In an earlier Heroes & Heartbreakers post, I confessed that I’ve never actually read a Jane Austen novel—it was something that was overlooked in my schooling. (When it came to 19th-century English literature, I was only ever officially exposed to Dickens and Hardy in high school, and then the Brontë sisters in college.) As I was getting ready to correct that oversight, I stumbled upon William Deresiewicz’s A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter. Well, I said to myself, this could be helpful.

This is actually the second book Deresiewicz—a former English professor at Yale and a highly regarded book critic in venues from The New York Times to Bookforum—has written about Austen; I haven’t seen Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets (2005) yet, but it sounds like the sort of scholarly work that would be best appreciated after I have the six novels under my belt. A Jane Austen Education, on the other hand, is a more informal project: an outline of an autobiography tracking the twenty-something Deresiewicz’s moral development through his reading, starting with Emma, which made him realize “I’d have to somehow learn to stop being a defensive, reactive, self-enclosed jerk,” all the way through to Sense & Sensibility, which is about finding a partner who can spur you towards becoming a better person: “less selfish, more aware, kinder, more considerate.” It was almost enough to make me think I haven’t really been missing out on much by not reading Austen after all, if I was just going to receive 200-year-old moral instruction.

[Then the fun bits kicked in!...]

I have a confession to make: Although I've seen several of the film adaptations, I've never actually read a Jane Austen novel (hey, Ron, check out our Jane's World series and try an Austen on for size!). So I'm taking it on faith that Mary Robinette Kowal's Shades of Milk and Honey, one of the six books on this year's Nebula “Best Novel” shortlist, is (to quote the flap copy) “precisely the sort of tale we would expect from Jane Austen . . . if she lived in a world where magic worked.” On the other hand, I have read a ton of Patrick O'Brian, so I can tell you that the voice of Kowal's narration, and her character's dialogue, does feel like an authentic simulation of an early 19th-century prose style with just enough goosing for modern readers.

It's also a fine example of a romance novel where the romance progresses largely by deflection. And I'm not talking about the magic.

[Wait, you're not?!? Color us intrigued!...]

I started looking at this year's nominees for the Best Novel Nebula through a romance reader's perspective with M.K. Hobson's The Native Star, which turned out to be a classic “opposites attract” story in an fantasy alternate history setting. The next book on my list, N. K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, isn't strictly speaking a romance, although it is about a heroine who achieves a personal awakening that allows her to come into her full identity, and that awakening is provoked by an emotionally and physically intimate relationship. Additionally, there are aspects of the story that come close to erotic suspense—though for relatively tame values of “erotic”—with a high fantasy twist. Yeine, the novel's narrator, addresses those themes early on:

Consider: An immensely powerful being is yours to command. He must obey your every whim. Wouldn't the temptation to diminish him, to humble him and make yourself feel powerful by doing so, be almost irresistible?

'I think it would be.'

'Yes, it definitely would be.'

[Yes! A hundred thousand times yes!...]

The first thing I noticed about the “Best Novel” finalists for this year's Nebula Awards was that five of the six nominees were women writers—and I wasn't seeing any hint of backlash from the science fiction and fantasy community, like I had among literary fiction insiders in response to the 2004 National Book Award shortlist. The next thing I noticed was that several of the titles appeared to be paranormal romance—in the broadest sense of the term, that is: a romance novel with a significant fantasy element. What's up with that, I wondered, and set about reading some of those nominated novels, beginning with M.K. Hobson's The Native Star.

Hobson's debut novel is full-on romance in the “opposites attract” mode. The heroine, Emily Edwards, is a witch in rural California who's already decided to cast a love spell on the town's richest bachelor so she can provide for her financially struggling adoptive father. But “she was no cheat,” Hobson emphasizes; “she'd take on the job of being a pleasant and loyal wife just as she'd taken on Pap's magical work.” The spell backfires, but not without attracting the notice of Dreadnought Stanton, a smug warlock from the Mirabilis Institute of the Credomantic Arts who's been sent out to proselytize about the benefits of modern magical technique. The two wind up investigating a report of  trouble up in the mountains; as Dreadnought tells Emily, “I can't let a female with such dangerously antique notions about magic . . . face a pack of zombie miners alone.” For her troubles, Emily gets a strange, magic-sucking gem embedded in her hand, and Dreadnought offers to escort her to the Institutes's San Francisco office, where they hope to learn more about the “Native Star,” as the jewel is called, and whether it can be removed.

[On the road again . . .]