Romantasy is All the Rage

A good beach read and an action packed story team up to build a world far more than imagined. They create a genre that defy odds and audiences. Today the Romantasy genre, a hybrid between romance and fantasy, is all the rage with readers wanting more and more of it so much so that there are now bookstores and book conventions dedicated to just this one niche area of the book world. Small but mighty these books are creating maps, guides, and fanbases that connect in real life and virtually around the globe with hundreds of trends and audios for readers to try out and put their own spin on things. 

According to Penguin Books “Rather than treating romance as a subplot, Romantasy places it at the centre. The emotional stakes are just as important as the external conflict.” Born largely on TikTok, Romantasy has found a new home, and it's a publishing phenomenon. It started with and then began picking up steam on the platform’s coined term for the bookwork community: BookTok. This hashtag and virtual space has had a massive pull on increasing the standing of Romantasy books. Now, from mystical lands to the pages of Africa's writers, the genre is finding fresh ground.

South African authors such as Soweto-born Thandi Moagi tell Africa Live they are jumping into the genre, creating their own worlds of knights, dragons,and love stories. For her home is where the fantasy begins and her romance novels are largely set in Lesotho and South Africa, but her first venture into Romantasy brings African and Greek mythology together. While other authors like the Wisani and the Bafokeng Brothers draw on a real mountain in Lesotho, and she lets her mind run wild with the possibilities of the caves and mystical things happening in its gates.

Moagi states "South Africa has so many different amazing cultures when it comes to mythologies and fables and folklore," one author notes, "so being able to introduce almost a witchy approach and pair it with the mythologies that we have in our own country." She remembers growing up with her grandmother's stories, like Digoloshi, and how essential those tales are to shaping the next generation of storytellers.

And while Romantasy imports fill bookstores, readers are hungry for stories closer to home, rooted in the myths and folklore they grew up with.  The genre's rise has also given birth to dedicated spaces in the tristate with bookstores built around romantasy-only shelves, from Pennsylvania such as Page Burners and Cupid’s Bookshop to New Jersey where they have Kiss&Tale, Romantasy Bookstore and, where readers can find these worlds, meet the authors,and connect with fellow fans in person, not just online.

Romantasy is more than a publishing trend. It's an opportunity to take centuries of folklore beyond the page into film, television, gaming, and markets. As a new generation of writers is showing that fantasy doesn't have to follow one path to capture the world's imagination.