The two best selling fiction works at Amazon in 2023 were Fourth Wing and Iron Flame both of which are–and I so don’t love this mashup–romantasy. Also in the top 25 was A Court of Thorn and Roses–that whole series sold a boatload. If you look at just the best-sellers in romance, romantasy ruled on many a site.
OK, just to be clear, romantasy is a fantasy with romance in it. Which is fantasy romance, right? I confess I’m not sure I know JUST what it is. The person who, for me, has described it the best is Sarah from Smart Bitches who wrote in The Washington Post:
I think I get it. It’s fantasy romance redefined by those who wish to sell more books. Cool. Maybe we need a new book type at AAR. Fantasy romance doesn’t cut it anymore.
We reviewed 22 fantasy romances romantasies (or is it romantasys?) in the past year. Four were DIKs: Fourth Wing, A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon, Starling House, and Divine Rivals. But, using Sarah’s definition, I think only Divine Rivals and Fourth Wing count. Starling House is urban fantasy and has absolutely no dragons–there are monsters!–and the world building is local, not galactic. So, not romantasy? Yes romantasy? Only the marketers know for sure.
What do you think? How do you define romantasy? Is it a new thing or just fantasy romance repackaged. And do you like it? Not? And if so, what are your favorites?
Question: I understood Fourth Wing and Iron Flame to be fiction. You have called them non-fiction (first sentence above). Are they fiction or non-fiction?
I think that must be a typo – they’re fiction.
Typo! Thank you for catching that. I’ve fixed it.
Wouldn’t it be fun if they were non-fiction? LOL
Oh, but they would have been SO MUCH BETTER if they’d been nonfiction!!
I dunno. That school is BAD NEWS. 😉
I like romance +.
Usually, because romance alone can be a bit repetitive or too much, and also, because I like romance with interesting people, people who do something beside romancing, like having a job, a passion, an adventure, a problem to solve.
I am indifferent to labels myself, I just try to figure out what you mean by the label, and go with it, whether fantasy romance, romantic fantasy, or a new creation. It will change again, like clockwork, in a couple of years, so why bother? Urban fantasy, gothic, alternative history, …
So, I like fantasy romance, urban fantasy romance, romantic suspense, crime &romance, I also like a romance about winegrowers, politicians, adventurers, queens, currently a few hockey players, a long time ago military persons,… just anything that adds an extra, a +, to person meets person plus love.
In the fantasy realm outstanding favorites, maybe not adhering strictly to the label, just broadly:
I love T. Kingfisher‘s Paladin series
I love R. Cooper, both her „suitable“ books (fantasy standalone in one universe“ and her Beings in Love (more urban fantasy with werewolves and dragons etc)
I recently reread Winter‘s Orbit by Everina Maxwell – still great
Alexandra Rowland A Taste of Gold & Iron -another reread getting better second time around
Abigail Kelly New Protectorate- wow! So creative in how she sees Elves, and Orcs – and really like her women
JL Breedlove‘s Alpha Female werewolf series is great, though more urban fantasy with romance (I also loved her Lois Breedlove series about 4 strong college professor women friends Second Chances – learned so much about college politics and US outside big cities)
Sharon Shinn and her Elemental Blessing series
Andrea K. Host Hunting (fantasy with romance)
Ilona Andrews’s Innkeeper
I could go on, but these were reads or rereads of the last 6-12 months.
I love the Paladin series! And a couple months ago during the holiday break read the preceeding Clocktaur duology. Also great and it was great seeing a story about people only mentioned in passing in the Paladin series.
Edited to add that I will have to check out these others! (though I didn’t love the last Sharon Shinn book; could have been me but it felt so slow).
I agree on the Shinn – I really enjoyed her standalone Shuddering City, but Whispering Wood was so slow I have still not finished it – I find her way to do YA good in general (I generally do not have the patience for YA), but in Jeweled Fire and in Whispering Wood there is just so much waffling and stubborn reality denying, typical for YA, so I like these two books much less.
