I'd like to recommend a novel, and to tell you a little bit about it.
It's called "Just Stab Me Now" and for the most part it's a fantasy and romance story about a widowed noblewoman on a diplomatic mission to the court of a foreign queen. It's also a story about an office worker and part-time author who's writing the story you're reading. It's also a series of vignettes that take place entirely in the author's imagination as she "talks" to the characters while she's writing her book.
Despite the fact that the real author, Jill Bearup, has invented a whole new way of telling a story, it's not a masterwork of literature. What it is is great entertainment. It's a nice length, it's an easy pageturning read, and it's a whole lot of fun. There are two adventure stories that are thoroughly entertaining, there are two romance stories and one of them is genuinely heartwarming, and the way that the characters rebel against the author is laugh-out-loud funny.
I feel a bit bad for the author. She's come up with something as new and inventive as the epistolary novel, but I think it's one-and-done rather than the start of a whole new genre.
The best bit is that the author and the characters can talk about the tropes and forms of romantasy, but still use them or subvert them. I think it's both a love letter to and scathing criticism of romantasy genre fiction.
Richard "TLS" B
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