That’s what makes it a trope. Why aren’t there more sexualized female mentors for male heroes? Why aren’t there more asexualized male OR female mentors for female heroes?

I hate that we have been conditioned to expect these things and often don’t recognize that we’re just reacting to conditioning. Personally, I find it refreshing when there isn’t a love triangle in a YA novel.

And I’m totally with Saundra on the Astrid/destiny thing. Me, too!

(And finally, yes, there’s no dangerous, mysterious Gale. Sorry.)

But I can contribute my reason for usually liking the “sardonic older-but-sexy types.” For me, it’s all about the power – because power is sexy. ;D [Age is irrelevant, actually I prefer not older.]

I’ve never seen myself as powerful or identified with powerful heroines so that’s probably a factor in my attraction to powerful (rather than normal) literary males. Readers who can identify with a powerful heroine might be less power-hungry in their choice of hero. For me at least, the attraction of “stronger” is about acquisition of power rather than subservience. If you have no power, you ally with power.

This is an interesting topic!

Anyway, my completely unsolicited/uninformed advice is, if you want Giovanni to trump sexy power make him clever, because clever is very sexy.

I’m a huge Giovanni fan because he is normal and I do like normal boys (of course it always helps if they are super hot and speak Italian too) and this all kind of set my mind to rest about worries I had for Giovanni in Ascendant. Yay for normal.

And now I have to go and watch Labyrinth and David Bowie!

Two things stuck out to me from this excellent post:

1) Another reason Angel and Bucephalus are alike? Strange, pointy foreheads.

2) I would think that an Astrid/Bucephalus relationship (Ascephalus?) would work much better if, say, Astrid were descended from CATHERINE the Great rather than Alexander the Great.

Tasteless historical jokes aside, so much WORD to this post. The worst types of romances are when the characters aren’t on even footing at all. If one character is clearly superior to the other in everything, it’s a major turn-off. It reads like a bad 80s novel with “punishing” kisses and all that tripe. Yes, one partner can be more skilled at something than the other, but as long as they’re both bringing something to the table, so to speak, by the end of the story, it’s perfectly fine. I could rave about how Poe and Amy are one of my favorite book couples because of this, but you’ve heard that one from me. So I’ll just end by saying another great example of the relationships mentioned above would be my favorite Pierce couple, Daine and Numair.

(And just by checking Wikipedia, I found out she’s writing two Numair books. Excuse me while I go do a happy dance)