But Shuddering City was very good!
I have not yet read Clocktaur, I really enjoyed Minor Mage and A Wizard’s Guide to defensive Baking – they are teenager / children adventures but with dark themes, so not at all children books, no romance, really, or very subtle, but so good. I do not like Horror, so I do not enjoy those of her books.
Eh, I think it’s just marketing people trying to rebrand something to sex it up and make it seem new. I can’t see that “Romantasy” is any different from “Fantasy Romance”. Any regular romance reader will recognise the difference between Fantasy Romance (the romance is an integral part of the story) and Fantasy with Romantic Elements (the romance is secondary to the plot). I’ve read both and enjoy both depending on my mood and how good the story is. Like Lieselotte, I tend to gravitate to “romance and” (fantasy, suspense, mystery etc.) because so much “basic” CR is repetitive.
I wonder if Romantasy includes both–like it’s fantasy but women’s fiction-ish. Does it have to end happily if its romantasy? Does the love story have to work out?
If it’s not, then wouldn’t His Dark Materials be romantasy?
I see it as one of those portmanteau couple names (like Brangelina or Bennifer) and nothing more – I don’t think the actual content in a fantasy romance is any different to the content in a romantasy – it’s just a stupid new name! And it wouldn’t work in any other sub-genre – “romanstery”? (romantic mystery) – “romansuspense” (might just about work but you might as well stick with romantic suspsense!) “romanscifi”? Nah. And if the name includes the word “romance” – which “romantasy” essentially does – then the story has to obey the rules of the genre and end with an HFN or HEA.
I’d class HDM as fantasy with romantic elements because it doesn’t obey those rules.
I can see a marketer loving romystery.
Not a very good marketeer IMO, but that seems to be par for the course these days.
The only “romantasy” I read on the regular is anything from Kati Wilde’s Deadlands series. I love those books (starting with THE MIDWINTER MAIL-ORDER BRIDE and now up to, I believe, seven books)—but I think that’s more because they were written by Wilde and less because I’m caught up in the magic/world-building/monsters elements of the stories.
I’m glad someone pointed out the ridiculous titles of so many fantasy books, “The ___ of ___ and ___. It has me cringing every time I read a title like that. Plus, it’s become so generic that none of the books stand out anymore.
Like Caz, I think that if the romance is vital to the story and not a side plot, then it should follow the romance rules of an HEA, whether it’s a fantasy romance, Sci-fi Rom, RS any other sub-genre of romance. I have a shelf on GR titled “romantic elements” for books where the realtionship is important but not a primary focus, and sometimes for books in a series that are very slow-burn, and the first book or two is still setting up the relationship. (C.S. Poe’s Momento Mori books, for example.)
I don’t have a shelf for romantasy, and I even though I also have an Urban Fantasy shelf, I tend to put all books with fantastical elements on the Fantasy shelf as well as any other shelf they align with (paranormal elements, paranormal romance, magic, urban fantasy). I like having the details. For example, Nazri Noor’s books go on Fantasy and urban fantasy, while JAK books which are often contemporary books with paranormal elements that aren’t fantasies or urban fantasy, go only on the paranormal elements shelf.
I’ve read a few romantic fantasy books in the past couple of years, mainly 4 books by H.L. Day (13 Kingdoms), Briarly by Astor Glenn Grey, A Rake of His Own (#5 in the Stariel series) by A.J. Lancaster and Magician by K.L. Noone. I’ve also read quite a few urban fantasies + romance.
I’ve watched the rise of romantasy with interest – I read across all genres so it’s fun to see it rise.
My favorite title in the genre is Bewitching by Jill Barnett.
I just read and really, really loved Where Peace Is Lost by Valerie Valdes. There’s some romance in it, but also concepts of colonialism and restorative justice. I guess it’s not fantasy so much as science fiction, but still an alternate world.
