Is romantasy foidslop?
Fantasy novels where the war for the kingdom matters less than whether the two leads end up in the same tent.
Romantasy is fantasy with the romance doing most of the driving. There's usually a war or a curse or a dying kingdom in the background, but what people talk about is the enemies-to-lovers plot and the male lead, who tends to have wings, a dark past and a name with an apostrophe in it.
The books are long, often 600 pages or more, and the special editions have sprayed edges that cost extra. Readers mark them up with color-coded sticky tabs for favorite lines and spicy chapters. A lot of the series were announced as trilogies and are now on book four or five.
The two series people name first are Sarah J. Maas's A Court of Thorns and Roses, which started in 2015, and Rebecca Yarros's Fourth Wing, which came out in 2023 and is set at a war college for dragon riders. Fourth Wing and its sequels sold in huge numbers, and bookshops gave romantasy its own tables. Publishers have been signing new series to keep up ever since.
A lot of readers rate the books on 'spice', usually with chili pepper emoji, so you know how explicit it gets before you start. Fans film themselves reading the big scenes, annotate their copies and trade them, and line up for midnight releases. Critics complain that the prose can be rushed and the plots look alike, and the fans mostly don't care, which is a big part of why the label sticks.
Yes, because
- BookTok made the genre what it is
- Sticky tabs are basically a requirement
- Nearly every cover has a dagger, a crown or a moth on it
No, because
- It's one of the best-selling genres in publishing, so the slop label is a hard sell
- Some of the world-building is honestly impressive
- Fantasy has always had romance in it, from Arthurian legends on
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