Its tension holds tight even while it ridicules conventions of the genre.

His body relaxed, as if only tension and pain had been holding his bones together.

I had not known, until then, how much tension my body held; even the bath had not assuaged it.

They held each other's gaze, tension held between them like a tight wire.

For a moment the tension between them held.

There was quiet, and a tension as if too many of those around her had held their breath for too long.

Anni just kept staring down, the tension holding her spine stiff.

Enough tension, perhaps, to hold the reader's attention for a chapter or two, but not an entire novel.

The slight tension between the poles holds them steady against the trunk.

The tension in Frost's body as he held me told me more clearly than any words that I wasn't the only one who would miss Galen.