Love is torture. Just ask the lightning wielder who’s so passionate about a moody bachelor that when they finally fool around, she accidentally sets a bunch of trees on fire. Or the leading lady whose lying crush only fully commits to her after she plunges a knife into his heart. Or the alluring heroine who tangles with the seven deadly sins in the form of seven hot princes and–guess what?–they’re total playboys.
In the literary genre known as romantasy—a mix of fantasy and romance—heroines ride dragons to battle enemies and otherwise navigate magical realms, all while living their best sex lives. The books are tearing up the bestseller charts, delivering blockbuster sales in an industry that’s in a fight for readers’ attention.
Material that older generations might have labeled as smutty—a young heroine experiences sexual encounters that involve lip biting, hissing, growling and moaning—are now referred to as “spicy.”
“His biceps flex as he lifts me by the backs of my thighs, and I wrap my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist, my dressing gown caught between us as he pivots,” writes Rebecca Yarros in “Fourth Wing,” about a young woman who attends dragon-riding school and falls in love with a wingleader she initially thinks wants to kill her.
These books are striking a chord with generations of readers who grew up on series like “Harry Potter” and “The Hunger Games,” where fighting evil comes well before romance. In romantasy, the adult relationships matter as much as the high-stakes plots.
Sales of books from authors including Sarah J. Maas, Yarros and Rebecca Ross rose 45% last year to nearly 20 million copies, while overall U.S. book sales fell 2.6%. Three of the country’s best known authors, James Patterson, Stephen King, and John Grisham, altogether sold six million print books in 2023, according to Circana BookScan.
The romantasy genre was supercharged by the rise of TikTok in the pandemic, as influencers on the social platform—under the banner #BookTok—started promoting these books relentlessly.
Maas, whose first book was published in 2012, led the romantasy wave and eventually became queen of the genre. The 38-year-old author has written three different series encompassing multiple books, each hundreds of pages long. Her novels, which primarily take place in a mythical world populated by the Fae (which is how fairies are known in the books), have sold 45 million copies in English worldwide.
The explosion of these titles is changing the mix of bestseller lists, with female writers of romance, fantasy and romantasy climbing the charts at others writers’ expense. “Male thriller writers have been eclipsed,” said literary agent Elyse Cheney.
Part of the draw of romantasy books, fans say, is that men are portrayed as understanding women and their romantic needs rather than focusing only on their own.
“Men written by women are the best men out there,” said Kendall Garrison, a 31-year-old social-media consultant in Atlanta.
Garrison discovered the genre after a friend recommended Maas’s novel “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” the first book in her runaway hit series about a huntress abducted into a faerie realm. Its blend of heroics, self-discovery and steamy sex scenes proved irresistible. She followed up on Maas’s novels by reading Yarros’s “Fourth Wing” and its sequel. “A big part of it is women taking back their sexual power,” she said.
Lauren Moore, a 36-year-old book lover from Vancouver, Canada, who runs the social-media community Book Huddle, said that while some call romantasy books “fairy porn,” sex scenes are outnumbered by world-building, family dynamics, battles and other themes that appeal to fantasy readers.
She recently started selling scenic retreats for romantasy fans. The weekends, which cost around $1,600, feature book talks and special events like historic tours and astrology lessons. Romantasy fans say the sex in these books often is healing for the characters and reveals their emotional vulnerability.
“While women at these retreats aren’t necessarily talking about their sex lives in detail, there’s definitely an intimacy with talking with other people about the books you love that have sex scenes,” said Moore.
For many readers, escaping to faraway lands is the lure. “My job in the medical field is real enough,” said Alexis Weinrich, a 27-year-old physician’s assistant. She grew up reading “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” books and got into Maas’s novels last year after searching online for up-and-coming novelists.
Women who get into romantasy have been known to inhale multiple books a week. Julia Johnson couldn’t put down “Fourth Wing,” even if it meant reading racy scenes in public. She read it while she ate at New York City cafes, while she visited her boyfriend’s family, and while riding the subway to work, pulling the book close to her chest so other rush-hour commuters couldn’t see the near-feral intimacy unfurling before her.
“It’s a feeling of being in a different world,” said Johnson, a 25-year-old New Yorker who works in communications for a legal nonprofit.
Dangerous, but safe
The booming book genre features strong heroines on a mission to recognize their own power. The catch is that while the female characters can have whatever they want, they usually choose a throwback guy, a possessive bundle of testosterone and domination.
Mr. Romantasy is a surly mix of brute strength and emotional damage. At various points in these books, the heroines aren’t sure if their partners want to love them or kill them. The males raise relationship red flags from here to eternity.
“Thus I became Rhysand’s plaything,” Maas writes of her heroine’s roughly 500-year-old tormentor and eventual love interest in “A Court of Thorns and Roses.”
“He had me dance until I was sick, and once I was done retching, told me to begin dancing again.”
Maas, who started writing fiction as a New York City teenager and married her college boyfriend, is a working mother of two who has described feeling mortified when her mother-in-law asked if the bedroom scenes in her books were inspired by her own life. “I was like, ‘No, Linda, they were not,’ ” she said on the “Today” show. “But I think I can write about true love because I get to live that every day.”
