sarah j. Maas IS returnING TO pyrthian
New York Times bestselling author Sarah J. Maas’ interview on Call Her Daddy (CHD) reached over 2 million views.
Maas has one of the largest fan bases in the romantic fantasy space, and across her three series, she has developed a cult following. However, when people outside of the bookish community hear the word romantasy, they assume it is just some sort of code for “fairy smut” (a term Sarah shut down on CHD).
Now of course some fantasy books have it (it’s a romantic fantasy), but dismissing an entire genre by reducing the work of its authors is not fair.
From a reader’s perspective, there is more to these books that someone who does not read the genre might not realize or even chooses to ignore. There is yearning and tension that the author has spent hundreds of pages building up, and around the romance there is a often another storyline going on. Plots with trials to win and ancient curses to break; wars and battles that are won by gut wrenching sacrifices.
On the writer side, world building is much harder than you might think. Authors create characters whose existence and sense of self are shaped by an entirely different world with its own norms and taboos. They have to consider everything from a thousand years worth of history to how an average person in their world would spend their birthday in order to make their world feel lived in.
Romantasy is now thought of as its own category, but at its core, it is still a genre blend. Genre blends are simply the mix of two genres: horror romance, dystopian fantasy, historical mysteries, etc. Romantasy combines the necessary world building and magical elements of fantasy with the heated passions and heartbreaks that come with romance. All fantasy has a degree of realism that makes it believable, and the same should be thought when critics approach the romantic side of the genre.
Now if you want to hate on romantasy more, go right ahead, because at the end of the day, this episode on Call Her Daddy with one of BookTok’s most popular romantasy authors has been one of its most viewed episodes this year.
Fans speculated about SJM’s appearance on the show weeks before Alex Cooper (CHD Host) had even released an official teaser. The smallest bit of interaction from Maas on Instagram was and is enough to put hundreds of thousands of people in a frenzy. And now that she has announced both the 6th and 7th books in the A Court of Thorns and Roses series (with promise of ACOTAR 8 soon to come), her books are flying off the shelf.
The market for the genre might be oversaturated, yes, but it is hard to say that the genre’s popularity will soon fall. With Maas returning to (one of) her most loved series, romantasy’s reign over BookTok will only continue to flourish.