In this episode of Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons SFF criticism podcast, Jenny Hamilton and Anushree Nande join Dan Hartland to discuss romance and romantasy. A huge proportion of science fiction and fantasy works and sales are now accounted for by this form. But what is its appeal? What is it doing? And where is it going?

Transcript

Critical Friends Episode 22: Romancing The Genre

Dan Hartland: Welcome to Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons SFF criticism podcast. I'm Dan Hartland, and in this episode I'll be joined by the writer and editor Anushree Nande and the critic and Reactor columnist Jenny Hamilton.

In every episode of Critical Friends, we discuss SFF reviewing: what it is, why we do it, how it's going. In this episode, we turn our attention to that much discussed, but weirdly under-attended-to publishing phenomenon, romantasy. 

A huge proportion of science fiction and fantasy works and sales are now accounted for by this form. But what is its appeal? What is it doing? And where is it going?

Jenny and Anushree talk to me about romantasy, its readers and writers, its tropes and its prose styles—and in the process start to deconstruct what we mean when we talk about romantasy … and what the reactions against it might tell us, too. 

But we began with a confession.

[Musical sting]

Dan Hartland: OK, so let's begin this conversation with a confession. And the confession is mine, which is that I don't really read romantasy. So I am an ignorant in this conversation, I'll be entirely reliant upon your reading and your expertise. 

You know, I've read a little bit of Maas, I've read a little bit of Yarros, but I can't say that I’m steeped in it. But the reason that I wanted to have this conversation is because it strikes me that an awful lot of people are, and sometimes the critical conversation that exists within science fiction and fantasy—or what was once science fiction and fantasy, we can get to that—doesn't pay attention to romantasy and romance-inflected works in a way proportionate to the volume of the stuff, the prominence of the stuff, in the publishing landscape. 

So should we start there? Because it seems to me really germane to this conversation in general. What do you perceive to be the position of romantasy in the general critical conversation? You know, how do you find your spaces to talk about this stuff? 

Jenny Hamilton: Yeah, it's a good question. I would say—and, you know, this isn't really based on anything, people have been pretty nice—I think we've reached a point in SF where people sort of know it's probably sexist to be terrible about romance. 

Still, nevertheless, I tend to assume that most people who I don't specifically know are into romance are potentially going to be a little sniffy about it. And I am not always … you know, I'm not always super excited to sort of have the defensive conversation. 

But I would say until very, very recently—within the last five years, let's say—there has been quite a lot of SF romance that the genre has just completely ignored, that SF has completely ignored. And that’s … you know, paranormal romance has been around for so, so long. And some of the earliest romance novels that I ever read when I was getting into romance around 2012, 2013 were science fiction: Alyssa Cole's Off the Grid series was one of the first romance series I ever read at all, and then Meljean Brook’s Guardian series as well, which is very, very … I remember it being very good, I guess I'll revisit it soon and find out! 

So the fact that romance is in the critical conversation at all to me feels very new. 

Dan Hartland: And Anushree, does that map with your experience? Because I know that you don't just review and read science fiction—you read quite widely and you review quite widely—so do you see what Jenny's talking about? That kind of sniffiness, is that wider than just SF? 

Anushree Nande: It is, I think because, because I come from—and I hate this term, I hate the term “literary” because it feels so, you know, exclusive. But because I come from that kind of creative writing background and reading a lot of what I would say is literary fiction along with genre fiction, there's the expectation that I wouldn't be reading … I would only be reading serious genre fiction, whatever that is. 

Though I do have to say at this point that I am quite new to ... I would still say I'm quite new to romance, because in India growing up, I mean I read all the Meg Cabot books while I was in school, which I loved. It was great, but we didn't have access to a whole lot of them. Sophie Kinsella was probably my gateway into sort of adult romcom. But then after that, the sort of access that we got just kind of dropped off.

So it's a genre I'm sort of rediscovering from just before the pandemic when I read, um, Beth O'Leary's The Flatshare. 

