Yeah, in retrospect, if you're totally new to Valdemar then it's like, huh, what? Why'd she do that? But he was a minor side character mentioned in a previous book in the series, and it was already established that he died defending the country. And when she wrote his backstory, she just "decided to make him gay".
But then she also kills lots of characters, not just the gay one. I have a real love-hate relationship with this woman's books, lol.
I have a love-hate relationship with fantasy. I like alternate worlds and adventure but I hate having random rape or half the cast die off in horrible ways.
I know; if it's not one, it's the other. Which, hey, by the way, there's a (nongraphic, thnkfully) rape scene in the third book. I seem to have deliberately forgotten it until now. -_-
Oh god, I hear you. Twice now I've gotten recommendations from friends only to be gobsmacked with rape scenes. Sometimes it seems like half the fantasy books with female leads follow this weird formula where the lead is raped, and for the rest of the book she's dealing with it (and always the same way - first by curling up into the fetal position and often needing to be tended to by someone else/an animal companion, possibly for weeks or even months on end, then by running off to a country or town she's never been to, assuming a new identity, and learning to live and love again - and then she goes back home), only it's totally fantasy because it's in a pseudo-medieval world and there's magic and Gypsies and curses. And then I feel really depressed afterward because, well, rape is an incredibly depressing subject, and the heroine never sets the rapist on fire or sinks his country into the ocean like I think she should.
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But then she also kills lots of characters, not just the gay one. I have a real love-hate relationship with this woman's books, lol.
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