Six romances out today, three are fantasy
By Nora Ashby
Three fantasy romances came out today, November 3, at the start of what Smart Bitches, Trashy Books calls a month "really packed with releases." Their list runs seven books. Six carry a romance tag.
Three of the six are fantasy romance
Laurell K. Hamilton's A Glimmer of Death is Merry Gentry #10, from Berkley. Danielle Jensen's Defy the Dusk opens The Sundering Duet, a post-apocalyptic fantasy pair from Del Rey. Alexandra Kennington's Drown the Bones, from Berkley XO, is tagged fantasy romance, LGBTQIA and new adult: a spare princess and a rival prince, hunting whoever killed her twin.
I haven't read any of them yet. Think of this as the case lit up before anybody has taken a ring out.
Both long fantasy picks now come with an end date
The Hamilton is book ten, and Smart Bitches lists it as the first of a two-book conclusion. Jensen's was built as a duet from page one. Two very different on-ramps, same useful fact: you know how much is left.
That matters more than people admit.
A reader who starts a fantasy romance is paying layaway on an ending. She already knows what's in the case. Knowing how many Fridays are left before it comes out is half of why she keeps showing up.
The rest of the week is contemporary
Michelle Heard's My Neighbor the Assassin (Montlake, and on Kindle Unlimited per the list), Danica Nava's Sunflower Season (Berkley) and Dahlia Adler's Hanukkah novella One for Each Night are tagged contemporary romance. The seventh book, John Scalzi's Monsters of Ohio, is tagged science fiction and fantasy, no romance.
The tag skips the two things I check first
A genre tag tells you the shelf. It does not tell you how open the door is, and it does not tell you whether the ending is promised. Those are the first two things I look for, and the two things a store page is worst at. My blog carries the heat scale and the craft posts if you want to read new titles that way.
Smart Bitches has its comment thread open for what you're picking up this week.