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Romantasy, a portmanteau of romance and fantasy, is a relatively new genre term. Though love stories that take place in a fantasy setting are long-established (as opposed to fantasy with romantic subplots, which bear less resemblance to romantasy than a narrative with a dominant romance plot), romantasy, as a term and as a genre, has seen a boom in the early 2020s.
Though a report from The Guardian cites the first reference to “romantasy” appearing online in 2008, the subgenre became mainstream largely due to the BookTok community on social media platform TikTok (Creamer, Ella. “A Genre of Swords and Soulmates: The Rise and Rise of ‘Romantasy’ Novels.” The Guardian, 2 Feb. 2024). Titles like Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (2015), for example, saw massive boosts in sales after becoming popular on the video platform—even though the book was billed as “high fantasy” when released, due to the relative unpopularity of “romantasy” as a term at the time. Quicksilver also gained significant popularity via BookTok; though the book was initially published in June 2024 on Amazon KDP’s Kindle Unlimited platform, the novel’s runaway success led to a publishing deal with Forever, an imprint of Hachette, re-released December 2024.
Romantasy is distinct from subgenres like high fantasy, paranormal romance, or science fiction romance, though all of these categories have some overlapping features. Romantasy plots typically take place in fantasy settings; by contrast, paranormal romances have fantastical elements (including Fae or vampires, which appear in Quicksilver) but take place in the real world. High fantasy does not always have the prescribed significant romantic plot that romantasy requires, and while science fiction romance may take place in otherworldly settings, its characters are often extraterrestrial rather than folkloric or otherwise magical creatures.
While many romance series outside romantasy focus on one romantic couple or group per book, ending on a “happily ever after” (or HEA), romantasy often centers on the same protagonists across many installments in a series. Romantasy protagonists are thus unlikely to have their HEA until the last book in a series; preceding volumes instead feature “happy for now” (or HFN) endings—as Saeris and Fisher share at the end of Quicksilver—separate the characters, or put them at odds (as in Holly Black’s YA romantasy series The Folk of the Air [2018]). Readers’ expectations for romance dictate, however, that love interests do end up together eventually, without any major obstacles to their love remaining.
While romantasy’s online boom has often equated it with “steamy” or “spicy” romance, sexually explicit scenes are not mandatory for the genre—though they are common, leading to the connection between romantasy and high-heat romance. Nevertheless, YA romantasy, for example, like Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone (2012), tends to include less explicit sexual content, as does cozy romantasy, like Sarah Beth Durst’s The Spellshop (2024). When included, however, sex scenes in romantasy may be more explicit or detailed than those in other romance subgenres.
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