Attempting to understand “romantasy”

Hello readers! Have any of you visited a bookshop lately? A few weeks ago I was browsing Amazon, and I ended up scrolling through an endless stream of “romantasy” novels. I wasn’t seeking these titles intentionally (far from it), but as soon as I entered the fantasy section, Amazon assumed that romantasy was what I wanted. This was a logical assumption on Amazon’s part, of course, because romantasy is the fastest-growing genre in the world right now (not that anyone ever explains how this oft-quoted statistic is calculated). Its popularity isn’t just some quirk of Amazon’s impenetrable algorithm: these books are being pushed by big publishers like Penguin, and by bookshop chains like Waterstones. Last week I was in an airport WHSmith which had literal piles of romantasy paperbacks.

However, when faced with all these titles (and I’m talking hundreds and hundreds of titles), I realised that I don’t really know what “romantasy” is. I’ve never read any – or at least, I don’t think I have – and I’m pretty sure I’ve never written any, either (which would appear to be something of a career blunder on my part). So, I decided to do a bit of investigating.

What, exactly, makes a “romantasy” novel? Who is reading them, and why are they so popular? Three weeks ago I had plenty of preconceptions, and maybe you do too – but I wondered whether these might be unfounded. After all, when a genre gets so big that it consumes the front page of Amazon, there must be something special about it. Right?

Chapter 1: A genre of intrigue and mystery

I never intended to spend hours researching the romantasy genre. And just so you know, it wasn’t fate that set me on this path, but boredom. I was meant to be buying gardening gloves, a shoe rack, and some lightbulbs (a shopping list readily explained by my procrastination of household chores), but after reading a few too many customer reviews for products that may, or may not, have looked anything like their AI-generated promotional images, my brain had started to liquefy. I needed distraction – and the Amazon bookstore was one click away.

I wasn’t looking to buy any books, but to see which books other people were buying. And it turned out that they were buying shedloads of romantasy – which is a lot, when you consider the size of Amazon’s sheds.

Four out of the 14 “featured categories” in the fantasy section were promoting books by Sarah J. Maas, the most well-known romantasy author. The four categories in question were “epic”, “action and adventure”, “paranormal and urban” and “urban”. But Amazon already has a “romance” sub-category for fantasy – so why was romantasy breaching containment and invading other sub-categories?

(As an aside, I hadn’t really come across the term “urban fantasy” before – so maybe that’s an investigation for another time. I’m currently imagining hobbits made homelessness by a savage rent market, and dragons popping sick heelflips in grimy underpasses. Am I right?)

Chapter 2: Scratching the surface. What is romantasy?

I imagine that some (many? most?) of you readers already have some idea of what constitutes romantasy. But for those of you who spend even more time living under a rock than I do: firstly, I envy your rock and respect your priorities, and secondly, “romantasy” is a portmanteau of romance and fantasy, used to describe romance novels in fantasy settings.

Of course, having a romance story in a fantasy setting is nothing new: there are plenty of love stories to be found in the fantasy genre. However, romantasy is treated as its own genre because it borrows so heavily from romance tropes. The romance isn’t just a big part of the plot: without the romance, there wouldn’t be a plot at all.

When I dug a little deeper, I discovered that romantasy can be divided into several subgenres. These include: “high romantasy”, which borrows elements from high fantasy (big worlds and battling kingdoms); “dark academia”, which usually involves a magical school or university; and “cosy romantasy”, which is set in a world similar to our own, in a small town with a witch and maybe a demon or two.

Perhaps the most striking thing about these novels is that they are written almost exclusively by women (or, at the very least, by authors with female pen-names), and that they are read almost exclusively by women. Amazon doesn’t give out this sort of customer data, of course, but this was stated as fact in The Economist, and it tallies with my own observations.

Chapter 3: Digging a bit deeper. Why the recent boom?

Apparently, the success of these novels can be attributed to influencers on TikTok. I am not a TikTok user myself, but to my understanding, lots of young people (mostly women) are making very short, snappy book reviews, sharing fan theories and fan art, and even dressing up as their favourite characters. I’m genuinely astounded by the level of excitement and engagement towards these books. Something about them just seems to have clicked with the younger generation – and by the looks of it, word has now spread to older readers. These sorts of sales wouldn’t be possible unless the mums of the world had also jumped on the romantasy bandwagon.

But why now? Just like any niche, nerdy field, the fantasy genre has inspired plenty of erotica over the decades. Until now, however, this sort of “literature” has been shunned by major publishers, and much of it ended up online. Is romantasy just erotica under a different name, targeted to a different audience – trying to present itself as a separate, less seedy venture? From what I understand, plenty of romantasy novels are filthier (or, as the fans would say, “spicier”) than most erotica published a few decades ago. It would seem that the boom in romantasy has only been made possible by traditional publishing houses such as Penguin and Bloomsbury becoming more comfortable selling “spicy” books, which would previously have been left to specialist publishers (or Tumblr).

