Sibs

Hi guys, and welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. All month long, we’re talking about the extremely logical February topic of…. (you guessed it)… love! But We’re not just talking about romantic love. No, no, we’re taking this month to talk about the many different kinds of love, and dig a little deeper into why love is so central in every good story ever written.

Last week, we started off with the mushy one. The romantic one. The one you think of whenever somebody says “love story.” This week, let’s derail that a bit.

One of my favorite kinds of love stories, involves none other than…

Sibling Love

And maybe some rivalry, too. Because we siblings love each other while also simultaneously competing with each other. Why? Because we do. We don’t need a better reason than that.

You might not think of sibling love as a kind of love that could drive a story forward, but you’d be wrong. See, siblings have a bond that’s not easy to find among other people. Unrelated people. Random people. Friends. Even in other familial relationships. There’s just something special that unites siblings under a single banner, and it’s something that draws readers in, time and time again.

I’ll use one of my own books as an example for this. In Dwr: People in the Water, the only reason Malcolm and Maisie are leaving the plains is that Malcolm wants to find a better life for his sister. He’s her caretaker at this point in the story, sure, but mostly he’s her big brother and he just wants to look out for her. He wasn’t able to do that in the plains, and now he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.

They’re each other’s family—the only family they have left. And it unites them in a unique way, a way that’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t have a sibling.

Then there’s Freia and Emmett, from Cedwig: People in the Vines, the twins who couldn’t be more different, and yet their rivalry is what ends up pushing the story through several of its major plot points. Emmett wants to be the strong and logical leader of their family, but Freia was never going to need him that way. She loves her brother as a brother, but she could never look up to him as a father figure.

Two very different perspectives on sibling relationships, and yet both were primary draws within stories of their own.

It’s all boiling down to love. Malcolm made the decisions he did in Dwr because he loved his sister and wanted what was best for her. Emmet did the same, in Cedwig. So did Freia.

And you know what I love most, about writing this kind of love? It’s a love that innately knows, what the other person is going through. How? Because we share a unique bond with our siblings. We grew up together. We faced the world together, as children. And now we’re going to face it together as adults, because of a love that unites us.

Of course, the opposite can also be true, in many stories—and still be a fantastic driving force. Consider Rydrek and Loke from The Wraith and the Wielder (AC Schafer). They’re twins, and they’re always trying to one-up each other, but their relationship always boils down to how much they love each other. The events of the book follow all three siblings, Merrith and the twins, and their loving and loveless relationship that could bring the world down, if they let it.

Sibling love is one of the better and more fun versions of love, to play with in story. If you haven’t given it a go, I highly recommend it!

[love]

{Rani Divine}