Jenny Hamilton: Oh!

Anushree Nande: Which I was like, “Oh, this is such a great book, and why have I not been reading more of these?” So I am, again, I would still say quite fairly new to it in the past few years and for SFF Romance even more. But I do agree with the sniffy sort of attitude: People are surprised when I tell them what I'm reading sometimes.

Dan Hartland: And you're not alone, though, in being kind of new-ish to this. It's been—I mean, you will know better than I—but it's been, what, the last kind of five, six years where the sales figures, for example—there's one metric to track—for this stuff has really taken off for romantasy in particular. 

Whereas I completely agree with Jenny that, actually, romance in speculative genres has been there forever. You know, I think of Carmilla, right? Like, the idea that the Le Fanu is not in some way an early romantasy! It simply is.

So it's always been there, but it has a new prominence now and it is attracting a lot of new readers. So one of the questions that I wanted to get into here is what that's all about, what this most recent kind of resurgence is doing—how it's working. So I thought we could start, Jenny, with your most recent review, that you came to me and said, “Hey, do you want this thing?” and which is of Into the Midnight Wood by Alexandra McCollum.

It's a really interesting thing, because we batted it back and forth a little bit because I was like, “Yeah, but what's the speculative content here?” And you were like, “Eh!” So talk to us a little bit about that book, your review of that, but also what it tells us—what it doesn't tell us!—about how romance and speculative fiction are sort of smooshing together here. 

Jenny Hamilton: Sure. So Alexandra McCollum's book belongs to, I think, the less visible strand of what we're calling romantasy. It feels to me like there are kind of two divergent paths. 

I made a pretty big spreadsheet of 2026 romantic releases, and I kind of categorize them by which of these two strands, if either, they fell into. It's a fairly even split between these sort of cozy, often small-town low stakes—what Charlie Jane Anders recently called near stakes, which I thought was really a good intervention. In my experience, those tend to have more queer pairings, like queer central pairings. And then on the other side, these very sort of epic secondary world fantasies, extremely big kingdom-saving stakes, often trials, and the heroine is in captivity. Those are some of the common tropes, and those tend to be sort of grindingly, heterosexual. 

It's been interesting to see those two different strands because they have such different valences, I guess, in terms of stakes, in terms of how they approach the central relationship. Often those romantasy books have these really sort of like dire and torture-y relationships between the hero and the heroine. And then, as I address in the review of the Alexandra McCollum book, the more cozy ones tend to be very sweetie-sweet. I think, where they go wrong, they can be overly sweet for me. 

So it's an interesting breakdown. The poles are very polar. 

Dan Hartland: Are these two different types using the … well, the first question is are they using the speculative in interesting ways or is it backdrop?

Jenny Hamilton: I don't really know how to answer that. I think SF is pretty committed to the idea that they're not using the speculative in interesting ways. I hear that a lot from the speculative side and people will say, “Well, the reason I don't read romantasy is because it's not good enough speculative fiction.”

I don't know. 

Dan Hartland: Which leads me to my second question, which I'm more interested in, which is how does it use it. I suspect that these books use it, use their speculative elements, differently—which is why, as you say, traditional SFF critics aren't even perceiving how it's used, because it's not used in the way that they're familiar with.

The reason I ask is because, as I say, we batted back your review of the McCollum a couple of times, because it holds its speculation kind of at arm's-length almost, right? Like, it doesn't explain it. It doesn't … it doesn't “worldbuild” it. It's just is, it's just there as part of the fabric of what is actually the focus of the novel.

So is that something that happens a lot? Is it unique to this book? Can you talk a bit about that kind of texture? 

Jenny Hamilton: It depends. I do think that the cozy side tends to think of the speculative elements as backdrop, but I don't think that's unique to romantasy. I mean, I'm thinking of some of the cozy fantasy that we've had so much discourse about where the worldbuilding, again, kind of varies. I think choosing a D&D style world is one common thing that folks will do. 

