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Enjoying Lost Girl made me decide to check out some paranormal romance-y books…which has reminded me why I like Lost Girl and don't tend to read paranormal romance.
Some vague spoilers but nothing significant.
So, "Moon Called" by Patricia Briggs.
The heroine Mercy is a skinwalker and can turn into a coyote, which in effect makes her a super special werewolf Lite: she's free of their command structure and has certain unique abilities (skinwalkers are incredibly rare), she's not anywhere near as ruled by instinct, but she's also smaller and weaker.
Lots of sex=death/dominance: werewolves and vampires are all about staking claims and she constantly has to act submissive (in as unsubmissively feisty a way as she can manage) to stop the bigger stronger more violent werewolf men in her life from attacking her. This dominance is seen as sexy.
Werewolf love interest is big and strong and old and Manly, always acting like he knows what's best and being domineering and Alpha-ish. He is a rich business man with lots of money.
The protagonist is the ONLY positive female character who isn't incredibly minor or dead. Apparently EVERY SINGLE FEMALE in the werewolf pack she grew up in hates her. She has NO female friends. Female werewolves are submissive to the males, and there's some token bleating about how this is sexist but mainly she seems to find them dull and bitchy.
A moderate number of non-white/POC and lgbtq characters, not fantastically written but not too bad imo. Not sure about how well the protagonist being half American Indian was handled.
Lost Girl:
The heroine Bo is a succubus. Apart from vague hints of a Secret Past her one specialness amongst Fae is her ignorance and that she consciously chose to not pick a side.
Sex can equal death for other people, but for Bo sex=life, and as the show's progressed the more she's come to grips with her power and seen it as a gift that doesn't have to kill anyone. She happily feeds of the sexual energy of all sorts of people, but the more dominant and violent she gets (eg when she's actually attacking someone) the more she transitions to unsexy predator. The only sexual possessiveness we've seen from anyone has been very human "But I thought we were dating exclusively :(" stuff. Gender roles and relationship dynamics in general seem mostly unrelated to Fae-ness. Plus of course Bo is bisexual.
Werewolf love interest Dyson is…tall. And implied to be quite old though this mostly comes out as a quiet slightly smug self confidence. He is a cop, and no danger to Bo, nor is she any immediate danger to him. Mainly he helps Bo out when she calls for him.
There is also a female human love interest Lauren! Who Bo is theoretically some danger to, but this is fairly low down the list of issues they have to deal with. I'm less happy with the Lauren plot, but since "female love interest of fantasy heroine" is a rather less well worn path am willing to cut them a little slack. Lauren and Dyson can both be a bit "I know best" manipulative/condescending, not sure where the show is going with that but Bo definitely doesn't find it sexy.
Apart from Lauren there is Bo's best friend/sidekick Kenzi who is hugely important and awesome plus lots of one-off positive or interestingly ambiguous female characters.
Two unambiguously lgbtq main characters! Really quite bad ethnic diversity and racial dynamics :( Score one for "Moon Called". For me at least Lost Girl still wins overall.
I was thinking about why I like Bo being a succubus when it seems like such a creepy premise. And I've decided that it's because even in fairly tame non-romance-y fantasy (and fiction in general) there is a consistent theme of male sexuality=dominance, and female sexuality=female power=evil doom. But here we have a sympathetic female character who, while she has had serious problems as a result of her powers, is coming to see them as just part of who she is, who is cheerfully and unselfconsciously sexual in an entirely unsubmissive way. And she's not punished for it, it's an inherent and value neutral part of who she is. There is also a fairly clear distinction between sex for pleasure, sex as a sign of affection, and sex as power/food (Bo sometimes gets them mixed up, but the show generally doesn't) unlike, say, Twilight or True Blood or even Buffy. Having her be bisexual means all those crappy men-as-predators-women-as-prey dynamics (with non-dominant/weak men and dominant/powerful women being inherently despicable) get skewered completely.
EDIT: While I'm at it, some other things I like about Lost Girl: It is a similar monster-of-the-week-plus-arc tv fantasy to say Buffy which is a little slow but interesting and moderately consistent, I believe in the world of the Fae more than I did that of the Hellmouth. The side characters have their own lives and motivations and are engaging in their own right, the relationship between Kenzi, Dyson, and Dyson's partner Hale is adorable.
Which is not to say Lost Girl doesn't have issues. Beyond the patchy B-grade low-budget Canadian-ness there are the obvious issues around consent that, while not as terrible as they could be, could still stand to be dealt with better in my opinion, plus the dodgy portrayals of non-white/POC, overweight etc characters, and other stuff I'm probably forgetting. But in a lot of ways it's a breath of fresh air.
Some vague spoilers but nothing significant.
So, "Moon Called" by Patricia Briggs.