I’m in the “it’s just a new marketing thing” camp. There is no actual difference in content. I think publishers have moved from “paranormal romance” to “romantasy” because it has a lighter/fluffier connotation to it than the darker “paranormal romance” category. I’ve not read most of your examples above but I wonder if the on-page sex/heat level is a bit lower? For sure it is a term that is shorter to say and write. But for my purposes it is all the same content – a world in which magic of some form exists (shifters, mages, demons, etc.).
I have books that are tagged both paranormal romance and fantasy romance and I’m hard pressed to tell you what the difference is between them. The best I can do looking at the titles is that “paranormal” generally is a world that looks and feels “contemporary” (Patricia Briggs, Charlie Adhara, Ilona Andrews) while “fantasy romances” have “old” or fairy tale-ish settings (Grace Draven, Freya Marske, SU Pacat, AJ Demas).
I think it can be quite hard to find the line between Fantasty Romance and PNR – my own personal definition is that Fantasy includes magic – as in people who can do spells – whereas PNR has shifters, vampires, werewolves and other magical creatures. But while they’re magical, they can’t do actual magic, if that makes sense. The authors you mention – Briggs, Adhara, Andrews – all write what I class as urban fantasy; they’re set in a contemporary-looking world, but there is magic and/or magical beings.
But there’s a lot of overlap, that’s for sure.
Agree, there are no clean lines between subgenres these days. Lots of books overlap. I’ll have to think about your distinction: humans who can do magic vs. magical creatures. That’s interesting. A Witches Guide to Fake Dating a Demon would be both for you – urban fantasy (witch) and fantasy romance (demon), yes? For me, it would be paranormal romance.
For my purposes, urban fantasy may or may not have romantic elements. But if it has “a romance” (two characters that settle into or achieve a monogamous relationship (whether in one book or over the course of several books) then it’s a subset of urban fantasy and gets tagged paranormal romance. I tag authors like Jim Butcher, Charlaine Harris, Ben Aaronovitch, David Slayton, and Kim Harrison urban fantasy. Their characters frequently become involved romantically, but they generally don’t get what a romance reader would consider an HFN/HEA the way Briggs, Andrews or Adhara’s characters do.
My romance tags are contemporary romance, historical romance, romantic suspense, paranormal romance, scifi romance, and fantasy romance (in that order). That’s it. Everything else about those same books (e.g. professions or settings) is a separate tag. So I don’t have “sports romance” or “medical romance” but I do tag contemporary romances with “athletes” or “LEOs”; and paranormal romances with “shifters” or “witches/mages”, for example.
My librarian brain loves thinking about categories like this.
I’m wary to start a fantasy series with cliff hangers in each book and then wait a year for the next book to come out. If there are a lot of books in the series, it could take years before I can read the HEA.
There are a number of series like that. I gave up on Mercy Thompson for that reason. I think she eventually ends up married to Adam but there were too many vampires and witches and fae characters to wade through for very little relationship payoff in any given book. Charles and Anna Cornick, characters by the same author in the same world is quite readable, however.
I know. I am reading a bonkers but can’t put down book that comes out on my birthday this May. I was halfway through it when I looked it up on Goodreads and so it’s the first in a series. I am not thrilled–so many of these fantasy series take way too long to resolve love stories. I don’t always have the patience!
Oh your bonkers book sounds fun and quirky. I haven’t seen a lot of fantasy books with humor and I would love that.
It is crazy.
In my eyes, witches fake dating demons belongs in paranormal romance or urban fantasy romance (both being on our current world with supernatural characters though I think of urban fantasy romance as JR Ward type books) vs fantasy romance which has supernatural characters on a non-earth world ( or a pseudo-medieval world a la Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, or The Lord of the Rings).
Thus I think romantasy is just fantasy romance repackaged/labelled.
