaps abuse on the man, or where the man is so dominating that one expects him to club the little woman and drag her by the hair back to his cave just make me wonder why anyone would want to get into a relationship with that kind of toxic person.The conflict in "The Alliance" developed from a situation that "felt" real, and the characters were not mindlessly combative with each other, but acted consistently throughout, even as they were growing and developing within the constraints of the story. Even though Reuel starts out thinking he can thoughtlessly dominate the women in his life, he soon begins to realize that domination isn't necessarily emotionally fulfilling. (Hey! He has human emotions! Imagine that!) Christa is a strong female character in that she logically sees that she must compromise in a situation she can't change, and realizes that not only is the hero an admirable man in many ways, but also that haranguing the hero only makes him more resistant to change. (Personally, when someone starts shouting at me and telling me I'm wrong, I tend to dig in my heels!) My favorite moment in the book is when Christa tells Reuel that she is bored, and he is honestly surprised that the mere fact of being his wife isn't fulfilling her. Frankly, I, too, would like to be pampered and have people wait on me hand and foot for a while, just as a change of pace, but I can see that it would certainly get boring after a short time, particularly if you are used to thinking and doing. Although I really enjoy SF romance, many authors are good at either the SF part or the Romance part, but not both. Romance writers tend to have strange concepts about what SF is. Weird words describing things and awkward descriptions of "alien" things tend to jar me out of the world of the story and make it difficult to grok the romance. SF writers who try to write romance tend to write an SF story, then, when their editor tell them to add romantic interest, they add a relationship that reads as the afterthought that it is. I like to have both a good SF story and a good romance. I know it can be done, because a few authors have managed to do it. In this sense, "The Alliance" is among the few that smoothly combine both elements. (The only correction I'd make is to call people from Earth "Terrans" - "Earthling" sounds so 1950-ish!) Finally, I really like the title - "The Alliance" is the name of the federation in which the story takes place, but it can also mean "The Alliance" between two people for the benefit of others. Very sophisticated.
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