The world is obsessed with romantasy, but it’s time for sapphic dragon riders and queer fae to populate the shelves
BY EMILY WARNER, IMAGE BY GETTY IMAGES
Heterosexual couples fill the pages of romantasy novels, a genre that brings together romance and fantasy. It’s difficult to get more than a few chapters in before stumbling across a preposterously muscled man, or an impossibly curvaceous woman, who will inevitably be locked into an enemies-to-lovers arc – what’s romance without a bit of knife play? But the public, it seems, can’t get enough of this.
Book sales in the UK have climbed by 15.6 per cent since the pandemic, partly due to the success of romantasy fiction. Meryl Halls, the managing director of the Booksellers Association told The Times: “It’s just the biggest amplification of the passion for reading really that you can imagine.” The London Book Fair, which ended on 13 March, reported a surge in demand for science fiction and fantasy, “with record sales in 2024 and a strong presence at the fair” and the “romantasy” hashtag on TikTok boasts nearly 900,000 posts. And although a lot of mainstream romantasy is strikingly heteronormative, some authors are starting to explore queer relationships too.
Rhian Perry, a literary agent for The Blair Partnership, felt that romantasy was an opportunity to portray alternative relationships. She says, “It can often feel like there’s another layer to the central relationships in romantasy, by nature of the more social or political themes you find. Science fiction and fantasy has always been a spearhead genre for diversity of all kinds, and that’s bled into the types of relationships we see portrayed in romantasy – more people are seeing themselves portrayed in these books, and so more people are reading them.”
The Faebound series by Saara El-Arifi blends magic, elves and lesbian relationships, fittingly described as a “queernorm romantasy” by The Lesbrary. The plot follows two sisters, Yerevan and Lettle, who are exiled from their homeland into the world of the fae. After Yeeran kills the obeah, a sacred creature, she is captured by the fae warrior Fury – and so begins a fiery relationship that evolves from hatred into steamy attraction as circumstance brings these two powerful women together. The novel presents a world where bisexual, polyamorous, and non-binary characters are the norm, and it’s a progressive step for fantasy.
This month, several sapphic romantasy books were published: Aunt Tigress by Emily Yu-Xuan Qin, Idolfire by Grace Curtis, Homegrown Magic by Jamie Pacton and Rebecca Podos, and Tea You At The Altar by Rebecca Thorne. Their subject matter ranges from lesbian pirates and plant witches, to Taiwanese folklore, but they’re all infused with lesbian relationships which challenge the traditionally heterosexual nature of romantasy. Even Rebecca Yarros’ hugely popular Fourth Wing series features a lesbian relationship between the protagonist’s best friend Rhiannon and another dragon rider, Tara.
According to Perry, “so much of [romantasy] is escapism – romance is a guaranteed happy ending while fantasy, by design, is otherworldly. It’s a genre that allows readers and writers alike to temporarily step away from a world that feels increasingly precarious.” For queer readers, romantasy offers a reprieve from a world that doesn’t always accept them – an “otherworld” – which is what gives it so much potential for LGBTQIA representation.
So as romantasy sales continue to climb, let’s hope for more queer, and non-binary protagonists. After all, fantasy is about boundless possibilities so the relationships they portray should be too.
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