How Romantasy Seduces Its Readers

A few years back, novels classed as “romantasy”—a portmanteau of “romance” and “fantasy”—might have seemed destined to attract only niche appeal. But since the pandemic, the genre has proved nothing short of a phenomenon. Sarah J. Maas’s “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series regularly tops best-seller lists, and last month, Rebecca Yarros’s “Onyx Storm” became the fastest-selling adult novel in decades. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz are joined by their fellow New Yorker staff writer Katy Waldman as they delve into the realm of romantasy themselves. Together, they consider some of the most popular entries in the genre, and discuss how monitoring readers’ reactions on BookTok, a literary corner of TikTok, allows writers to tailor their work to fans’ hyperspecific preferences. Often, these books are conceived and marketed with particular tropes in mind—but the key ingredient in nearly all of them is a sense of wish fulfillment. “The reason that I think they’re so powerful and they provide such solace to us is because they tell us, ‘You’re perfect. You’re always right. You have the hottest mate. You have the sickest powers,’ ” Waldman says. “I totally get it. I fall into those reveries, too. I think we all do.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Did a Best-Selling Romantasy Novelist Steal Another Writer’s Story?,” by Katy Waldman (The New Yorker)
“The Song of the Lioness,” by Tamora Pierce
“A Court of Thorns and Roses,” by Sarah J. Maas
“Ella Enchanted,” by Gail Carson Levine
“Fourth Wing,” by Rebecca Yarros
“Onyx Storm,” by Rebecca Yarros
“Crave,” by Tracy Wolff
“Working Girl” (1988)
“Game of Thrones” (2011-19)
“The Vampyre,” by John Polidori
“Dracula,” by Bram Stoker
“Outlander” (2014–)

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