6 days ago
The rise of romantasy: Escapist books become more popular as real-world challenges loom
You're all alone. Abandoned, scared and defenceless. Then a tall, dark, handsome and magical stranger enters – and you're swept up in an exciting adventure. Swept up, that is, until you close the pages of the
book
before you.
Romantasy – a blend of romance and fantasy – is the term that has been given to the rapidly rising literary genre that is taking over bookshelves here and abroad. Authors including Sarah J Maas and Fourth Wing writer
Rebecca Yarros
are queens of the genre, netting sales in the millions across the globe – Yarros's new novel Onyx Storm sold 2.7 million copies in its first week of sales in January – but
Irish
authors are also part of the literary trend, with names such as Catherine Doyle,
Sarah Rees Brennan
and Jessica Thorne sealing deals for romantasy novels with international publishing houses.
In romantasy fiction, human heroines are often plunged into fantastical realms, where faeries, vampires and magical beings rule, and love blossoms between unlikely characters and in thrilling circumstances. Often, the suitor is older or immortal, while the usually very young heroine tends to be capable (though they may not know it), beautiful (though they may not realise it), and forced to take on death-defying challenges (almost always).
What's the appeal of such fiction for readers? 'It's wish fulfilment,' says Mila Taylor (37) a
Dublin
-based librarian who hosts the Wisteria romantasy book club in Dundrum Library. 'It's living a greater, better, more exciting life. Another thing you see in a lot of romantasy books is not only romance, but a sense of friendship, loyalty and community.'
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'It's taking off, even among people who don't read,' says Nikki Shields (37) a corporate marketer who is a member of the Wisteria book club. 'Lots of people are getting into it. Romantasy is its own world. It follows normal life – it's somewhat realistic – but there's a magical element. There are different elements of folklore, it manages to combine old worlds and new worlds without it seeming ridiculous.'
Nikki Shields: 'Romantasy is somewhat realistic but there's a magical element.' Photograph Nick Bradshaw
With a large following among female readers in their 20s through to their 40s, romantasy also appeals to teenagers who may have come to the genre through their enjoyment of young adult novels such as Twilight by Stephenie Meyer or Leah Bardugo's Shadow and Bone fantasy series.
'Most of my reading right now is in the romantasy genre,' says Chloe Horgan (16), from Dublin. 'It's very popular with people my age. The two genres mixed together add layers to the story, plus most of the time the stories tend to be very easy to read.'
Around the country, bookshops are creating new sections devoted to the romantasy genre. In the Dubray bookshop in Rathmines, Dublin, bookseller Molly O'Neill shows me to their section devoted to romantasy and fantasy fiction. 'When I'm in meetings on Zoom with representatives from publishers and they're trying to sell us the books for three months from now, they are saying the word romantasy a lot,' O'Neill says. 'I'm hearing it more and more, especially in young adult fiction and fantasy.'
The romantasy section of the Eason bookshop on O'Connell Street, Dublin
As a fan of romantasy herself, how did she get into the genre? 'I've always read fantasy,' she says. 'My sister had some of the
Sarah J Maas
books so I started reading them. Sarah J Maas isn't exactly high literature but I will read all of her. The Cruel Prince by Holly Black is another classic in the genre. It's quintessential romantasy.'
We pause by a shelf featuring a new romantasy bestseller from Galway author Catherine Doyle entitled The Dagger and the Flame. 'There's a group of thieves and a group of assassins and it's a Romeo and Juliet-type story,' O'Neill says, describing 17-year-old heroine Seraphine and her love interest Ransom, heir to the Order of Daggers.
What did she think of the plot? 'I wouldn't forgive him for some of the stuff he does. The male characters in romantasy tend to be very tortured. It's a grumpy sunshine kind of thing, but the girls are always the sunshine and the man is always the grumpy.'
Catherine Doyle, Galway author of romantasy bestseller The Dagger and the Flame
Grumpy sunshine? That's a BookTok term, referring to a love story where one character is dark and brooding, and the other cheerily optimistic. It's part of a shorthand often used online on Reddit, Goodreads and StoryGraph alongside others that are sometimes easy to understand ('love triangle'), and sometimes require a certain leap of the imagination ('reverse harem' is where the woman character has many male lovers).