Definitely a lot of it is by feel and by identifying books as they relate to other series that you know you’ve mentally tagged as paranormal romance or urban fantasy romance or fantasy romance. Like, Nalini’s Singhs Psy-Changeling series to me is Paranormal romance while her Guild Hunters series I think of as Urban Fantasy Romance. Why are they different in my brain? Because Guild Hunters has vampires/angels and I think of those like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or True Blood tv series as urban fantasy.
Me too. BUT I think some think it’s also fantasy with romantic elements. Which is a different thing. And it makes me think about that argument that keeps popping up that romance doesn’t have to have an HEA involving two or more lovers. Which it does.
Fantasy romances are quite often same-couple series, so the HEA doesn’t arrive until the end of book 3 or 4… hopefully not too much longer than that or I’m likely to lose interest! An exception was Hailey Turner’s Soulbound series, which is 7 books but the HFN at the end of book 1 is very strong and HT then does a really good job of developing the characters and relationship throughout.
That particular argument just won’t die a death will it? It seems to come from people who want in on the genre $$$ but have absolutely no respect for it. (Not a surprise).
Jeffe Kennedy’s Twelve Kingdoms series and spinoff Uncharted Realms series is an exception to the multi-book/same couple fantasy romance where each book has a different couple with HEA (where the worldbuilding arc moves forward with each book but they are standalone romances). However her Forgotten Empires series is a trilogy with the same couple in all three books, as is Abigail Owen’s Dominions series (2 books so far, same couple). And I should clarify from my first comment above that TV shows like Buffy and True Blood are not urban fantasy romances, just urban fantasy (with some occasional romantic elements).
I suspect a lot of people like romantasy for the same reason many AAR readers have said they like queer romance–one doesn’t have to worry about leads behaving in ways we find out of date in our modern world.
Males can be very aggressive–It’s war between the realms! He has great magical powers!–and women can be more traditional–It’s the culture! She’s a slave!–and we don’t have to have a Me Too lens on it.
I can’t speak for others, but that is not why I like queer romance, and I don’t remember any conversations where leads behaving badly was a reason anyone likes m/m romances.
I don’t care for overly aggressive males in any genre, but I particularly hate them in contempory books (queer or not) because it feels way too real. I absolutely expect the leads in the m/m books I read to NOT act in ways I find “out-of-date” or any way misogynistic or abusive (verbally or physically). I can deal with morally grey characters, but they need to be redeemable. You might be right that it’s the reason some people like fantasy, but the comparison to queer romances doesn’t feel right.
I like m/m romances becuse 1) Sexual assault in my past and my family’s past make dealing with men misbehaving around women a very strong turn off due to the very real vulnerability women have in our society. But I also don’t like abuse in m/m relationships, either. 2) I’m a very hero-centric reader and find that I’m more interested in m/m dynamics than m/f, again, because they are on a more equal footing in most cases. 3) I find most m/f romances these days to be insipid and/or boring or see #1, men behaving badly and objectifying women. 4) Some of the best romantic suspense and romance + other (like romantasy) is being written by m/m authors. Complex plots, great relationship dymanics and originality.
I’m sure there are great m/f reads that I am missing right now but it seems every time I try I just get frustrated or angry at the gender dynamics and stop reading. I’m still trying to find more m/f books, but other than Lucy Parker, I haven’t found any straight contemporary romance authors that I consistantly enjoy. I have better luck with m/f RS authors.
Exactly–we struggle with gender dynamics in books that seem real to us. Contemporary romance–we don’t have the heroes there we have that we still do in historical romance that is period accurate. I’m not dissing queer romance but rather saying many readers are more comfortable with non-modern standard behavior in books that don’t seem real, like fantasy.
But, queer romance are as real to me as non-queer, so I still don’t understand your thinking. I still want them to act within modern standards of behavior. I don’t necessarily think you’re dissing queer romance or readers of such, but I still don’t think you understand what draws people, especially non-queer women, to enjoy m/m romances over m/f. Maybe because even though I’m straight, I have queer kids and feel a part of the community.