But I don't really see a huge difference in how the genre reacts to books that are more heavily worldbuilt in this kinda strand of romantasy. Like, Sara Raasch has some, a book came out that was called The Entanglement of Rival Wizards, I want to say, which was quite heavily worldbuilt.

So, I mean. It depends. Again, I'm sorry, that's such a boring answer! But it is my answer, I'm afraid. It really depends. Some authors engage quite a lot with the worldbuilding, and others do have it as a backdrop. And I will add as well, like: deliberately have it as a backdrop. I mean, the stories they want to tell are sort of regular, personal stories that are just happening in this fantasy world rather than … you know, it's definitely a very deliberate choice rather than getting into these, you know, big world changing stakes. 

Dan Hartland: And I find that a really interesting kind of characteristic of some of these books—which is, I think, part and parcel of another move which is happening in quote-unquote genre circles, which is that literary fiction is increasingly using SFF as its own kind of backdrop and it is interested in projecting different kinds of stories onto these canvases, too. So I think that it is a much wider thing. 

You know, we see a lot of kind of pearl-clutching about, you know, romantasy is somehow kind of stealing science fiction from its own readers …

Jenny Hamilton: Colonizing the genre is an exciting phrase I would love to never hear again!

Dan Hartland: I wasn't gonna use the words!

Jenny Hamilton: Several people have said that to me and I hate it so much, 

Dan Hartland: Especially as it's happening all over. Like, one of the things that's happened to the genre in the last five years in general is that all its walls have come down. We are focusing, or some people focus, on romantasy, I think because of the number of units it sells; but it's in some ways actually not that unique.

But, initially talking about number of units sold, one of the things that happens, I think, is that—and you can both tell me if you agree with this—we find that marketing departments start to use the word “romantasy,” or mention romance, for books that perhaps in some years past wouldn't have been thought of as part of this at all. 

Anushree, your most recent review for us is of a book—The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains by Reena McCarty—which kind of holds out the possibility of romance and then almost, you think, doesn't or didn't deliver. Do you wanna talk a bit about that kind of experience?

Anushree Nande: Mm-hmm. This is not the first time I've kind of got into the misguided or, you know, just wrong marketing. You know, I understand it, because, having been on the publishing side as well, having been in marketing and publicity teams, it is hard to get eyeballs on books. And I know that.

But I think it also just does a disservice to the book and the story if you are going to label it in a way that is not as true. Because if you are gonna get people there with the expectation that a certain storyline is gonna play out and then it doesn't, it's more likely to disappoint them than if they would've maybe given it a chance anyway.

So this is not my first experience with this. It's just happened to be the first book I'm reviewing that I got to talk about because of the blurb for this. It talks up a “second chance romance” quite a lot, and in a lot of the early reviews, you know, it kind of ended up in the tropes. 

I usually do not check tropes of a certain book before I read it. I may read the blurb or the synopsis, just because I want to know—obviously want to know—what it's about. But I try as much as possible to avoid the tropes, just because I'd like to discover them on my own and then see how they're subverted or not, or played around with.

But for this, I did see it before I read it. So then when this character came along—the ex-boyfriend, who's the Fae—and I thought, you know, this is OK. This is where it starts. He's gonna be an important character. And he does come, he's introduced, at a very important moment. It's the moment when she finds out that she's been betrayed and she's gonna have to return to the faerie world that she thought she'd lost forever. And so it's an impactful sort of introduction. 

And then, as you go, she returns to the world that she's not been in for a few years, and then for most of the story, a lot of the story, they're just not … they're not together! And she's with this other person whom we don't know. He's got a shadowy sort of identity, which will, you know, come into play later. But there is chemistry between these two characters as well. So my first thought was, “Oh God, not a love triangle.” Because, you know, it's like: “Are they back?!” 

