Quote:
Originally Posted by queentess
I've read two of the Luna titles. They were Harlequin "romance" with a teeny bit of bad sci-fi/fantasy wrapped around it. But hey, now I know to stay away from Luna!
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I don't read a lot of fantasy. But I'd say you might want to at least give them a quick look, if they cover a topic you normally enjoy.
Michelle Sagara (West) has an urban fantasy series under the LUNA imprint, and there's almost no romance in it. In some ways, I see it as a cross between "regular" fantasy and urban fantasy - the setting reminds me of the typical "medieval" tone that a lot of fantasies have (swords, horses, ladies in long gowns, etc.) It's just different enough that I really like it.
I've also liked at least one of the Maria V. Snyder series from LUNA and didn't feel it was romance 'dressed loosely in fantasy'.
But, I do enjoy romance, so I've even liked the Robin Owens series' from LUNA, and they've definitely included romances as an important part of the story.
I've probably named 90% of the LUNA books I've read in this post - like I said, fantasy isn't my first choice of genres.
I think LUNA suffers from what other Harlequin "non-romance" lines suffer from - people expect it to have romance because HQN owns it. Books don't sell well because the romance readers complain there isn't enough romance, most x-genre readers ignore them because they assume they're only romance.
So HQN slides to the safer side and tends to include more books that please the romance readers, which makes it less likely that x-genre readers will touch them....and so on.
x-genre = they have at least a couple non-romance lines, but have had others that didn't do well and were cancelled (LUNA, MIRA - ongoing, Bombshell - cancelled)