The fiction world has been set alight by a racy, lucrative beast this year. It’s called romantasy. A portmanteau of romance and fantasy, this genre is less about the gentle romantic exploits of Harry Potter and more… Fifty Shades meets Game of Thrones. If you added one of these raunchy tomes to your bookshelf, a neighbouring copy of The Chronicles of Narnia would probably spontaneously combust.
But it’s being read by teenagers and adults alike. According to retail sales monitoring service Nielsen Bookscan, more than half of these books were bought by women between 13 and 34. And its protagonists are equally as youthful. In one recent bestseller, a 20-year-old heroine attends a “war college for dragon riders” and ejects bolts of lightning as she orgasms. In another, a 19-year-old “huntress” enters the mythical land of Prythian and witnesses a whole lot of “faerie f***ing” (a fan term, not our own, thankfully). It might sound like covered and bound fanfiction, but it’s also wildly successful. According to The Times, sales of fiction classed as both fantasy and romance reached £27 million in the UK last year, a significant increase from £15 million in 2022.
