Romantasy: The TikTok fuelled sub-genre taking the publishing industry by storm

The pink, red and purple glow of a bookshop’s romance section has long been a backbone of the publishing industry.

But now, swords, fae and supernaturally gifted assassins have shoehorned their way in - and some readers aren’t happy about it.

Scores of shops are sporting a dedicated romantasy section - a genre which blends traditional elements of fantasy worldbuilding alongside a central romance plot.

Fourth Wing, A Court of Thorn and Roses, Throne of Glass and From Blood and Ash are some of the big fish - you can find stacks of these titles just about anywhere.

And they rack up huge sales, spawn cult online fan clubs and have even landed TV show deals.

So how did the genre explode - and why are some people less than jazzed about it?

Romantasy’s boom

Book marketing has shifted hugely since the advent of social media, but even more so since the rise of TikTok.

In the olden days (10 years ago), keen readers often sourced book content in the dusty well-traversed channels of BookTube.

Times have changed, and though long-form book content still performs quite well on YouTube, BookTok and “edits” culture have become the new dominating force.

Romantasy itself isn’t actually new, it has just been boosted into the mainstream in recent years because of online trends.

Some have called it an old genre with a new name.

Certainly, classic fantasy titles like The Lord of the Rings don’t fit the romantasy brief, but there are novels going as far back as the early 1900s which do.

Take Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1912 novel, Princess of Mars, which is certainly more sci-fi centred but has strong world-building and a central romance plot.

Generally, Emma Bull’s 1987 War for the Oaks is accepted as the founding book of the genre, and that was published nearly 40 years ago.

Since then, we’ve had plenty of supernatural series involving a main romance plot. Take Twilight, the Mortal Instruments or the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, for example.

The romantasy tag on TikTok has more than 1.4 million posts, and the fantasybooktok tag follows closely behind it with 1.1 million.

These are just the people posting about the genre, not those interacting.

Content ranges from book recommendation videos to edits of different popular characters (with the help of AI generated art).

But many have a bone to pick with the modern iteration of the romantasy genre.

Problematic and harmful?

The romance genre has never existed without its critics - but let’s save our “what is going on with Colleen Hoover” chat for another time.

In the past five years especially, there has been a cultural discussion about whether the media has a responsibility to avoid glamorising “problematic” or “harmful” ideas, especially in young adult content.

In the context of romantasy, the criticism centres around the portrayal of age-gap relationships, power imbalances and “toxic” male behaviour - things younger readers might not be equipped to understand.

Willow Heath, a prominent online book critic and author, said in a now viral video that romance books are “toxic, lazy and conservative propaganda”.

She argues that the plots often dehumanise women and excuse evil behaviour from the main male love interest just because “he’s hot”.

Criticism doesn’t end there.

Readers of Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yaros, a series about Violet, a 20-year-old woman who is learning to become a dragon rider, criticised its constant mention of the main character’s tiny frame.

Following the body-positivity movement, discourse around the portrayal of women’s bodies was cast into the spotlight - and many readers expressed their tiredness of main characters being extremely thin.

These criticisms are just the tip of the iceberg - and seem to carry across what many readers identify as problematic within the broader romance genre itself.

But if its all dressed up in cool superhuman abilities and hot combat outfits - can it be ignored?