So, why have publishers embraced the “spice”? If I’m being optimistic, it’s because people, especially women, are more comfortable talking about sex. But if I’m being cynical (and I always am), it’s because publishers wanted money. Just look at Rebecca Yarros’ Iron Flame, which recently set the record for the highest number of daily pre-orders from Waterstones. This stuff sells. In an era of media overload and dwindling attention spans, is it any wonder that traditional publishers jumped on a profitable trend? It’s not even like they need to promote these books themselves, when they can rely on TikTok influencers to do the work for them.

Chapter 4: Digging even deeper. Is this “fantasy for women”?

Many book genres have a clear gender divide. Romance is one. Historical dramas are another. Murder mysteries tend to be read predominantly by women, too. So, it is hardly surprising that novels combining these genres were also very popular with women. If you go to your local library, I guarantee that you will find bucketloads of steamy historical romance novels, almost always published by Mills & Boon (one of my jobs when working in a library was to pick books for house-bound pensioners, and the old ladies loved these). This is why I’m quite surprised that it took so long for romantasy to take off. I’d always assumed that plenty of women read traditional fantasy – but maybe I was wrong.

According to Kathleen Farrar at Bloomsbury, in an interview with The Guardian, romantasy has attracted “huge numbers of female readers who may previously not have felt particularly welcome or catered for in the fantasy market.” This was news to me. I have plenty of female friends who read fantasy. But in researching this post, I kept reading this same opinion again and again: that fantasy was never written for women until now.

I feel very conflicted about this. I appreciate that many traditional fantasy novels lean hard into the pseudo-medieval setting, meaning that female characters are often subjugated, poorly educated, married off, abused, etc., but this isn’t always the case. When magic is involved, women can be incredibly powerful: even Tolkien managed to write strong female characters in a story mostly about men. But even if a story only has male protagonists, that doesn’t mean that women can’t read it and enjoy it. Yes, readers like to see aspects of themselves reflected in fictional characters – but there is no reason that this should revolve entirely around their gender.

The concept of romantasy as “fantasy for women” doesn’t sit well with me. It invalidates all the women who were enjoying traditional fantasy without the steamy sex scenes, thank you very much – and there are plenty of women who don’t want the entire plot of a book to be based around romance tropes. The idea that romantasy makes fantasy “accessible” for women, just by having more female main characters and more romance, feels patronising and reductive. To be clear, I don’t have any issue with romantasy, and I’m happy that people are enjoying it – but I don’t like the way that publishers are pushing it as the emancipation of women from a previously oppressive genre.

Chapter 5: Digging past the bedrock. What’s with the tropes and tags?

Something that stood out to me when I was looking through dozens of romantasy novels is that they advertise their tropes and plot contrivances. For most authors, the heavy use of tropes is something to be avoided, because readers see them as lazy and uninspired, and they make the plot predictable. However, the descriptions of romantasy books draw attention to the fact that they are “forbidden romance” or “enemies-to-lovers” stories. This latter example is a spoiler, isn’t it? Seemingly, romantasy fans want to know the end of the story before they start reading.

Now, where else do we see synopses that highlight specific tropes, and reveal exactly where the “plot” is heading? I think it’s safe to say that romantasy readers are looking for something different to an ordinary novel. Romantasy descriptions are filled with words such as “sizzling”, “steamy”, “spicy” and even “smut” (including books from big-name publishers). Online, people discuss stories in terms of how well they meet the criteria of a certain trope, using the abbreviations “FMC” and “MMC” for female and male main characters respectively – because names don’t matter when the roles of “FMC” and “MMC” are dictated by a set narrative formula. Readers are just seeking slight variations on a theme to keep them engaged, and I won’t even pretend to understand exactly what they’re looking for.

Even the titles of these books are very similar, following the same structure. Following the success of Sarah J. Maas, there are now dozens of books titled “An X of X and X” (the original Maas example being A Court of Thorns and Roses). Another popular title structure is “X of X”. Until now, I was under the impression that a book should have a memorable and meaningful title – something to make it stand out from the crowd. But romantasy authors seem determined to make their books fit a certain mould. They know that their readers are looking for something specific and samey, rather than something new.

Chapter 6: Digging into the mantle. A journey to the centre of the genre?

At this point in my investigation, I was keen to learn a bit more about these tropes, and how romantasy authors bundle them into their novels. I read dozens of book descriptions, and then spent forty minutes reading the opening chapters of as many books from as many different authors as I could. It’s safe to say that these books are not my cup of tea – not that I ever thought they would be – but to avoid upsetting anyone, I won’t call out any specific authors or use identifiable quotes.