To be fair to the author this was a really nice way of doing one, if there was going to be one. It is not a love triangle as such. It's just a character who sort of re-encounters someone from her past who is very special to her at a time when she's a very different person than she has realized. And so she also finds sort of this connection to someone she may not have found as the person she was in the past. So it's quite an interesting sort of interaction. But there is no second chance romance! There are interactions, obviously, and they do sort of return to some of the old patterns and whatever; but it's not an important story thread, nor is it something that I would title as second chance romance. 

And I thought that did the story a disservice because I think a lot of people are gonna go into it expecting it. And I did see it in some of the reviews on Goodreads as well, and they were like, “Oh, you were expecting this to be playing more of a prominent part and then it wasn't.” So yeah.

Dan Hartland: I mean, this always happens, right? I'm just looking at the Nielsen data for 2025 and SF had like a 41% jump in sales from its previous biggest year.

And this is purely driven, The Bookseller believes, by romantasy sales. You know, this is, this is a huge driver of genre sales figures right now. So it is inevitable—and I've said before in these episodes, I don't want to kind of diss our friends in publisher marketing departments. You know, they've got a job to do.

Anushree Nande: Absolutely not. 

Jenny Hamilton: An increasingly difficult job. 

Dan Hartland: Absolutely. Right? 

Anushree Nande: Yes. 

Dan Hartland: Yeah. And so they are going to use what tools and what trends there are. But yes, it's interesting to me that I think some books are being labeled as romantic, and this is a double-edged sword. It may result in sales, but it might also result in sniffiness towards certain texts simply because they just happen to be being published in these five or ten years, right? If they were published five or ten years ago, they wouldn't have been labelled. 

So to some extent, I wonder: Are we kind of creating … is romantasy a thing that we're just imagining in our head? To what extent is this a substantive turn in the literature and to what extent is it something that's always been around that we're just noticing more? 

[Musical sting]

Dan Hartland: Because there are two aspects to this. There are books that get sold and then there are texts that are written. 

And I wonder, you know, is there something here that … obviously something is happening in terms of the marketing. But are the texts that different? Where are we looking to see the separation between, if such a separation exists, between traditional SFF and this new thing called romantasy?

Jenny Hamilton: I mean, again, I think it depends. I think—if we're talking about the secondary world, sprayed edges, dire stakes, trials, captivity strand as romantasy—those to me are drawing on a lot of YA tropes. But also, I mean, it’s not like that kind of thing hasn't existed in SF before. But I do think a lot of authors are being sort of funneled towards writing that kind of book. 

I mean, I've seen a lot of authors say, “Oh, my editor asked me, do I have like a romance that I would potentially wanna write,” which is interesting to me. I mean, I think that authors could be at anything, and this is sort of right now where they're being nudged. 

I do think the presence in SFF of explicit sex scenes isn't new, but it's gotten a lot more common, just again in the last five or ten years. And I've seen that with authors who are coming from fan fiction backgrounds—like, Freya Marske is a good example of that, but others as well. So I think it was a trend in SF before the sprayed-edge strand of romantasy blew up, but that it's accelerated. 

Dan Hartland: And is this something that's happening initially—I dunno whether you are able to sort of map this—is this something that's also happening elsewhere? You know, are we seeing a bunch of crime novels that have loads of romance in them? Are we seeing a load of … Romance doesn't seem to be having, for example, a moment in literary fiction, which is something that I read quite a bit of. So if this is something that is happening, I mean, first and foremost, is it something that is happening only in SF right now? Do we think that we can say that?

Anushree Nande: I'm not much of a crime reader, so I don't actually … I think when I say genre fiction, I'm mostly, again, like a science fiction fantasy reader. Like you said, literary fiction has always … they are using a lot more of the stylistic elements of SFF, for example. But I don't think the romance has crossed over.

I did read this piece on Lit Hub, I forget who the author is. It said romance is zeitgeisting and I agree. I think a lot of it is publishers are realizing that having sort of like a romantic narrative arc is going to be a good selling point to get people, get maybe romance readers, reading a genre they normally wouldn't, or like a kind of story that they wouldn't.

