Sex in books

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I'm a big fan of sex, no question. But while I was reading Jack Whyte's "Dream of Eagles" series, I felt that the sex was gratuitous and unnecessary to the plot. It looked to me like he was aiming for the Harlequin audience when he wrote those segments.

In any event, when is there too much? Give some examples of books where you felt the sex as described was important to the plot and some examples of when it was just there to titillate the readers.

 

The Happy Hooker

Both important to the plot and there to titillate the readers.

 

It's never so important that it absolutely needs to be there. It's only ever so important as not to stand out too much.

 

Sex was absolutely vital to Kushiel's Dart; the book would've been weaker without it. But then, it's my understanding that the author deliberately set out to construct a book in which sexuality was an integral element, without being gratuitious. I think she succeeded.

On the other hand, there's Laurell Hamilton. Dear God, that woman needs to stop writing. Or, more accurately, people need to stop buying her damn books.

 

Most fantasy-adventure that I read has very little sex. In fact, it seems as if there is a degree of sexual repression within the genre. Writers I'm currently reading include: Robin Hobb, Tad Williams, Steven Erikson, Greg Keyes, Raymond Fiest and Glen Cook - Scant little here. I have not read any of the vampire genre, which is a whole other matter, and much like the original, is probably steeped heavily in either implied or explicit sexual content.

Yet, actually it's quite odd that there isn't more sex in the fantasy-adventure genre. There are basically two streams of literary traditions that inform most modern fantasy-adventure: The Norse, Anglo-Saxon traditions, which informed most of Tolkien's stuff, and the Arthurian tradition, which flowed directly from the High Middle Ages, with it's twin obsessions of chivalry and courtly love.

It would seem that the Arthurian stream has fallen out of favor with most modern writers of the genre. Chaucer's Wife of Bath, and her tale, are good examples of the sexual content used in the literature of the High Middle Ages itself, and Chaucer is informed by de Troyes and Marie de France as much as he is by Boccaccio, his contemprary, in his formulation of the "Good Wife" and her tale - not withstanding his placement of the Knight's Tale and the Miller's Tale side-by-side. It would seem that sex is as much a motivation with the "chivaric knights" of Arthur's Court, as much as their search for the Holy Grail. Of course, these two threads - or "quests" - were blended together in Brown's The Da Vinci Code with a varied degree of success.

But then, we could still go back to Ovid (The Art of Love) and his influence on the Art and Literature of the Middle Ages, with its elevation - for the first time in history - of the "quest" for the feminine and the desire for romatic, sexual love - both pure and adulterous. I could go on exploring just how powerful a force sexual love is in the Middle Ages and the Reniassance (we still have not touched on John Donne, Robert Herrick, Richard lovelace and the early works of Andrew Marvell) but I'm getting a bit carried away here...sorry....

 

If the sex is underemphasised to the point that you didn't realise it happened and yet it becomes vital to the plot later - I think it's safe to say that some more time could have been spent on it *cough*TheDiamondAge*cough*.

 

Sounds really uncomfortable.

 

try reading George R R martin's "a song of ice and fire" series, it has a fair amount of sex, some of it quite importent to make the story work and some quite importent to make a character work.

Ken Follets "pillars of the earth" had some sex to, it often helped flesh out chaacters.

the first Dragonlance books had some sex in it.

Colleen McCullough's the roman family has a fair amount of it, again as a plot device and to tell us something about the character.

I think a well written sex scene can be used to tell alot about a Characters, and be a good plot device, I cant recall any book where i sad reading a sex scene and felt there was really no point in telling me as a reader about it.

 

I don't think that it belongs to this discussion, but as the material in fantasy books seem so slim I think I'll contribute all the same.

In the series "The Clan Of the Cave Bears", there appears a lot of sex. It's done very tasteful, and both willing as well as unwilling is described.

 

Regarding Martin - I read the first book and about half the second, which I never finished. IMO, SoF&I is just not that good. To be honest, I don't recall much about them - same goes for the early (or any) Dragonlace books.

As far as historical fiction is concerned, there's usaully a lot of rape, which is not really "sex" but violence, it's almost anti-sexual. Pillars of the Earth is a pretty good example of that. Iirc, most of the sexual content was attached to the overall violent tone of the story. Since we are on historical fiction, Shogun had a lot of sexual content, which was used fairly well, to an even greater extent than the First Man in Rome. Again, most historical fiction usually treats sex as another, almost casual, form of violence.

Lunne89 - I've heard that the "Cave Bear" books are really good, but I've never gotten around to them. Someday....

DR - The topic was sex in books, not ON books. Geesh...

[ August 03, 2007, 16:53: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

The sex in Robin Hobbs' books is very important as it completely shifts the relationships between some of the characters. Such as....

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Fitz/Molly, Fitz/Starling, Fitz/Jenna, Althea/Brashen, Kennit/Etta. All of those relationships would be immensely different without the sex.

 

Hobb's Soldier Son books - at least so far - have had a few moments of real sexual content, the same with Keyes. There is some sexual tension between Anne Dare and her sidekick, Cazio. But sexual desire is not really a part of the story, nor is it a motivation - except maybe for Cazio - for most of the characters. My larger point was, given the literary traditions from which fantasy is drawn, one would expect it to play a much larger role. Yet, it doesn't, which seems rather odd.

 

you should give martin a second change, the political parts of the books are very good, but i guess we have different taste, as i picked up the the first book and could hardly leave it, pillars of the earth diffinently contained mainly rape, thats true, but it did also contain some actual sex. the clan of the cave bear and the following books in the children of earth (or whatever the series is called in english) does treat sex both forced and willingly rather well, allthough come to think of it, in the follow up book to clan of the cave bear i got a bid tired of hearing about Ayla's sexlife.

 

I grew tired with Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, partly because of the sex in them. Every book had about 2 sex scenes which didn;t add much at all to the stories. They were just there to be tehre, it seemed.

 

You know, Daie, that's close to how I felt -- I kind of got the feeling that Goodkind was projecting some pretty nasty S&M fantasies in his books! It got tiresome and somewhat nauseating.

 

Ah, the mark of a poor writer. I've heard his books are not very good.

 

His books are contemptible, only partly because he's a poor written. The 'morality' he advocates in his books is, if such a thing is possible, a more repugnant version of Ayn Rand's objectivism.

At any rate, for an exhaustive and humorous dissection of his 'work', click here.

 

Aw man, Terry Goodkind, I am almost tempted by his latest books just to see how low he can go.

 

I will conceed that Goodkind's books are mostly rubbish and that the sex scenes have dragged them down but they are nothing compared to Laurell Hamilton. Hamilton's decent from being a pretty good author to dumping out absolute dreck consisting of nothing but sex scenes is like watching a train wreck.

I will throw another name into the ring for bad and pointless sex scenes - John Ringo. The man can write pretty entertaining pulp military sci-fi but the minute he starts vearing off into a sex scene you know that you should skip forward 30 pages or so.