Romantasy: When Magic Meets Love
How love and fantasy combine in books.
The protagonist straps a dagger to her thigh, since her dress isn't made for carrying weapons. In a moment, this girl will be dancing with the enemy she's preparing this dagger to fight. Stories like these combine magic and love, battles and powerful feelings — all of which shape romantasy.
The genre's popularity is surging in the book industry. As reported by The Bookseller, sales of science fiction and fantasy titles rose 41.3% between 2023 and 2024.
The Guardian has attributed part of that growth to the explosive popularity of romantasy — a subgenre blending fantasy and romance that's become a favorite of the BookTok community on TikTok, the outlet reports.
What Romantasy Is
The term 'romantasy' appeared on Urban Dictionary in 2008. The dictionary describes it as a literary subgenre blending fantasy and romance elements. Romantasy's core trait is that the love story isn't secondary — it takes center stage in the plot.
Romantasy also shouldn't be confused with classic fantasy that happens to include a love story. In romantasy, love is the driving force — it shapes conflicts, influences characters' decisions, and intertwines with magical events. Fantasy elements, meanwhile, serve to create special trials and relationships between characters.
What Types of Romantasy Exist
It's still hard to define romantasy's main subtypes, since the genre is still evolving. Still, Dreamscape offers three types: cozy, epic, and dark.
Cozy romantasy is a style that creates an atmosphere of warmth, humor, and kindness. This type offers readers a gentle, heartfelt journey filled with romantic plots and fantastical creatures. Books like these aim to convey a feeling of calm and coziness.
Epic romantasy, unlike the previous type, offers large-scale adventures and complex worlds with their own rules and magic systems. Books like these usually put the world on the brink of catastrophe, facing a powerful antagonist that only the hero (or heroine) can defeat.
In dark romantasy, the line between good and evil is often blurred. This style blends fantasy motifs with horror elements. Here, unsettling creatures and grim worlds appear, where characters face not just outside dangers but inner contradictions too.
Examples of Romantasy
Fourth Wing, by Rebecca Yarros
Rebecca Yarros's book ranked seventh among the UK's best-selling books of 2024. At the center of the plot is Violet Sorrengail, a 20-year-old girl planning to enter the Scribe Quadrant. But her mother, a renowned defender of the kingdom, decides for her daughter and sends the heroine to the Rider Quadrant instead.
Neither people nor dragons tolerate weakness here, and Violet has never been able to boast great physical strength. So the girl has to survive among those who want her dead.
A Court of Thorns and Roses, by Sarah J. Maas
The human and faerie worlds are divided by a tall Wall and centuries of hostility. 19-year-old Feyre, the youngest in a poor family, is forced to provide for her relatives alone by hunting animals. One day, the girl kills a wolf that turns out to be a faerie in disguise. For this act, she's taken to Prythian, where Lord Tamlin becomes her captor.
Captivity turns into a trial that changes everything: hatred gradually turns into love, and Feyre learns that her fate is tied to Prythian's future. The girl becomes the key to lifting a curse and the faeries' last hope for salvation.
Mercury, by Kelly Hart
Saeris Fane has spent her whole life hiding what she isn't supposed to have. No one knows about her mysterious powers, or that she's stealing water from an immortal queen. In the desert, Fane is ready to do anything for a sip of water, but even the tightest secrets can come undone like knots. A meeting with Death herself changes her fate — the girl ends up in an icy land of snow, where faerie legends come to life.
Saeris becomes the first human to set foot on the frozen mountains of Ivelia in a thousand years. And there, she unexpectedly finds herself bound to Kingfisher — a mysterious faerie warrior pursuing his own goal.
In romantasy, characters' feelings drive the story forward, while adventure and magic heighten the emotional impact on readers. The genre's popularity keeps growing, since it lets readers immerse themselves in a fantasy world while also feeling deep emotion.