Rebecca Yarros' latest Fourth Wing instalment, Threshing Day, was released on 29 September, and readers who have already finished its 13 stories may be looking for similar titles. The genre, dubbed 'romantasy' by BookTok, blends fantasy and romance with a focus on pleasure: page-turning plots, innovative world-building and, of course, the smut.
What is romantasy?
Romantasy is a separate entity from pure fantasy or romance, geared towards a generation who once spent days on sites like Wattpad, Tumblr and AO3 reading epic fanfiction. Some popular romantasy authors on BookTok today may have started by writing chapters on these blog-like sites.
While some novels in the genre are considered low-brow or a perversion of fantasy, this is a gross generalisation. Navigating romantasy as someone who values brilliant writing is no simple task, but this curated selection aims to cure an Empyrean hangover.
Top romantasy recommendations
Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone offers a masterclass in worldbuilding, following orphaned mapmaker Alina Starkov as she discovers a dormant power and enters the world of the Grisha. Naomi Novik's Uprooted follows Agnieszka, a young girl living near a corrupted Wood, who must be handed over to a wizard known as the Dragon. Cassandra Clare's City of Bones is an urban fantasy about fifteen-year-old Clary, who witnesses a supernatural murder and is pulled into a dark underworld of Shadowhunters.
Novik's A Deadly Education is set in a cut-throat school where students survive or die, following sorceress Galadriel "El" Higgins. Rachel Gellig's One Dark Window features Elspeth Spindle, plagued by an ancient spirit, who meets a mysterious highwayman on a quest to cure the kingdom of Blunder. Carissa Broadbent's The Serpent and the Wings of Night follows Oraya, the adopted daughter of a vampire king, who enters a tournament to gain acceptance.
Sarah A. Parker's When the Moon Hatched centres on Raeve, a professional killer, and dragon rider Kaan Vaegor. Olivie Blake's The Atlas Six follows six magic-wielding beings competing for membership in the Alexandrian Society. Leigh Bardugo's Ninth House, declared by Stephen King to be "the best fantasy novel [he's] read in years," follows Alex Stern, a high school dropout who monitors Yale's secret societies.
Samantha Shannon's The Priory of the Orange Tree focuses on two warring kingdoms in a world besieged by fire-breathing wyrms. Bardugo's Six of Crows, set in the Grishaverse, follows criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker and his crew on an impossible heist. Deborah Harkness's A Discovery of Witches is about a centuries-old vampire, a reluctant witch and a mysterious alchemical manuscript in Oxford's Bodleian library. Diana Gabaldon's Outlander follows Claire Randall, who walks through a circle of stones in 1946 and disappears into 1743.
