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When it was released in late January, Onyx Storm – the third book in Rebecca Yarros’s The Empyrean series – became the fastest selling adult novel in 20 years. It sold more than 2.7m copies in its first week, according to the New York Times. Across the US, fans lined up in the cold outside of Target stores to nab special edition copies. In the UK, there were midnight-release parties where attendees wore costumes, made friendship bracelets and applied dragon-themed temporary tattoos.
The Empyrean series is a prime example of romantasy – a genre that blends high fantasy and romance. It follows the cadet Violet Sorrengail as she trains to be a dragon rider. Fast-paced and detailed, the books boast mythical creatures and magic. There’s also a lot of sex. On more than one occasion, sturdy wooden furniture is broken during vigorous bouts of lovemaking. Violet climaxes every time with her generous lover, Xaden. Violet and Xaden’s dragons are mates – and they have sex too.
Romantasy has exploded in popularity in recent years. It’s also lucrative. In May 2024, Bloomsbury publishing announced that it had its highest sales year ever thanks in large part to Sarah J Maas, whose romantasy series A Court of Thorns and Roses (known by fans as Acotar), Crescent City and Throne of Glass saw a 161% sales increase in the 2023-2024 fiscal year.
Fans say it’s easy to get hooked. Emily Porter, a photographer based in West Virginia, started reading romantasy in the summer of 2024. She had never been a big romance fan, but loved fantasy stories. “I was seeing those Acotar books everywhere – in stores and on friends’ Instagram stories – so I figured I’d see what all the fuss was about,” she says.
Although Porter had been an avid reader as a teenager, after college she didn’t read much – maybe 10 books a year. She finished all five books of the Acotar series in less than a week. Then, she began tearing through other romantasy series. In the eight months since she first cracked open Acotar, she says she has read nearly 150 fantasy romance books.
“I went from being embarrassed about not reading books at all to being embarrassed about reading over 20 books a month,” Porter says.
Highly sexual fantasy stories are nothing new. But romantasy is part of a recent wave of entertainment that makes sex look not just enjoyable, but fun for women. The genre tends to have strong, opinionated heroines; hot male protagonists who ask about consent; diverse characters; queer storylines; and mutually enjoyable couplings.
And for some of its readers, it’s improving their real, non-magical sex lives.
Vanessa Marin, a sex therapist and host of the podcast Pillow Talks, says she started reading romantasy novels because so many of her clients and followers were talking about them: “It got to a point where it was a professional obligation.” She’s heard from a lot of readers who say their lives and relationships have benefited from romantasy.
“I’ve had a lot of women tell me: ‘Previously, I felt like I had low libido or even no libido, and these books feel like they’re bringing me back to life,’” Marin says.
Reading about sex causes readers to think about sex more. This in turn causes them to desire it more. “It’s keeping sex top of mind,” she explains.
Women have told Marin the books have encouraged them to explore their sexuality in ways they haven’t before, whether it’s trying out a new position they read about, or centering their own pleasure during sex like many of the genre’s protagonists do.
Porter says romantasy hasn’t changed her sex life, but it’s reinforced her confidence in her own long-term relationship. “The tropes and elements I love the most all remind me of my own relationship with my partner,” she says.
Dragons, magicians and fairies abound in romantasy, but the genre’s recent explosion has produced more unusual stories. One of Porter’s favorite authors, Mallory Dunlin, wrote a book called The Gardener and the Water-horse, which, according to Porter, features “an immortal being who can shift into a man, and a horse, but really he’s a lake – like a body of water – who’s also a virgin”.
These playful, surreal, magical elements are part of what makes romantasy so appealing, Marin says. “Most of us tend to take sex very seriously, so to have something that feels fun, playful, lighthearted and whimsical, that’s a really great thing for a lot of people.”
Romantasy isn’t the only kind of horny escapism consumers are flocking to. The first three series of Bridgerton are three of Netflix’s 10 most popular shows of all time. Romantic TV leads like Andrew Scott (Fleabag), Katherine Moennig (The L Word) and Lucien Laviscount (Emily in Paris) voice breathy episodes for the audio erotica app Quinn, which describes itself as “created by women, for the world”.
In Laviscount’s episode, the Regent, he voices Peter Kelly, a notorious jewel thief who “recalls a series of thrilling encounters with fellow thief Katerina Laszlo”. Moennig voices Sam Shaw, a reclusive rockstar “and you are tasked with ghostwriting her memoir”.
