@Zeteni said in A Pale Moon Reverie Vol. 1 Discussion:
@Pieta I don't tend to read series where that's the case so I'm curious how Sari compares to other female leads in those situations. While accounting for her working relationship with Eid I found she did a good job expressing her desire to maintain a distance from him. If not to him directly then at least to us, the readers. This is why I wasn't really entertaining the idea that the story was trying to present him as a problematic suitor.
It's not that I thought he had any chance with Sari, but it was her disinterest that disqualified him in my eyes, not his behaviour, despite being way over the line in many many ways. After all I've seen too many times that being way over the line might not be enough for an author either.
The genre of romance as a whole tends to have an unhealthy amount of "No means Not Yet" or "No means Pursue Me Harder". Which, I guess, brings us to the question of how other female leads might deal with these situations - and the answer is often that it doesn't matter, because "women don't actually mean what they say" is also something that appears way too often.
As you can probably tell I have something of a love/hate relationship with the entire field of romance. (:
The worst are those with interesting women who draw me in, only for the men to disgust me on arrival with no concept of consent. Reverie is absolutely golden in that regard.
Also I finished my review at about 1100 words: https://www.reddit.com/r/LightNovels/comments/13otadt/rt_a_pale_moon_reverie_fantasy_romance/. It was incredibly difficult because so many of the things I really wanted to discuss hinge on knowing the big reveal at the end of the first story. Obviously spoiling that is a no go.
Nicely said. And I agree, not wanting to spoil anything makes it pretty hard to discuss the books.