The heroine Mercy is a skinwalker and can turn into a coyote, which in effect makes her a super special werewolf Lite: she's free of their command structure and has certain unique abilities (skinwalkers are incredibly rare), she's not anywhere near as ruled by instinct, but she's also smaller and weaker.
Lots of sex=death/dominance: werewolves and vampires are all about staking claims and she constantly has to act submissive (in as unsubmissively feisty a way as she can manage) to stop the bigger stronger more violent werewolf men in her life from attacking her. This dominance is seen as sexy.
Werewolf love interest is big and strong and old and Manly, always acting like he knows what's best and being domineering and Alpha-ish. He is a rich business man with lots of money.
The protagonist is the ONLY positive female character who isn't incredibly minor or dead. Apparently EVERY SINGLE FEMALE in the werewolf pack she grew up in hates her. She has NO female friends. Female werewolves are submissive to the males, and there's some token bleating about how this is sexist but mainly she seems to find them dull and bitchy.
A moderate number of non-white/POC and lgbtq characters, not fantastically written but not too bad imo. Not sure about how well the protagonist being half American Indian was handled.
Lost Girl:
The heroine Bo is a succubus. Apart from vague hints of a Secret Past her one specialness amongst Fae is her ignorance and that she consciously chose to not pick a side.
Sex can equal death for other people, but for Bo sex=life, and as the show's progressed the more she's come to grips with her power and seen it as a gift that doesn't have to kill anyone. She happily feeds of the sexual energy of all sorts of people, but the more dominant and violent she gets (eg when she's actually attacking someone) the more she transitions to unsexy predator. The only sexual possessiveness we've seen from anyone has been very human "But I thought we were dating exclusively :(" stuff. Gender roles and relationship dynamics in general seem mostly unrelated to Fae-ness. Plus of course Bo is bisexual.
Werewolf love interest Dyson is…tall. And implied to be quite old though this mostly comes out as a quiet slightly smug self confidence. He is a cop, and no danger to Bo, nor is she any immediate danger to him. Mainly he helps Bo out when she calls for him.
There is also a female human love interest Lauren! Who Bo is theoretically some danger to, but this is fairly low down the list of issues they have to deal with. I'm less happy with the Lauren plot, but since "female love interest of fantasy heroine" is a rather less well worn path am willing to cut them a little slack. Lauren and Dyson can both be a bit "I know best" manipulative/condescending, not sure where the show is going with that but Bo definitely doesn't find it sexy.
Apart from Lauren there is Bo's best friend/sidekick Kenzi who is hugely important and awesome plus lots of one-off positive or interestingly ambiguous female characters.
Two unambiguously lgbtq main characters! Really quite bad ethnic diversity and racial dynamics :( Score one for "Moon Called". For me at least Lost Girl still wins overall.
I was thinking about why I like Bo being a succubus when it seems like such a creepy premise. And I've decided that it's because even in fairly tame non-romance-y fantasy (and fiction in general) there is a consistent theme of male sexuality=dominance, and female sexuality=female power=evil doom. But here we have a sympathetic female character who, while she has had serious problems as a result of her powers, is coming to see them as just part of who she is, who is cheerfully and unselfconsciously sexual in an entirely unsubmissive way. And she's not punished for it, it's an inherent and value neutral part of who she is. There is also a fairly clear distinction between sex for pleasure, sex as a sign of affection, and sex as power/food (Bo sometimes gets them mixed up, but the show generally doesn't) unlike, say, Twilight or True Blood or even Buffy. Having her be bisexual means all those crappy men-as-predators-women-as-prey dynamics (with non-dominant/weak men and dominant/powerful women being inherently despicable) get skewered completely.
EDIT: While I'm at it, some other things I like about Lost Girl: It is a similar monster-of-the-week-plus-arc tv fantasy to say Buffy which is a little slow but interesting and moderately consistent, I believe in the world of the Fae more than I did that of the Hellmouth. The side characters have their own lives and motivations and are engaging in their own right, the relationship between Kenzi, Dyson, and Dyson's partner Hale is adorable.
Which is not to say Lost Girl doesn't have issues. Beyond the patchy B-grade low-budget Canadian-ness there are the obvious issues around consent that, while not as terrible as they could be, could still stand to be dealt with better in my opinion, plus the dodgy portrayals of non-white/POC, overweight etc characters, and other stuff I'm probably forgetting. But in a lot of ways it's a breath of fresh air.
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In later books, I think Mercy has some female friends, although I don't remember very well, but stuff goes in a better direction with the love interests later on, and I give Briggs props for handling the aftermath of sexual assault in a more realistic way than usually happens in these books. (Also, I like her creepy vampires.)
IDK, I love about half of the things about the books and hate the other half. (And the thing is, werecoyotes make MUCH more sense in an urban setting than werewolves. Set a book in New York and they could even be packing.)
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