Right. I'm completely okay with reading about the differing agendas if I feel it's organic to the character. I think Fire had an okay reason to not want children, but I felt like in Graceling, the main character was irrational about it. She fell in love with someone to whom marriage was very very important. It felt like a cop out when he was kind of like 'oh, yeah, okay, you're right, it's suddenly not important anymore', and the fact that she never even CONSIDERED compromising to understand his point of view. Dunno. Just bothered me a lot... felt like the character was just programmed to be that way, instead of actually BEING that way for a reason.

I'm ALL for the strong female hero, I just think in Graceling (again, not as much in Fire), the men were all bumbling idiots to varying degrees. I like the men to at least be respectable, even if they are being saved by awesome heroine.