What happened to romantasy?

We can’t even get good junk food anymore. By junk food, I’m referring to romantasy books, or romance-fantasy, for those of us who haven’t been exposed to the influx of mass produced romantic novels set in fantasy worlds that have sprouted up seemingly overnight in almost every Barnes & Noble I’ve been to. Romantasy sales reached about $600 million dollars in 2024, about $150 million more than the year before, likely due to the genre’s popularity amongst BookTok creators. 

Of course, even if you’d never heard of it, just typing it into the search bar would inundate you with enough horror stories about bad writing, incoherent plotlines and gratuitous smut to put you off for good. However, if you’re like me, you’re probably wondering what the hell happened. 

I grew up reading a lot of romantasy like the series “Cinder” by Marissa Meyers and “An Enchantment of Ravens” by Margaret Rogerson, but when I look at the shelves of any bookstore nowadays, I can barely recognize what used to be one of my favorite genres. Although now that I’ve said that, I’m betting a good few of you aren’t going to take me seriously anymore. After all, can you really expect an intellectual, literary opinion from someone who willingly consumes this? The culture around these books and this genre has reached a point where people who read romance-fantasy novels are no longer viewed as legitimate readers. 

So what happened to the genre, and why has the credibility of romance-fantasy readers tanked so drastically over the last couple years?

Let me start by saying I don’t hate romantasy. I really don’t. Have I perhaps been critical of it in recent years? Yes, but only because I used to love it so much that looking at what the genre has become is genuinely disappointing.

More and more, it seems like authors are writing their books around the popular tropes and fill-in-the-blank plotlines of this genre that they sacrifice originality for the growing consumer demand. They are so focused on satisfying the consumer and publisher by adding in every buzzword or next new thing that they end up with a collection of tropes and no actual plot tying everything together.   

Because of this, romantasy is becoming known as the genre with bad character writing, subpar world-building and excessive amounts of explicit scenes. As someone who likes this genre, it is incredibly irritating. It means that when people find out I’ve read romantasy, they no longer take my opinions on books seriously. They tend to assume that I’m talking about the new wave of mass-produced novels, and reach the conclusion that I clearly have no standards when it comes to writing quality, plot complexity or literally any literary quality. 

Like any other genre, romantasy has good books mixed in with the bad; there are so many stories with interesting plots, in-depth worldbuilding and wonderful characters. For example, the “Sands of Arawiya” series by Hafsah Faizal is one of my favorite romantasy series as an adult. It has captivating female characters, a strong mystery and adventure plotline and amazing worldbuilding. So, why has the opinion of romantasy books in general dropped so low? Personally, I believe it’s due to the low quality of these newer novels. This is not to say that all new romantasy books are automatically bad; I’m only referring to the ones that have been obviously copy-pasted with a general type-scene structure.

For me, a good romantasy novel should have a strong female lead with a hard past, but a confidence and personality that makes her unique and compelling to read. There should be an interesting plot built on a cohesive fantasy world, perhaps including a few dragons, and a mystery completely independent of any romantic endeavour. And of course, it needs to have the obligatory standoffish male lead with his own struggles. Although in a majority of those ‘new-wave’ copy-paste novels that are mass-produced, these aspects are poorly done or ignored in favor of explicit scenes. 

The main character is still a confident woman. However, her ‘confidence’ usually borders on blatant arrogance and a frustrating amount of ignorance to the context of the situation. For example, in “A Court of Thorns and Roses” by Sarah J. Maas, the main character Feyre continuously ignores warnings concerning her safety as a human in the fey realm. 

This resistance to warnings is likely a way to write her as self-reliant. But, given that Feyre spent most of her life hunting, she would be aware of the dangers of the woods and unfamiliar wild places. The fact that she then makes choices to actively ignore the warnings out of a desire to “be independent” makes no sense. 

Moving on to world-building and plot, in an ideal novel, the romance and overarching plotline should be equally balanced and fleshed out. Unfortunately, with most new romantasy books, almost every aspect of the plot is added to further the romance or add room for sex scenes. 

In Laura Thalassa’s “Rhapsodic,” the main character Callypso and the male lead Desmond travel to his kingdom together so he can show her the victims of the mysterious kidnappings that have been happening recently. However, there isn’t much emphasis placed on the actual victims beyond a very dry, cursory explanation; this sequence of scenes is only used to endear him more to her, and advance their physical relationship, which is something most new-wave romantasy books focus on a lot — the physical relationship between the leads. I don’t see anything wrong with adding a sex scene or two, but when it’s inserted constantly into situations where it adds no narrative value or meaning, it just gets old. 

Clearly, a lot of these newer novels lack most of the aspects that I value in a good book. But why is it so negatively affecting the external view of the genre?

Well, generally speaking, the influx of bad quality books in a genre means that the average book for that genre is statistically likely to be worse. Meaning if you go to a bookstore and pick a random romantasy novel off the shelf, chances are you’ll get one of the newer ones that I’ve described not-so-favorably above. 

Most people, judging romantasy based on the average book quality, will assume that all or the majority of the genre’s books are at the same level. It also means they’re more likely to think people who enjoy those books have the same standards for literature that these books exhibit. 

So regardless of whether you read romantasy as “literary junk food,” or simply because you enjoy a fun romance with magic involved, you invariably will end up with your opinions reduced to reflect the worst books of this genre. In the end, it all comes down to the market flooding our indulgent hobby with subpar versions of the books we enjoy, and now we, as readers, are judged based on their quality. 

But, it’s not all bad news. In my opinion, although the genre’s quality overall is diminishing, this doesn’t have any bearing on my own discernment and taste as a reader. As long as I stick to the same high standards of quality I’ve always had and take the time to search for that one good novel in the haystack, my literary opinions are worth listening to.

Kavya Praveen is not giving up her romantasy novels or her standards.