Pacing

I like books that unfold leisurely. That is not to say, borrrring, but where words, emotions, setting, nuances are meant to be chewed upon and savored by the reader.

By the same token, I'm not enamored of stories where I'm galloping after the author and her story, my sides heaving with effort. Nothing brings on the famous Regency ennui like these so-called fast-paced novels. Flooding me with sensory overload doesn't snag my attention; I get tired. (*koff*DanBrown*koff*) By extension, I'm not fond of a rush towards the climax (hur!) either.

For illustration purposes, I'm going to use two novels by Linda Lael Miller, an author whose westerns, on average, I adore. I will state at the outset, I'm not an academic scholar, nor a reviewer, nor do I claim to have an English degree pedigree. My "expertise" on western history and ways of life are gleaned from novels by LLM and Jodi Thomas (honorable mentions to debuts by Jo Goodman and Kaki Warner). So my comments here are as a lay reader.

The books are: The Man from Stone Creek (TMFSC) and McKettricks of Texas: Tate (MOTT). The former's pace is galloping, the latter's is trotting; neither is plodding. (For comparison purposes, a P.D. James novel would be a walking pace.)

Sam O'Ballivan and Maddie Chancelor are the protagonists in TMFSC and Tate McKettrick and Libby Remington are the main characters of MOTT. TMFSC is a historical, MOTT Sam's an Arizona Ranger working undercover in Maddie's town as a schoolteacher. Libby's runs a tea shop in the town near McKettrick huge ranch. Sam has wealth, but that's unknown to Maddie. Tate's wealth isn't in question. Every character has past emotional baggage—that's the heartbeat of a rippin' good yarn.

TMFSC jumps from tragedy to death to destruction to heartrending loss with virtually non-existent sexual tension and nary a kiss till the hero and heroine make hasty love in the aftermath of the climactic tragedy. MOTT, gently but inexorably, draws the hero and heroine together like a loom holding the warp threads of backstory and joint history in tension and interweaving the weft threads of current emotions and secondary characters in them.

In TMFSC, after that first love scene, everything unfolds magically and quickly into a new, fancy two-story house with a wraparound porch, a whole new life in a new town, new careers, children from the tragedies settled in comfortably, and every character still alive towards the end of the story situated happily. In MOTT, the loving happens as an inevitable escalation of the tension and takes the story to a deeper, more intense, and more introspective level. The h/h do rethink career options but not so that the HEA is achievable, but more as an organic growth to their characterization.

Neither TMFSC nor MOTT are stories with only the two central characters; their host of secondary characters do play integral roles there. But the pacing is what makes the difference. In MOTT, it feels like every character has breathing room to discover himself and reveal herself to the reader. In TMFSC, it feels like the characters are so busy saving themselves and so involved in their own concerns that they have no time for the reader to get to know them.

For full disclosure purposes: I had to stop and start TMFSC four times; I read MOTT in one sitting. I persevered with TMFSC, because I could not believe that an LLM novel could give me this much trouble. There wasn't anything wildly shocking or hateful about it. That is what got me thinking about why I liked one and not the other.

Have you read these two novels? What is your take on their pacing? Have a favorite author and/or book of western romances to recommend? Go ahead. I'm soliciting.