For younger readers in particular,
BookTok
and Bookstagram – the book-loving corner of Instagram – play a large role in driving sales and sparking interest. Books are given 'spice' ratings online to indicate how much explicit sexual content is in them. On BookTok, popular posters will merrily spend whole videos unpacking the amount of 'spice' in romantasy novels.
For readers new to the genre, the surprise may lie in discovering how conservative many of the offerings actually are. Yes, it's true there are plenty of longing looks cast in A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas, but her human heroine Feyre Archeron (19) spends most of the first novel in the series chastely mooning over the 'muscled midriff' of her masked suitor Tamlin, a High Fae and High Lord of the Spring Court who can transform into a beast.
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From the archive: Sarah J Maas: 'Just because you have great hair doesn't mean you can't kick ass'
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In The Cruel Prince by Holly Black, a romantasy that follows the adventures of Jude who is brought up in the faerie world after her human parents are murdered, the pace of the action would make Jane Austen look almost racy. Or as one Reddit user puts it: 'it's low/almost no spice.'
Many romantasy novels are grounded under the wider category heading of young adult fiction, and many romantasy authors, like Catherine Doyle, started off writing for young adults.
Doyle began writing romantasy during Covid, when she penned a trilogy with her sister-in-law Katherine Webber called Twin Crowns. 'It's about a witch and a princess separated at birth. We wrote it for the love of the genre and as a bright spot during the pandemic. It turns out we were tapping into something that publishers were crying out for. We were very fortunate to sell Twin Crowns to 20 different foreign publishers at a time when everyone was looking for light, escapist fantasy.'
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Catherine Doyle: 'Death and loss do exist in the world of children, so I never try to shy away from them'
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In Doyle's opinion, the reason the romantasy genre has become so successful is because it plays off classic fairytale tropes readers have grown up loving. 'Even as adult readers so many of us never lose that grá for whimsical, childlike concepts,' Doyle says. 'Magic, adventure and enchantment continue to appeal, romantasy just makes them more accessible to us.'
Escapist literature may also be becoming more popular as real-world challenges – from job insecurities to the realities of emigration or housing issues – loom for a new generation of readers. Reality biting? Burying your head in a romantasy novel might seem a solid option.
When Mila Taylor first arrived in Ireland in the early 2000s from Poland with her family, fiction was an important refuge for her as a lonely teenager struggling to find her way.
Librarian Mila Taylor, founder of the Wisteria book club at Dundrum Library. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw
'I joined fifth year in Tullow Community School in Carlow. It was a huge adjustment because I was one of the few non-Irish people there,' she says. 'I found my group of people in the migrant group mostly and we all loved fantasy. I went on to university, I started meeting people, and going to book clubs. Then I met my wife, who is a writer. And an opening came up in the council in the library section so I moved: I did the degree and became a librarian.'
Now a librarian with Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, Taylor founded the Wisteria book club in March in part because she wanted to nurture readers who may crave the community that books can offer. She is protective of the romantasy genre, as she believes it often comes in for unfair criticism from highbrow readers who dismiss it as 'popcorn fiction' without ever bothering to read it. As with women's literature in the 1990s, there's a sense that women are being scorned for their reading tastes. This, she says, is unfair.
'Fiction helps you develop empathy,' she says. 'It helps you look at things from a different point of view. Romantasy has that extra something to it that makes it more wish fulfilment, but also fun. It's already becoming mainstream and hopefully more accepted.'
Nikki Shields believes the genre is ephemeral but enjoyable, and maybe that's the point. 'I wouldn't be reading them the whole time,' she says. 'I don't like that they all blend into one, to a degree. I find some of them are quite lazy in their writing and ideation because they're just trying to tap into something that's a popular scene. But I enjoy reading them while I'm reading them. They're otherworldly.'
Perhaps the genre's very simplicity is also its strength: it has the capacity to bind readers together and build community. In the United States, fans in their thousands attend literary gatherings to have a chance to be close to romantasy stars like Yarros and Maas. Just as with Twilight and Harry Potter, there are midnight release parties for books and costumes for Halloween based on iconic characters such as Feyre Archeron. For fans of the genre, these literary gatherings and parties are invaluable in a world where so many are isolated online.
For Taylor, her love of romantasy and fantasy fiction has given her both a career and a community. Having had a tough start in Ireland in the 2000s, is she in a good place in life now? 'I'm in a very happy place,' she says. 'A love of stories and books is what got me here.'