So I think it is being—again, I don't know, I haven't like spoken to anyone who can sort of corroborate this—but I do have a feeling that there is more of a push to include at least subplots that have sort of romantic elements in them. Though personally, I love reading romance novels when there's a narrative strand that makes sense for the story overall, not just one that's there to be there—because I have read some books recently that did fall under that as well—but it is seeming a lot more prevalent. Again, not sure whether it's also outside science fiction and fantasy, because I don't read a whole lot outside of those genres. 

Dan Hartland: I think one explanation for why it might be—and again, like we're all to some extent genre readers, so there might be blind spots in our reading of course, but it does seem that this is a particular phenomenon within those kinds of science fiction and fantasy spaces—and one explanation is the one that Jenny mentioned, which is that fan fiction has trained an entire generation of readers who may not have been science fiction and fantasy readers without fan fiction. They wouldn't have been reading Clarke and Asimov, right? If they hadn't read fan fiction, if they hadn't been on AO3, they'd have been reading something else. 

Jenny Hamilton: I don't think that many people are going from AO3 to Clarke and Asimov. I speak for myself, I'm choosing not to go to Clarke and Asimov 'cause I don't want to!

Dan Hartland: I agree, right? 

Anushree Nande: Same here. 

Dan Hartland: So, one of the objections of core science fiction readers is, “Oh no, more people are reading science fiction and fantasy.” Right? Like, that's one explanation: that fan fiction has influenced the professional space to such an extent that romance-inflected books are driving fifty percent increases in genre sales.

Jenny Hamilton: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a factor. I don't think it's the driver. I've heard a lot of romantasy readers in the Maas-Yarros sphere saying that they have not been romance readers and they haven't been science fiction fantasy readers, either. So I think … it seems to me that a lot of these are kind of just new readers to genre fiction, written broadly. Anushree, is that kind of your sense as well? 

Anushree Nande: Yeah, I agree. And it's great because they're coming to genre fiction completely without misconceptions or preconceived notions and sort of building from there. So I think it's interesting, for sure. 

Dan Hartland: So one of the things that, you know, science fiction critics speak about a lot is something called reading protocols, right? I mean, it's not just science fiction critics, but science fiction critics are particularly obsessed with the idea—the idea that there is a set of ways to read science fiction. 

And I agree: One of the things that romantasy, but also the kind of literary turn is doing, is changing all of that, that there aren't these sort of fixed reading protocols to approach these texts with. 

What interests me, though, is that, from what you both say, there is this idea that romantasy is additive somehow—it is doing something new. So its readers were not romance readers before and they were not fantasy readers before. They are romantasy readers. 

Jenny Hamilton: Again, I can't prove that! That's my sense. I don't wanna … yeah! 

Dan Hartland: I think it's a fair bet because of simply, you know, a function of scale. The number of books being published, the numbers of books being sold, the number of careers being made, but also just—you know, we're having this conversation—the number of conversations being caused by these texts suggests that this is something new. It's something additive because of the explosion. It's not building on something that previously existed. It is itself a new thing. 

So let's run with that a little bit, because what I would love to get a sense of from you both really is … So a brass tack question: Why do you read this stuff? What is it that it gives a reader? And then the second question, which builds out from that a little bit in terms of romantasy specifically: What is it that it does, do we think, that attracts so many new readers? 

Like, if we're saying that romantasy readers did not read Mills & Boon before and they did not read Isaac Asimov before, why is it that we think they are reading romantasy? What is it that's unique to this particular type of literature that is having this effect?

Anushree Nande: So even now, if someone asks me what romantasy is and what's the difference between, say, like a fantasy romance or a romantasy, or a romantic fantasy, I think all these terms are … I would not know how to sort of differentiate or like what makes one?

Jenny Hamilton: Nobody does!

