Small rant ahead.
Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with them, but I’m starting to hate the concept of the love triangle used in literature, especially young adult novels.
In the most popular young adult novels on shelves today, it seems like a love triangle is obligatory—Twilight, The Hunger Games, The Mortal Instruments, etc.—if you want your YA SF book to get made into a movie, you’d better put in a love triangle. The last blockbuster YA series I can think of that avoided this was Harry Potter, which was incidentally the last YA SF series I thought was really cool.
Personally, I blame Twilight (of course, I blame Twilight for a lot of things). Do you ever notice how it’s usually a female protagonist who gets saddled with the two schmoes she can’t choose between? A male main character can ride off into the sunset a hero without a girl and be just fine. If he gets the girl, that’s just a bonus. But a female protagonist who doesn’t end up attached to a boy when the action is over is deemed… I don’t know, incomplete?
Just once, I want to read an awesome book about a teenage girl who kicks ass and fights aliens or something and who notably doesn’t find twoo wuv in the process… and turns out perfectly okay with it.