If we had more Lucy Parkers, I’d be reading more m/f contemporaries, but I’ve tried several contemporary m/f romances that have gotten DIKs here and haven’t even been able to finish them. A lot f the time I’m really not liking the heroines these days, so it’s not just gender politics that kills it for me.
Carrie, please believe I understand why straight women like queer romances and that I meant NO CRITICISM of either those readers or the romances.
I really didn’t think you were criticising anyone, so we’re good! There was a discussion on AAR some time ago where some people said they didn’t understanding why het women enjoyed m/m romances, so maybe I’m confused about who said what. I apologize if I misunderstood.
Thanks.
Several readers here have said that it’s a gift that queer fiction doesn’t require one to hash through the power issues many see in straight romance. That’s part of what I was trying to get at.
That’s absolutely true for me. But for me, escaping the gender politics isn’t the same as wanting to escape the “real” world, so I didn’t understand equating that with fantasy (which I do enjoy a lot). Many mm books I read are very real world, full of both difficult relationship issues and outside issues like homophobia. That said, many contemporary romances (m/f and m/m) are more fantasy than reality these days, with all the hot benevolent billionaires and sexy motorcycle clubs. 🙂
I am not equating it. I’m saying I think there is a similar kind of enjoyment.
Got it!
Lucy Parker is pretty much the only author of m/f romance I read, too – although as Liselotte reminds me below, I’ve enjoyed books by Olivia Dade as well.
Having that problem too – just now, hugely enjoyed Spite House by Olivia Dade, m/f CR done wonderfully. Strong rec.
Thanks! I’ll give it a try!
I…. am really not sure what you mean in your first paragraph. Carrie beat me to it, but I, too, don’t recall any of our regular readers of queer romance suggesting they like them because they don’t have to worry about leads behaving in an out of date manner. If anything the leads in the queer books I read are very progressive!
I was about to pop up and say yeah, this is why I read contemporary queer romance. I could see this argument being made for many other romance subgenres but not this!
That is my point. In books set in worlds we can imagine–contemporary romance, historical romance with modern values–we tend to be more comfortable with progressive leads.
In fantasy, because it’s a whole nother world with different contexts and rules, I think it makes it easier for people to accept behavior that is less progressive.
I think the wording of your initial comment has caused the confusion, because you equate contemporary queer romance with fantasy romance – effectively saying that, like fantasy rom, queer rom is not “real world”.
I suspect what you’re getting at is that in m/m romance, readers don’t (perhaps) have the same concerns around modern gender inequalities that can arise in m/f romance, and that in fantasy romance, those may not exist either?
Yes. I’d suggest that interpretation of my remarks has a rather unkind assumption behind it. I’m startled that anyone who reads this site would think I meant that.
To be honest, Dabney, your original comments confused me, too. I’m still not 100% sure you were getting at with the queer romance comparison, but I accept that you weren’t trying to be critical. I’m not trying to be critical either, and I don’t think anyone is being unkind.
On this topic, just saw a CBC news article regarding romantasy: (hopefully this link will work) https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/romantasy-booktok-female-readers-1.7120386
I like that they pointed out that the tag is new, but the subgenre is not. I remember reading Diana Wynn Jones, Patricia C. Wrede and Patricia Briggs (like Hob’s Bargain) with my kids decades ago! Lois McMaster’s Bujold’s Sharing Knife series comes to mind as well.
I’ve noticed some backlash against The Fourth Wing on the fantasy subreddits and other places due to supposedly deceptive marketing: the blurb indicated it was an epic fantasy and not so heavy on romance (or smut as they say). Apparently, people can’t spend a few minutes to research an author’s background and read some user reviews. However, it’s pretty interesting if it’s an indication of romantic fantasy becoming mainstream. Even better if they get the adaptation right (I have my doubts about that).