Anushree Nande: I think a lot of those are just tags. So I think. If from what you, you know, if the, the, the, the two strands that you were talking about. I haven't actually read that many from the sprayed edges, bigger stakes, nation states strand; I read a lot of it in YA back when—obviously, there was like a huge explosion of that—but I don't think I've … I'm trying to think of … I don't think I've read any romantasy that fits into that sort of thing. 

So it's mostly just stuff that fits into the more cozy—I would say more magical—romantasy sort of thing. So for me, I think for example, discovering someone like India Holton, who was probably one of the first authors that I read—because I was unwell and it was one of those like phases where you're too ill to do things, but you're not so ill that you have to sleep all the time. And, and, I had India Holton's Dangerous Damsels, the first two books were out at the time, and I had them on my Kindle. And I was like, “You know what, this might be a great time to start these.” And I just … I couldn't stop reading. 

And I think for me it's just the fact that—because I wouldn't call myself a historical romance reader either, because the only ones I have read are the ones she writes—for me, I think it's just the combination of having magic and then you have this comedy of manners and then you have all these like allusions to literature and that kind of thing. It's basically designed for someone like me, if I'm honest. 

So I think it's a kind of escapism that's kind of rooted a lot more in human emotion, more than just a fantasy is—like, a traditional one. 

Jenny Hamilton: One of my all time favorite romance novelists is Rose Lerner, who writes historical romance—so, Anushree, if you need a recommendation, she's, oh, fantastic; I'm gonna email you after! But she, at one point, and she doesn't remember this and she denies it now, but I swear to God at one point she said that romances are about solving an emotional problem. And I find that really, really satisfying—when a romance can propose a really knotty, emotional problem and then unpick it over the course of the book.

That is what I love about romance, and when romantasy is good that's what I like about it. And when any kind of romance is good, that's what I like about it, its ability to do that. And I think that romance has always taken emotion seriously, and it has always taken the human body seriously.

You know, I also read a lot of literary fiction, and I think—and this is changing, I'm definitely seeing this change—but within literary fiction the tradition has sort of been the body as grotesque, and sort of something you want to be separate from. And even sex scenes in literary fiction have often been quite sort of grim and punishing.

And so one thing that I loved when I came to romance—and this I think is very true in fan fiction as well—is that there's a compassion and an interest in how embodiment works, which is a kind of pretentious way to talk about sex scenes. You know, they're also sexy, they're also fun to read in that way. But those are two elements that I feel that romance does well and, in the best of romantasy or any romance, those are the elements that really draw me in. 

Dan Hartland: Is there something about the magical setting—the secondary world setting in the sprayed-edges or just that cozy, magical, almost fairy world of the first type—is there something about that setting which enables the kind of emotional problem-solving in it, or unlocks the emotional problem-solving in a different way to a historical romance? 

I suppose what I'm trying to understand from you is why romantasy? Why not … Why are we not just reading historical romances? Why are we not reading contemporary romances? Why are we reading romantasy, romances with dragons and elves? Is there anything about that or is it just, as the accusations go, is it just set dressing? 

Jenny Hamilton: I don't think it's just set dressing. I really, really don't. I mean, as we've been talking, I've been thinking more about some of the romantasies that I've been reading, and the worldbuilding just varies so wildly. Sometimes it's really, really involved. Other times it's, you know, exactly like any subset of fantasy and science fiction. So I don't necessarily think that there's a big difference there. 

Why elves? The answer is the Sarah J. Maas book. Why dragons? The answer is the Rebecca Yarros book. These are really marketing trends. I think a lot of this is going to change as time goes on. I don't think there's anything inherent about the fae or dragons that … it's just what happened to happen. 

Dan Hartland: There are two things that we should dig into a little bit there. Then the first is the tropiness, or the alleged tropiness, of romantasy. Right? So in answer to my question, “Why elves?”, Jenny, your answer—and I know you don't mean it!—but your answer is, “Because one person wrote a really successful book about elves, so now all these other people are writing about elves.” There must be something more! So that's my first question.

