Sakura of DOOM

General overview for books 1-6 on race and gender and etc.

Can I just say that these book titles are terrible? I can't keep half of them apart. Also, assume spoilers in each cut for the book being discussed and for prior books in the series.

( Out of Control (2002) )

( Into the Night (2002) )

( Gone Too Far (2003) )

Into the Night and Gone Too Far are romance recs for doing some really interesting things with the tropes, despite the inclusion of things in there that I don't like.

Links:
- kate_nepveu's reviews of Out of Control, Into the Night and Gone Too Far

(covers The Unsung Hero, The Defiant Hero, Over the Edge, Out of Control, Into the Night, and Gone Too Far. Individual book write ups to come.)

As previously noted, Suzanne Brockmann is very good at writing sensible, normal characters who do rational things like try to talk to each other instead of letting Big Misunderstandings fester. Her categories suffer a bit from this because she has to resort to some authorial gymnastics to create conflict, but her Troubleshooters series mainly solve this by a) having more than one couple per book, b) adding in external suspense plots, and c) giving people a lot of background angst. Normally I'm not a huge fan of any of these, except I tend to like most of her couples and the diversity she puts in, her background angst is much more realistic than normal romance background angst, and although sometimes I dislike her external suspense plots, sometimes they provide excellent tension without taking over too much of the romance (my usual complaint for romantic suspense).

Also, I've seen Brockmann recced just about everywhere, but I've avoided her for the longest time for two reasons. First, I tend not to read contemporaries that aren't paranormals because although you'd think the contemporary setting would give romance authors more room to play with, the books usually end up with the same old romance tropes in a setting in which I find them completely unpalatable, as opposed to only somewhat unpalatable. Second, I know the series is about US Navy SEALs. I have zero interest in Navy SEALs or in the US military, romantic suspense is my least favorite romance subgenre, and I feel Navy SEAL heroes are the perfect excuse for more-alpha-than-you heroes and lots of heroines in distress. Thankfully, this is not the case in this series, which I am devouring despite all the above qualms.

Instead, the best books so far are about people falling in love with each other while other things go on in their lives—sometimes action related, sometimes not. So far, all of them have one main romance, a secondary romance, and then a third romance that's a flashback from World War II. Sometimes the secondary romance is concluded in the book, but sometimes it's a set up to another book or plot. I was going to say I like it best when they're concluded in the book, but the way Brockmann has set up several of her later romances has really worked for me. I don't enjoy her categories as much because the length works again her; instead, I think with shorter page length but a longer stretch of time, Brockmann is very good at packing in a lot of emotional complication, just as in real life. I like that people sleep together with disastrous results, that there are actually good reasons for people not getting together (some of it being emotional stupidity, but acknowledged as such!), that I get the sense that these are people with pasts and lives and interests.

I'm also reading these books as genre romance, despite them being mainly shelved in the general fiction section, largely because those are the tropes I'm comparing them to. I have no idea how they read as non-romances or as thrillers, and would be curious as to people from those genre's impressions.

( Race )

( Gender )

( Other cool bits )

In conclusion: I have qualms about many things, but the awesome bits so outweighed the qualms for me that I found these worth reading. (YMMV, of course.) My favorites so far are The Unsung Hero, Into the Night, and Gone Too Far. Over the Edge made me headdesk quite a few times with its portrayal of Kazbekistan, but it also sets up several plots that come to fruition later in the series. I've found it worth reading everything so far, but I may end up skipping books about characters or settings I dislike, and I think middle books are still skippable.