The topic for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday is supposed to be “books that make you swoon.” I went back and forth on whether to do this one at all; no matter which way I tried to approach it, it came out as “favorite fictional romances,” which is subtly different (and has already been a TTT topic, I believe). And also because I couldn’t think of ten: “swoon-worthy” just doesn’t describe the bulk of the books I read. But here’s what I came up with just the same, TTT rebel that I am. No particular order here.
- Vespasian and Caenis from The Course of Honor, Lindsey Davis.
- Lan and Nynaeve from the Wheel of Time series, Robert Jordan—this was just about my first-ever fandom ship.
- Snape and Lily from the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling—because of course.
- Aquila and Ness from The Lantern Bearers, Rosemary Sutcliff—I’m not usually a fan of Sutcliff’s female characters, to be honest; Ness is the exception.
- Sam Spade and Effie Perine from The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett—this one is honestly as much from the movie as from the book; but the movie essentially uses the book as its screenplay, so it’s OK.
- Aegnor and Andreth from The History of Middle-Earth, J.R.R. Tolkien—I get ALL the nerd points for this one, right? It’s really just hinted at in the legendarium, but Aegnor was a male Elf who fell in love with a female Human, It always seems to be the other way around, so this was always my ship because I just had to be different (rebel).
- Aral and Cordelia, from Shards of Honor, Lois McMaster Bujold—I feel like I can’t even legitimately include this one, because this is the only one of the Vorkosigan books I’ve read and I know there are a ton more; but—rebel.
- Gen and Irene, from the Queen’s Thief series, Megan Whalen Turner—if you’ve read MWT, I don’t need to explain this one; if you haven’t, what are you doing with your life?
