not four guys who are buddies and one of them has a girlfriend.

There's an ex-girlfriend too. She's evil and kills the girlfriend. Then she herself is killed. So by the end of the book? NSM with the women messing up the menage a quatre.

Older definitions of "romance" re: books seems to tend to something more adventurous than stories about everyday life. Such as when people talk about living in a more "romantic" era. I think it's a somewhat more intellectually acceptable term than melodrama.

So nice I said it twice.

I think it's a somewhat more intellectually acceptable term than melodrama.

It's specifically related to the medieval Romance, which was a tale of knightly adventure and magic and thwarted love. Orlando Furioso being the prime example. It doesn't really have much to do with melodrama as a genre, though medieval Romances were often melodramatic.

These long prose narratives were the equivalent of popular fiction in their time. It is why novels are called "Roman" in France to this day.

It is this sense of "Romance" which Hawthorne alludes to in The Scarlet Letter - by which he meant, "not bound by strict realism."

Yeah, Dumas' female characters are not what I'd call interesting, complex heroines. The adventure aspect is fun enough, but as romances? NSM.

I must have tried to read Portrait of a Lady 15 billion times.

I love Portrait of a Lady despite the violent urge to kill a good proportion of its characters every time I read it. I haven't had much success with the rest of James' longer work though. I like his shorter pieces much better-- Turn of the Screw, Washington Square, The Spoils of Poynton, etc. (Although not Daisy Miller.) Kind of difficult to consider them particularly romantic though, although they deal with the subject of romance most of the time. Hmmm.

I attempted the first Lymond book years ago and never got past the first chapter.

Suela has an icon that says "The first 80 pages of my fandom are really damned confusing." Sums it up.

Either give Lymond another try, or go for King Hereafter, which is a standalone and magnificent.

I think King Hereafter, prose-wise, is by far Dunnett's most difficult. I also found it less, well, romantic, in nearly every meaning of the word. Brilliant, yes. Accessible? By no means.

Susan, I would suggest giving Game of Kings one more try; if that doesn't work, skip forward to Disorderly Knights, which moves faster and gets into the uber-plot more quickly as well. Also, the first section of that novel has one of my all-time favorite set-pieces. Heh.

Once you've settled into the universe, it's not as hard to go backwards and see what Lymond was up to beforehand. I wouldn't recommend starting with any of the others, though: the later books are too arc-dependent, and Queen's Play is kind of problematic (I find).

Nutty, I read Ivanhoe as a kid, and the Three Musketeers, and yeah, found them romantic only in the swashbuckling sense, not in the the, um, investing-in-the-relationship sense. Dunnett does both of those for me; not a lot of other novels do.

Betsy, when does Captain Alatriste get released in the US? And did you see the link to the promo shot on LJ?

Betsy, when does Captain Alatriste get released in the US?

There's a movie? Huh. I hadn't heard. Then again, the movie of The Fencing Master was pretty terrible.

Re: the Musketeers, I was always invested in Milady. Take that as you will.

There's a movie? Huh. I hadn't heard.

Viggo.