And then my second question is more about where this will go. So we've had these very successful, kind of huge books—the Yarros and the Maas in particular, but others too. So where is all this gonna go? Given that the accusations of tropiness, whether or not they're fair or otherwise, where can we see this heading? Is it gonna escape the tropiness? Is there no tropiness to begin with? 

I'm really interested in, if the secondary world and the magic isn't backdrop—it is additive—but equally, if the particular expressions of the magic and the secondary worlds are influenced merely by the financial success of previous books, how are we squaring that circle? 

Anushree Nande: I actually had a thought to one of the questions we were discussing just before: you know, why a fantasy world, why magic? And I think it could just be, I think it's just as sometimes as simple as, it allows for a larger possibility of what's possible. And also how a lot of the magic, or the way fantastical elements work, are linked to either nature or they're linked to some sort of emotional energy or something within.

So it's all sort of interconnected to what we were talking about in terms of the emotions and in terms of how the focus is also on that emotional journey that is given equal weight. So I think a lot of these interconnections work really well because it's then possible for us to explore the limits and the ways we can stretch the possibilities of reality in that world.

So for example, at least the first of the Sangu Mandanna books, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches—because I reread the first book recently because, you know, I had the ARC for the second one and I didn't get to it in time last year, so I thought I'd reread the first one (I didn't know they weren't linked, I just didn't read the blurb!): I realized that the first one does a really good job of embedding the magic as something that is linked to her personal growth, that is linked to emotions, but it's also something you pull from nature. So it's all like in connection. And I think the magic in the second one as well was also just … it was different and it was as sort of intrinsically linked to the characters and it wasn't just, you know, like a fun element added in.

So I think, for something like that, it works really well to sort of parallel or intersect with the journey of the character. 

Jenny Hamilton: I think you're so bang on. I think you're exactly right. I think the—God, you're so, so right! The way that the speculative elements braid together with and reinforce the emotional arc I think is—again, when romantasy is at its best—is something it does really well. And with those two books that you're talking about, the second one—the, uh, Guide to Magical Innkeeping? I can't remember the first bit, the but … 

Anushree Nande: A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping!

Jenny Hamilton: A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping! Which I also enjoyed, but I felt like that one, for me, those two elements unbraided at the end in a way that I found unsatisfying. So the emotional arc felt like it resolved in a completely different way than the magical arc, but we were asked to believe that they were twined together. 

Anushree Nande: Completely agree. Completely. Because I was like … I was satisfied at the end of the first one and the second one, the way it ended, I was like … !

But also, like talking about the romance, I thought in the first book it was braided in a lot more. 

Jenny Hamilton: Agreed. 

Anushree Nande: And the second one, it just sort of felt like there had to be a romantic arc, and so just put these two people … like, I didn't feel much chemistry between the two of them, either. So I think it can, you know, it can work really well or then it can … and that's, these are a good example. I'm glad we're on the same page. 

Jenny Hamilton: Yeah, no, absolutely. And it's also made me think about what leads to that sort of sniffiness or the accusation that the worldbuilding is fake or, or you know, the worldbuilding is only backdrop or that they haven't done any worldbuilding.

I wonder now that I'm thinking about it if there is sort of a suspicion of that sex and emotional thing, and because those are scaffolded by the worldbuilding in the specific way that you've pointed out, Anushree—that's such a good point—I wonder if that's what's partly leading to that.

Anushree Nande: You might have something there. Really!

Dan Hartland: Yeah, I think you do. I think for science fiction, which in its kind of most traditional guises is an incredibly cerebral literature that sort of likes to … let's, let's put it this way: It likes to imagine itself.

Jenny Hamilton: Yeah. The mythology of it is that it's cerebral. Yeah. 

