Even the Wall Street Journal is weighing in on “romantasy.” (Thanks to Kat for this link.)
Reactor shared a short story from Nisa Shawl’s Everfair universe.
“Fantasy science for the win.” Judith Tarr writes columns on various topics for Reactor, including movie reviews. Here is her slightly acerbic take on 13th Child.
For Harlan Ellison fans everywhere, File770 has published the Table of Contents for the upcoming anthology The Last Dangerous Visions.
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, endorsed the Communist Party in the upcoming British elections, because she assumed they, like her, were anti-trans. The Communist Party said, “No, thank you,” to the endorsement and published a clarification about their stance on trans rights.
The New York Times shares graphic novel recommendations.
I was curious about caimans, so I looked them up and learned quite a bit. Now you will too. I think there are some caimans in Floria in the wild, which were brought there (probably not legally) as pets, but that may be just another Florida-tourist legend.
Nerds of the Feather talks to Samantha Mills about her Six Books.
Atlas Obscura, one of my go-to websites, suggests using writing to engage with nature. First of all, there’s good writing instruction here; secondly, might this be a fun thing to do with kids during summer?
Here’s one cool recipe for a hot summer night; rainbow veggie baguette. It looks like the site has lots of warm-weather recipes.
So, if the WSJ article is accurate, romantasy is just a heavy slather of pornographic, wish-fulfillment fantasy layered onto a standard (or substandard) adventure plot? And this is the new “big thing” in speculative fiction? That’s very disheartening. I wasn’t sure what distinguished it from the regular romance-tinged stories that have occupied at least 80% of the genre novel space over the last decade, but I guess this is saying that rather than the borderline soft porn stories, romantasy is the hard stuff. And popularized via Tik-Tok. Good grief, as Charlie Brown would say.
I don’t think it’s that at all. I’ve read cozy romantasy, and well as what I’d call urban fantasy romantasy. It’s just fantasy (and its many subgenres) with a higher focus on Happily Ever After either in each novel or each trilogy. Now, in fairness, I read and write books that could be called romantasy. But I would definitely say that romantasy is not “the hard stuff” at all. I consider Tesha Geddes a romantasy writer, some of T.M. Baumgartner’s work (specifically her stand alones like Dragon Freehold and She has a shifter one out too that might qualify. It’s been a while since I read it.) Geddes is definitely in the cozy realm. In better known authors, Ilona Andrews has some that would be romantasy and I’d also include some of Patricia Briggs’ work. It’s not that romantasy is new–it’s just a new way of saying romance is set in a fantasy world or fantasy characters are engaged in mysteries that also include romance. That may just be my definition, but I would definitely include an older book such as Briggs’ “When Demons Walk” as romantasy and it’s for sure not hard stuff at all. I think it’s just a tag to help readers find what they want. Other genre words help too: urban fantasy, cozy, fantasy, epic romantasy, etc. In a lot of ways, this new romantasy used to be called “paranormal romance.”
ReacTor has an article by R. Nassor that offers a different take on romantasy. As opposed to the Journal, this downplays the steamy content and says the two important factors are (1) takes place in a secondary world and (2) guarantees a happy ending. If it’s in a contemporary or near contemporary world, then it’s urban fantasy or paranormal romance, according to this argument, which is trying to set the genre boundaries. And it’s absolutely for romance fans (who may or may not also be fantasy fans) and therefore *must* meet the expectations of those readers, the most important of which is the happy ending. So this sounds like some romantasy could shade over into the “cozy fantasy” marketing category depending on how much or how little action/adventure tropes play a part in the story. I guess with the present looking bad and the future worse, it’s understandable that people flock to wish-fulfillment type fantasies for relief.
Yes, I think this is closer to what romantasy is–or at least what I look for when I’m looking for a romantasy book. I read a lot of cozy mysteries (paranormal or not) and the romantasy tag tells me if I’ll get a happily ever after.