romantasy n.

a subgenre that combines elements of romance and fantasy, esp. in featuring sexual relationships between humans and supernatural creatures

SF Criticism

Genre

  • [1940 Observer (London) 25 Aug. 2/6 (advt.)

    The holiday novel of the year [/] Bullett versus bombs! [/] Are we light-hearted? Yes if we counter warning-weariness by reading Gerald Bullett’s romantasy: When the cat’s away.]

  • [2000 A. Orloff I Married an Earthling (back cover) page image

    Part Jacqueline Susann romantasy, part cheesy Lost In Space episode, this gay comedy will delight any fan of pop culture literature.]

  • 2008 J. Johnson in DUCK FLASH: Jean Johnson’s Romantasy News in The Good, the Bad, & the Unread 10 Apr. page image Jean Johnson

    Anyway, for those of you who speak German, the website for the imprint is http://www.penhaligon.de and the website for my book in particular is: http://www.randomhouse.de/book_new/edition.jsp?edi=280654...and they've labeled it ‘Romantasy’...which I think is a particularly good way of describing the genre for the SoD series!

  • 2008 ‘BevQB’ DUCK FLASH: Jean Johnson’s Romantasy News in The Good, the Bad, & the Unread 10 Apr. page image

    Don’t you just love that label, ROMANTASY? It’s perfect for these surprisingly sexy Sword-and-Sorcerer-lite books.

  • 2010 Birmingham (UK) Post 30 Dec. 11 (review of SC Ransom’s Small Blue Thing) (electronic ed.)

    Billed as a ‘romantasy’—a hideous term if ever there was one—it tells the story of 17-year-old Alex, who finds an unusual bracelet in the River Thames as she tries to rescue a swan. It sets in motion a strange series of events: by wearing the bracelet, which has a beautiful large opal in it, she can communicate with a Dirge—a ghostly presence which takes people’s happy memories as sustenance. Condemned to existing halfway between life and death, the Dirges spend their time gathering memories. But Callum is different. Alex quickly falls in love with this young man and believes he also loves her.

  • 2022 A. Flood ‘More Zeroes Than I’ve Seen in My Life’ in Guardian 16 Aug. 9 page image

    BookTok…is going crazy for this story which hits the sweet spot between the deadly competition of The Hunger Games, and the ‘romantasy’ of Sarah J Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses.

  • 2023 V. Nguyen Love in the Time of Dragons in Publishers Weekly 17 Apr. 16 (electronic ed.)

    Romantic fantasy, increasingly marketed as ‘romantasy’, pairs the idealism of romance with the surrealism of fantasy, giving readers a break from dire headlines and humdrum daily life…. The best romance stories portray all the joys and complexities of lovers learning to navigate their lives and emotions together, and romantasy offers fertile ground to explore that complexity against the backdrop of an imagined world that operates by its own rules.

  • 2024 J. Kosin & Kathryn VanArendonk 12 Romantasy Authors to Know in Vulture 30 Jan. page image

    12 Romantasy Authors to Know…. Fantasy romance existed long before BookTok. The key to enjoying this genre is finding the specific combination of magical lore, a brooding daddy type, and spiciness that most speaks to you as a reader. Happily, romantasy offers a broad selection of options. Here are some of the most popular creators of sexy fantasy worlds.

  • 2025 K. Waldman Did a Best-Selling Romantasy Novelist Steal Another Writer’s Story? in New Yorker 6 Jan. (electronic ed.) page image Cassandra Clare

    In 2020, Maas’s publishers changed up their marketing strategy, causing the series to be rehomed in the adult section. ‘It birthed this genre of romantasy,’ Cassandra Clare, the author of the best-selling fantasy series ‘The Mortal Instruments,’ told me, ‘which to me is books that contain a lot of the tropes that make Y.A. popular but also have explicit sex in them.’

Research requirements

antedating 2008
Research History
Garson O'Toole submitted several cites.
Though Gerald Bullett wrote several stories or books having fantasy or supernatural elements, it appears that the book referred to in the 1940 cite (which has not been examined directly by the editor) is not among them. This suggests that this cite refers to a broader sense of fantasy, and we have accordingly placed it in brackets. We would be grateful if anyone could read the book in question to confirm this.

Last modified 2025-02-14 15:17:33
In the compilation of some entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries in OED.