“Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros and “A Court of Thorns and Roses” by Sarah J. Maas The Xavierite
Popularity is never random, and there are always reasons for what readers gravitate toward at a given point in time. In recent years, the romantasy subgenre has taken the publishing world by storm and shows no signs of letting up. The subgenre’s reliability among readers and easy escapism make it marketable but also encourage repetitive perspectives and a lack of diversity.
Romantasy is a subgenre of fantasy and, as the name implies, heavily focuses on romance. It differs from standard fantasy, which centers more on external plot events and magic systems. Romantasy follows the progression of characters’ romantic relationships just as much—if not more—as the fantastical world.
Romantasy is shining under the spotlight, and BookTok is the stage that lifted it there. BookTok is the avid community of readers on TikTok, but all books are not treated equally there.
BookTok is a careful, calculated machine that rewards books not for their writing but for their tropes and “spice level,” a popular way to describe how sexually explicit a book is.
“It is the most reader-centered space I have ever been in in my life, which is amazing—but also terrifying,” said Rebecca Yarros, a popular romantasy author, in an interview with Variety.
BookTok boils books down to their basic tropes to market them quickly and easily. This allows readers to bypass character and plot descriptions in favor of archetypal dynamics like “enemies-to-lovers” and “forbidden love.”
Readers are then able to choose a book they feel familiar with even if they haven’t read it yet. If they know a novel includes their favorite tropes, they pretty much know how the story will go. Romantasy leans toward repetition and unoriginality in this way, but it also establishes reliability with readers.
Reliability is important for readers, especially those who are reading for escapism and nothing else. If a reader opens up a novel in search of comfort and familiarity, they don’t want to be surprised. They want the strong female protagonist, the brooding male love interest, the high stakes, and the happily ever after.
With romantasy, they can reasonably count on those things no matter what title they pick up.
It also helps that the main demographic for romantasy is young women, and these books are written by women nine times out of ten. If a reader can rely on feeling seen and validated through the work they’re reading, it’s no wonder why they would continue to seek out these stories.
Romantasy books are written for the “female gaze,” a term used to describe media that puts women’s thoughts, emotions, and autonomy at the forefront rather than their sex appeal. Female readers feel comfortable reading romantasy, which makes these stories the perfect place to escape to.
In the modern social climate, an increasing number of readers read purely for escapism. Romantasy tends to be written in simple language, which lends itself perfectly to this. Romantasy also never takes place in the real world, making it easier for readers to immerse themselves and forget about current political and societal circumstances.
BookTok promises these novels will give readers a place to insert themselves into tales of intense love and adventure. However, BookTok holds more bias than meets the eye. A book is more likely to go viral if it has popular tropes and sexually explicit scenes, but it’s also more likely to go viral if the author is white.
There are plenty of diverse authors writing diverse romantasy books, but those are never the ones that garner millions of views. The ones afforded that luxury are overwhelmingly white and heteronormative.
Since BookTok influences the publishing industry so much, this spirals into a much larger issue very quickly. If BookTok only popularizes white authors who write from that perspective, the publishing industry will push more stories like this to the forefront because they know it sells.
This further decreases the opportunities given to authors of color and LGBTQ+ authors.
In short, the culprit here is not the romantasy genre itself. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to escape into a magical world where everyone’s hot and in love. If the genre didn’t mean something to a wide range of readers and provide something meaningful, people wouldn’t waste their time reading it.
The problem arrives when the shadow of BookTok and the publishing industry eclipses stories from diverse perspectives. Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros are quintessential romantasy authors, but what about Sara Hashem, Sue Lynn Tan, and Roseanne A. Brown?
Every romantasy reader deserves to see themselves in the stories they read. While BookTok churns out the same perspectives over and over again, it’s up to the reader to check their own biases and remember mass popularity doesn’t need to go hand-in-hand with exclusivity.