Dragon riders and forbidden faerie love? A random Instagram post takes Anna Murray on quite the literary journey.
It began with a recommendation by Samantha Hayes.
Posing in her newsreader best on her Instagram feed, she stood on set holding a couple of books aloft.
The books were from a series by American author Sarah J. Maas.
Hayes told her followers she’d read the first one, A Court of Thorns and Roses, in three days - no small feat for a working mother of young children. Her colleague, Hayes said, had declared that the second title in the series was her favourite book of all time.
I didn’t need to hear any more. I promptly put in an order for my own copy of the first book, not bothering to check what it was about.
But as I read the back of it a few days later, with its blurb about a human heroine being taken prisoner by a High Fae Lord, realisation dawned on me.
“Ohhh, I guess I’m reading spicy fairy romance now?”
I eventually got a third of the way through the book before I gave up. There were only so many piercing faerie gazes across the dinner table I could take.
But a passing mention of the books at work and a subsequent Google search later suggested I was very much in the minority in that respect.
The 'romantasy' phenomenon
One colleague told me about a book club member who had put her life on hold to read nearly 20 of these fantasy romance titles back-to-back. Another said the genre was a large part of her personality now.
And that genre was romantasy - where books blended elements of romance and fantasy.
It’s not a new phenomenon. And, as it transpired, this wasn’t even my own first foray into the genre, as Sacha Beguely, marketing manager at book publisher Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand, pointed out.
“If Twilight was being published today, that would be romantasy, but we didn't call it romantasy back then,” she said.
I, of course, ripped through the Twilight novels in my late 20s.
I became heavily invested in a series about vampires and werewolves that included, among other things, a werewolf imprinting on a newborn baby. I had earnest discussions about whether I was Team Edward or Team Jacob. (I was Team Edward, for the record, which was not at all an embarrassing thing for a woman who was nearly 30 to admit out loud.)
I’ve since read the entire Southern Vampire Mysteries series (the True Blood books) too, proving that I had, in fact, been a fan of romantasy for some time.
But while it might not be a new publishing craze, romantasy has taken off in a big way in the last couple of years – and New Zealand’s not been immune to it.
“We're selling tens of thousands of copies, and that's not including libraries, which have all got hundreds of copies ... that are always being taken out,” Beguely said.
Maas and her faerie realm were behind much of that drive, with worldwide sales of close to 40 million books. Fellow author Rebecca Yarros has also been a global hit with her Empyrean series, a fantasy romance saga where people fall in love with their sworn enemies while riding dragons.
Yarros is due to visit New Zealand next month. Her one-off event in Auckland sold out “in the blink of an eye”, Beguely said.
“We saw with Twilight, there has always been demand [for romantasy],” she said. “But the genre is really, really flourishing now.”
And it’s not just American authors who have cornered the romantasy genre. New Zealand writers, like Nalini Singh and Chloe Gong, may not be household names in their home country but they became New York Times bestsellers through their own popular paranormal romance books.
The power of BookTok
Social media had driven much of this new demand for romantasy, particularly the community of TikTok users known as BookTok.
“We now have online communities where readers can get together - location or geography isn't a barrier anymore,” Beguely said. “They can talk directly with each other and also they can communicate directly with the authors.”
Those authors were also using social media to build further hype around their books, Beguely said.
“Rebecca Yarros, for example, has been writing [new Empyrean series book] Onyx Storm and every day she’s been posting a bit like the kind of Taylor Swift thing; she’s been posting ‘this is what I’m listening to today, it’s the vibes of what I’m writing.’
“It’s giving hints and teases so even when there's no book to read, they're still very much embracing their community.”
Embracing the escapism
Maria Foy is part of that community, often sharing the books she’s been reading with her hundreds of thousands of followers across her social media accounts.
A long-time fan of fantasy books, she said Yarros’ book Fourth Wing was her gateway to the more romantic sub-genre.
“I’ve always been a big fantasy reader – I’ve read Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings and I’m a huge Anne Rice fan,” she said.
“Now that I'm a bit older, I've been like, ‘You know what, I'd love to add some romance into it’ and that has really worked for me. I don't need it to be full-on romance but if there’s an enemies-to-lovers trope within it, I just love that.
“I feel like I’ve been missing out. Now that I’m talking about [romantasy books], everyone’s like, ‘Where have you been, Maria? We’ve been here for ages – welcome.’”
Foy said her journey to reading romantasy was probably a little different to other people.
“I had a mental breakdown last year, so I was using the reading as a way to help me,” she said.
“Because I had to stop work, I started reading to kind of help me recover. I'm on TikTok quite a lot ... and I found Fourth Wing through it, and I started reading that and that’s what started me down that path.”
Foy said she enjoyed the escapism she got from romantasy books.
“Especially with what I was going through [last year], I definitely didn’t want anything to do with real life at all.”
Foy wasn’t bothered by anyone who might look down their nose at the romantasy genre.
“It’s like listening to music – everyone’s got different tastes, and everyone goes through different things in their life, and they're drawn to different things during that time,” she said.
“If you're going to mock someone's enjoyment of reading a certain genre, I think it's really unfair. I think it's really simple-minded because if that's what people like, that's what people like. I wouldn't ever think to mock someone for liking a John Grisham novel.
“And I do see that happening with fantasy romance, people mocking it a lot. But it's not a small genre - people love it.”
Beguely agreed, saying any haters should give the books a go.
“You never know, you might love it,” she said. “But also, at the end of the day, there’s books for everybody, and as long as people are reading and enjoying what they're reading, then that’s the main thing.”
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