[Ads-l] Word: Romantasy - literary genre blending romance and fantasy (with eroticism)

[Laurence Horn]

> On Jan 9, 2025, at 7:55 AM, ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> The romantasy genre is achieving new heights of popularity. This
> portmanteau word appeared in the following recent article:
> 
> Website The New Yorker newyorker.com
> Article: Did a Best-Selling Romantasy Novelist Steal Another Writer’s Story?
> Author: Katy Waldman
> Date: January 6, 2025
> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/01/13/did-a-best-selling-romantasy-novelist-steal-another-writers-story
> 
> [Begin excerpt]
> 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."
> [End excerpt]
> 

Hah.  A new one on me. I took a look at the Waldman piece in the link and was especially intrigued with this bit:

Romantasy sells a lightly transgressive form of wish fulfillment that holds out the enthralling promise of sex with vampires, manticores, werewolves, and other types of monsters and shape-shifters. (There’s even a “cheese-shifter” paranormal romance, by the author Ellen Mint, in which characters can turn into different types of cheese.)

Romano-tasy, anyone? Enthralling indeed!

LH


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