Quinn’s listeners reportedly tune in for 24m minutes every month. On a Reddit forum dedicated to discussing the app, users say the content helps them explore and reconnect with their sexuality. “[Quinn] literally woke me up,” wrote one user. “I thought my libido had mostly gone to sleep.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, much of the recent content that shows women enjoying sex is made by women. When sex scenes are “produced or written by a woman, that’s really different than when it’s written or produced by a man”, says Christina Marshall, a bookstagram expert and self-described “romantasy fiend”. Erotic content produced by women tends to foreground women’s desire and consent, she says.
The sex also tends to be safe. Faye Keegan, CEO and co-founder of Dipsea, another audio erotica app (“stories made by women, for women”), says their content shows situations that are sexually, emotionally and physically safe for women.
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For example, Keegan says, “If two people are going to hook up, and they’re in a semi-public space, let’s make sure there’s a lock on the door and that you can hear the door close and the lock click.” And if a man and a woman meet and spontaneously decide to hook up, Keegan says Dipsea scripts “try to give the listener a perspective into the male POV so they can hear his voice, and know he’s a cool, good guy. He’s not a villain in this story”.
Nevertheless, stories that feature sexually aggressive or very persistent male suitors are also popular. For instance, a lot of male romantasy heroes are possessive and hyper-fixated on their partners. When Xander sees Violet talking with her ex-boyfriend in Onyx Storm, for example, he uses his magical shadow powers to slam the ex into a wall.
Marshall says these characteristics are green flags in a fantasy book, but red flags in real life. “I don’t actually want some stalker, ultra-possessive person,” she says. She argues that these characteristics are an exaggerated way of showing a man’s devotion.
“In a fantasy book, he’s going to burn down the whole world and kill all these people for you,” she says. “In reality, you just want someone who’s going to put your best interests first.”
Many romantasy fans say the genre doesn’t get the respect it deserves. Marshall recalls being at a reading where a man described Acotar as “fairy smut”. (The protagonists of the series are faeries – hot, immortal magical beings – and there is a lot of sex.) The comment annoyed Marshall. “What makes you think that this epic fantasy is fairy smut, when you would never call Game of Thrones dragon smut?” she says. To her, it is part of a “longstanding pattern of dismissing anything women love as frivolous”.
The idea that romance books were some sort of low-brow, shameful pastime was never accurate, says Leah Koch, co-owner of the Ripped Bodice, the first romance bookstore to open in the United States. “[Media] was pushing that narrative, but it is not really true.”
Still, romance connoisseurs acknowledge that this moment is different. Koch says that in the 10 years she’s been running the Ripped Bodice, she’s seen readers attitudes shift from “proud, but insular”, to “yelling from the rooftops, and saying: ‘If this is something you have a problem with, you’re the weird one.’”
Marshall says Instagram and BookTok – TikTok users who post videos about books – have taken romance and romantasy to a new level. BookTok was key to the supersonic success of Maas and Colleen Hoover, the author of It Ends With Us, for example. “It became a new forum for readers to connect, and amplified a conversation globally that existed already, but was happening in the privacy of our homes.”
In addition to this bottom-up pressure, Keegan, of Dipsea, says there have been more women in positions of power bringing these stories to broader audiences. “Bridgerton is a great example,” she says. “Shonda Rhimes had the budget and the sway to make that kind of content. These stories aren’t new, but being able to bring this big-budget Netflix experience, that’s what’s new.”
Fantasy and period pieces also offer a much needed form of escape at a time when women’s health, safety, gender identity, sexuality and reproductive rights are being widely threatened.
“The shittier things get on earth, the more people want to go fly with dragons and divorce themselves from reality,” says Koch. Contemporary romance – where two regular people with charmingly twee jobs meet and fall in love – isn’t enough of an escape anymore. “Sure, he’s a cute baker and she owns a flower shop and whatever, but still, you wonder if his mom voted for Trump,” Koch says.
The desire for female-centered romantic and erotic content doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Experts predict genre fiction like romantasy will continue to grow in popularity. Netflix recently shared a sneak peek of Bridgerton season 4, and a Fourth Wing TV series in early stages of development.
“The real world is exhausting and stressful,” says Porter. “I’d rather spend my free time being immersed in fantastical worlds with creative magic systems, adventures, happy endings, and best of all – yearning.”
