SBD -- Brotherly love

[jmc_bks]

Today's Smart Bitches Day topic is brotherly love. I don't mean that as a metaphor for M/M romance or as a cute way to describe sibling sex (Lora Leigh, anyone?), but the real thing.

I'm rereading Bujold's Paladin of Souls. Like The Curse of Chalion, I notice something new every time I read PoS; this time, it is the relationship between Ferda and Foix dy Gura. They first appear in TCoC. Ferda is a placid, pragmatic young man, horse-obsessed. Foix is curious and wants to know, well, everything. In PoS, they are that and a bit more. Neither is the protagonist of the tale, although each plays an important role. Foix gets slightly more page time, I think. Neither is particularly verbose, in fact there are only a handful of scenes in which they both speak. But LMB shows that they irritate each other, like any siblings, and also that they love each other immensely. Ferda, the elder, worries about Foix and his recovery from an injury. Foix appreciates his brother, but also chafes a little bit. But when Foix is demon-ridden, Ferda is frantically worried about him. And when they are separated by an enemy raiding party, both of them fret. They are even both attracted to the same woman, but LMB doesn't demonize one in order to make the choice simpler for the lady in question.

Romance tends to focus on the sister relationship more that the fraternal one -- lots of series based on a circle of women friends. The only straight romance author I can think of who focuses largely (although not exclusively) on male relationships is Nora Roberts in her Quinn brothers' tetralogy. I'm hard pressed to think of another author who has written about brother relationships.

Elizabethe Lowell? Maybe. Can't think of anyone else. Can you?

Comments

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

Elizabeth Lowell's "Only..." series focuses on male friends, although not actual blood brothers. Suzanne Brockmann, of course, links her stories through the SEALs who certainly say often enough that they're "brothers." Stephanie Laurens' Cynster series is mostly about the men. Jo Beverley's series are mostly linked by their men, although not brothers, again. J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood--again not blood.

Are you talking real blood relation? Then the Quinn series (that I ADORE, although I think the last book jumped the shark a bit) doesn't count, even though it has to. If it counts, then I think the others do, too. But that's me. ::shrug::

Not necessarily blood relations

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

My original example was of blood brothers, but my question isn't limited to that. The Quinns qualified in my mind because they grew into being a family. For Lowell, I was thinking of the Donovans/jewel series, hadn't thought of the Only series.

I like Brockmann's books and her heroes and think of them as having a bond of sorts, but see them more as comrades than as brothers. I must've totally had a brain fart while writing my entry, because Ward, Laurens and Beverley never crossed my mind. Clearly the Cynsters, the Rogues and the members of the Black Dagger Brotherhood would do anything for each other. But I don't get the same feeling of intimacy, I guess, for lack of a better word, in their relationships as I do from the Quinns or the dy Guras. Maybe it is more a matter of details. I don't doubt that Rothgar is protective of Cyn, but have a hard time imagining him doing the little everyday things, like take care of him when he is ill. The brotherly bond seems more macho in their cases. Does that make sense?

Perhaps I need to go back and rethink my definition of "brotherhood."

Re: Not necessarily blood relations

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

Well, with Ward, Phury and Zsadist *are* brothers, and I still don't get that feeling--but then, they didn't grow up together. I think part of it is that the two men in the brother bond you originally talked about are not main characters of their books (?). I think that makes a difference. I have to say, I love it when the authors follow male bonds rather than female, but then, I'm interested in the men, not the women.

[eackerman.livejournal.com]

I think some of the best brother/sister romance novels are found in Mary Balogh's "Slightly" series. The Bedwyns are close, yet squabble as siblings do. The relationship between Wulfric and his younger siblings is complex, and while each finds love in his or her individual novel, that love also brings them closer to their eldest brother until he gets his own novel at the end (Slightly Dangerous).

Kate Elliott does a wonderful job with brother/sister relationships in JARAN (Or as a friend terms it, "I married Attila the Hun"). The nomadic society where the heroine finds herself in these SF novels values the sibling relationship even over that of lovers, and considers it the truest male/female relationship--you can leave your lover, and you're likely to outlive your father, but your brother is the one who knows you best and will know you the longest.

It's an interesting take on a seldom explored relationship.

You just reminded me!

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

The cover article for this week's edition of Time magazine is about how we are shaped by our siblings, even more than our parents. The jist of the article was that psychologists and sociologists have historically focused on the parent-child relationship and sexual relationships, but are beginning to pay more attention to sibling relationships and how they shape personal growth and influence sexual and social relationships. Oh, oh, oh, wish I had a copy at hand. I think one of the opening lines of the article is about how our siblings ultimately are the people with whom we spend most of our lives; our parents will predecease us and our lovers/spouses came later (usually) to our lives, but our siblings are our lifelong companions.

[jperceval.livejournal.com]

My offering is MJP's Fallen Angels series. The men aren't brothers (well, Michael and Stephen Kenyon are, but not the others), but rather schoolmates who banded together and formed their own family away from their cold aristocratic backgrounds.

This was one of the reasons I loved the series so much. So many authors do trilogies and series with sisters or females at the center, and this was the first I ever encountered that followed the men.

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought of the Fallen Angels at all. I liked a couple of the books, but didn't read them as a series. Instead, I read Angel Rogue and Thunder and Roses, and at other points I read Michael's story. I never finished Lucien's story or Rafe's, I think. Maybe it's time to check them out again :)