In romantasy novels, the relationships are full of violence but also rooted in consent, turning two extremes into bedfellows. There’s blood, pain, wounding, lots of talk about losing control. But no sexual activity starts until the heroines give the go-ahead. Here, even demons from hell ask for permission first.
“In the real world, half of that stuff would just never be OK. You know you’re going into this fantasy world where it is dangerous, but you’re safe,” said Jennifer L. Armentrout, whose heroine in the popular “Blood and Ash” world novels (more than eight million books sold globally across two series) stabs her love interest in the chest. It not only doesn’t kill him, it makes him love her more.
Armentrout and other female authors described writing sex scenes by laying out the emotions first, then going back and filling in the physical details. The heroine must feel completely wanted, the sole and supreme object of the male’s desire.
“It’s not necessarily just a graphic depiction of the act itself,” says author Kerri Maniscalco, 42, whose novels, including “Throne of the Fallen,” have sold 4.7 million copies in all formats and are populated by characters such as the seven deadly sins in corporeal form. “It’s really like, how are you hitting on some of those emotional notes?”
Torri Efron Pelton, a Los Angeles-based psychologist who focuses on young adults, said romantasy novels have come up in conversations with her clients, who may feel lonely. One drawback is that the books create such unreal expectations about what a relationship should offer that mortal men can’t match up.
“I’ve had single clients who have had to take a break from romantasy because it sets up unrealistic ideals of a relationship and how they’ll be treated,” she said.
The male romantic lead typically has what fans call a “Touch Her and You Die” protectiveness, a passion for complete ownership. The leading lady usually is experienced in bed, rarely a virgin, and often eagerly agrees to being physically overpowered. The male lead is endlessly appealing to her, even if he smells like the dragon he rode in on. Maybe especially if he does.
“There’s a certain thrill in the alpha male,” said Mary Bly, a literature professor at Fordham University who writes romance novels under the pen name Eloisa James.
“It’s an alpha, but now he’s got a soul. Now he’s got consent. You get your cake and eat it too.”
The mania for these books has descended on a nation that’s struggling in bed. Data show that people, including younger men and women, are having less sex. Dating apps are filled with dissatisfied customers. The country is in the grip of a loneliness epidemic.
Because of their sexual content, Maas’s books have been widely banned in public schools. Her popularity, however, remains undiminished. Maas’s latest entry, this year’s roughly 800-page “House of Flame and Shadow,” topped bestseller lists in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia, with an impressive 1.75 million copies in print globally.
Literary jackpot
It’s rare for book publishers to hit the jackpot with a fresh literary genre, and the rise of romantasy is being felt across the industry.
“Every publisher I’ve spoken to in the last few months has said they have launched, are launching or will launch a romantasy line,” said Lorraine Shanley, president of the publishing consultants Market Partners International.
Retailer Barnes & Noble has released at least nine exclusive editions of Maas’s books since 2016. One title, a 2022 paperback edition of “A Court of Silver Flames,” contains a bonus chapter featuring two of the series’s leading characters. An eBay seller recently priced a copy at nearly $200.
“It’s a thriving female audience looking for plot-driven romance from a female perspective,” said Shannon DeVito, senior director of books at Barnes & Noble.
Books-A-Million maintains its own internal bestselling sales list. Last year, through mid May, it was dominated by traditional romance novels. This year, in terms of unit sales, the same list is led by romantasy authors.
The genre’s popularity has hammered home the power of TikTok to publishing executives. As the platform took flight in the pandemic, it became an ideal venue for people to post about books they enjoyed reading.
Before long, it was clear that TikTok was a word-of-mouth machine that would reshape how books are marketed. Romance, in particular, was a favorite genre among increasingly prominent female BookTokers, who boosted everything from romantic comedies to military-themed love stories.
Maas was among the big beneficiaries. Last year, influencer Emma Halbrook created a TikTok video where she provided detailed descriptions of Maas’s books and suggested the order in which to read them; it attracted 330,000 views.
In June 2023, another influencer posted a video that explained how to pronounce the names of all the dragons in Yarros’s novel “Fourth Wing.” It garnered 230,000 views. Yarros, 43, a military wife and mother of six who describes herself as a hopeless romantic and a lover of “all things chocolate, coffee and paleo,” has sold 6.5 million copies of her “Fourth Wing” series worldwide.
Today publishing houses have entire teams devoted to promoting upcoming titles on TikTok. Sales for #BookTok authors have grown every year since 2020, according to book tracker Circana BookScan. In 2023 sales of books by authors prominent on #BookTok reached 46.3 million books, up 40% compared with 2022. Through the end of May, sales of books associated with #BookTok were up 42% compared with the same period last year.
Top-selling authors who say TikTok influencers have supercharged their careers include Carissa Broadbent, whose romantasy novel “The Ashes & the Star-Cursed King” debuted at No. five on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list dated June 23.
Broadbent, who launched her career as an independent author, became a favorite on TikTok. Her popularity there and her growing fandom brought her to the attention of Bramble, an imprint owned by Macmillan, one of the country’s largest book publishers.
“I owe my entire career to word-of-mouth on social media,” said Broadbent. “TikTok is the fire pit, but you need to get the sparks going.”