One of the first things I noticed when reading the opening chapters of these books is that almost all of them are written in first person. Only 10% are written in the traditional third person of fantasy novels. I’m not sure whether this style has been inherited from the traditional romance genre, but its use in romantasy makes sense, as first-person narratives allow for more introspection and internal monologuing, giving the reader a direct insight into the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist. Third-person narratives have an external perspective that reads more like a film, which has, until now, been better suited to the sweeping landscapes and sprawling battle scenes of the fantasy genre. Romantasy novels appear to take a more personal, internal approach – which makes sense, given the shift in narrative priorities. Although I am curious how they handle big battles.

Another glaring commonality between these novels is that the protagonist is generally a woman in her late teens or early twenties. I couldn’t find many examples of protagonists in their thirties, and none were any older than this. When it comes to the romance plot, the protagonist typically falls in love with an older man – sometimes hundreds of years older, in fact – who is invariably labelled in the book description as “mysterious”, “powerful”, or even “insufferable”. Most of these plots seem to involve falling for a man who is repulsive at first, before slowly revealing his kinder side, or being convinced to change his repulsive ways. In some stories, the protagonist breaks free from an arranged marriage, but there are plenty of examples where she falls in love with the man she was forced to marry. I also found several examples in which the protagonist falls in love with her captor, even after he has murdered her entire family, village, and/or race. In the dark academia sub-genre, it is very common for the protagonist to end up dating her teacher. The morals are questionable, to say the least.

Based on my research, it seems that romantasy fans like reading about relationships with exaggerated power imbalances. And perhaps this explains why the merger of romance and fantasy has been so successful? Stakes can be much higher when magic is involved. Men can be much more powerful when they are wizards, or warriors, or dragons. And no ordinary, real-world college romance could end up with people dying of curses or ruining a kingdom. You could argue that romantasy is just an exaggerated version of familiar tropes – a result of young people seeking more excitement in their romance literature.

Chapter 7: Digging to the core. Infiltrating the fanbase.

To truly understand the genre, I wanted to know what the fans had to say. Romantasy has only been so successful because there are millions of young women who are obsessed with it, reading the same tropes again and again. So, I spent some time reading reviews by book bloggers, and scrolling through some discussion threads on the Fantasy Romance subreddit. I discovered a fair bit of “toxicity” in the fanbase, with fans getting into heated online arguments about fictional characters – the sort of ridiculous, overblown discussions that you would normally expect from certain species of anime fans.

I also uncovered some fascinating complaints from avid romantasy readers. One discussion thread was titled “why are romantasy novels written so poorly?” – and nobody was stepping in to defend the authors. Everyone just accepted that the writing standard for most romantasy novels is very low, and they offered plenty of explanations: firstly, that publishers are so desperate to get these books onto the market that they accept writing of lower quality, then cut corners when it comes to editing. Indie authors face the same pressure to write books quickly, leading to more corner-cutting, and there are also plenty of grifters churning out poorly-written stories and AI-generated slop just to capitalise on the boom in popularity. Many readers suggested that the genre was becoming insular and stale, in that romantasy writers only ever read romantasy, leading to the same tropes, the same writing style, and a gradual lowering of standards from everyone involved.

There were also some specific complaints that I found quite amusing. There were fans who were annoyed by “too much spice” and “not enough romance”, and fans who were annoyed by “too much romance” and “not enough fantasy”. Lots of people kept arguing that romantasy and erotica are different genres, but nobody seemed able to explain the distinction. A number of people were asking for (and here I quote directly) “nerdy wizards”, “guys the same size as the FMC” and “no more shadow daddies” (if you don’t know, don’t ask). Clearly, plenty of fans are growing tired of the tropes. One post was asking for more medium-stakes stories rather than world-ending scenarios, with plots involving heists, prison breaks or traditional quests. Needless to say, I found this all very interesting – and I hope you did too!

In summary…

At the end of my investigation, I feel like I understand romantasy a little better. Many of my preconceptions were correct: it seems that in their desperate quest for book sales, major publishers are lowering their standards and readjusting their moral compasses. I’m interested to see how long the boom in romantasy lasts, because I detected that even the most avid fans are growing tired of the tropes and uninspired writing. Perhaps they will branch out into traditional romance or traditional fantasy novels? One can only dream…

On that note, my books are currently free on Amazon! The sale (or not-sale, really) lasts until the end of Monday 25th August. My books are very much NOT romantasy! They do include “nerdy wizards”, some of whom are actually shorter than the “FMC”, and there are certainly no “shadow daddies”. I use a mix of male and female character perspectives, and my writing is in no way targeted at a particular gender. So, if that sounds like better than reading another “enemies-to-lovers” trope, go ahead and visit my Amazon Author page. All of my books are also available through Kindle Unlimited.

Links:

C. W. Clayton books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/C-W-Clayton/e/B09YZXSQ3D

My Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/C.-W.-Clayton/author/B09YZXSQ3D (you can also follow me on Amazon if you want)