Dan Hartland: But also fantasy, too, which of course in its kind of Tolkienian form, is … well, obviously first and foremost, it's often dryly homosocial, shall we put it that way? And equally keeps … I don't want to say it keeps feelings at arm’s-length. It privileges certain feelings, and expresses, or allows expression of, certain feelings only in particular ways.

Anushree Nande: That's a great way of putting it. 

Jenny Hamilton: Yeah. 

Dan Hartland: So I think that romantasy coming in and going, “Yeah, no!” and just pouring the mess over the floor I think is certainly part of the sniffiness. The sniffiness is almost a defensive posture. 

Anushree Nande: Did either of you read the genre essay, the article that Molly Templeton wrote on Reactor? I think she makes a lot of these really good points: that it's just been like a science fiction against the world sort of thing, because you know, some of the elements are still there.

So I think there is … yeah, you're right: I think it is usually just like a defensive posture. But I think—and also, again, I haven't read a lot of, I haven't read any, dark romantasy that's not YA, that I haven't read a few years ago—but at least the other stuff that I've read, which kind of intersects with the fantasy, sci-fi, and romance narratives, there is always so much joy. Like, joy is prioritized.

And as much as, you know, the difficult human emotions are there, at the end of the journey you know there's gonna be some sort of catharsis, some sort of hope focusing on happiness and joy. And I think that's also something that's, “Oh, it's not literary enough or it's not serious enough.” And I think that's wrong.

Dan Hartland: It's not art unless it's sad! Yeah. 

Jenny Hamilton: Well, and I should … I also do just wanna mention, because it gets often left out of these conversations about romantasy, but there's also a lot of really good specifically science fiction romance even just in the last few years: Jessie Mihalik, Constance Fay, Kit Rocha … there's a bunch of stuff being published that's really fun. 

Anushree Nande: I’m gonna need you to email me by the end of this.

Jenny Hamilton: Absolutely—oh, don't worry. As soon as you said, “I'm new to romance,” I was like, “Ho-ho, she'll be receiving an email from me!” 

But yeah, I just wanted to mention that that also exists. It's not getting the same attention that romantasy is getting, but it's fantastic. And I really warmly encourage genre readers to explore those, those, um, writers and, and those bases.

[Musical sting]

Dan Hartland: And while we're talking about exploring and reading lists and all that sort of stuff, can we just pause to point out—and, Jenny, you mentioned this right at the top, the kind of sexism of the sniffiness—can we just point out who is writing these texts? 

If we're talking about romantasy entering the genre space and, you know, sort of upending the kind of emotional verities of the genre, we should probably also talk about it upending who is writing within these genres, right? And how their identities are also perhaps part of the reaction against the literature. 

Do we think that that is fair, too? That they are part of … You know, we read a lot about, and I've written about—terrible word—the “diversification” of science fiction and fantasy. I've particularly written about it from a kind of quote-unquote more literary end of things, but it seems to me that it's also happening at the romantasy end of things, if we want to talk about spectrums. Do we wanna talk a little bit about, about that, about what that means?

Jenny Hamilton: Yeah. I mean, of course, sexism is always in play when people talk about romance because it's perceived as a girl genre, which isn't true, of course. There are readers and writers of all genders in romance, and that has always been the case. But one thing that I do find troubling about the sort of sprayed edge strand of romantasy is that—while science fiction and fantasy have been undergoing this really amazing blossoming of diverse authors, where it's not just kind of white men and white people dominating the field—that really is not the case in romantasy. 

And this is very striking to me, because a lot of romantic authors, sprayed-edge romantasy authors, a lot of those people are coming out of YA. But publishers are picking up way fewer of the more diverse YA authors, even though YA is an incredibly rich space in that regard. So I think if our genre should be worried about anything with romantasy, it should be worried about that—because that's choices that publishers are making.

I do see that as a backlash against diversity initiatives in publishing, and part of a broader cultural turn towards conservatism and reinstating whiteness as the sort of primary mode. And that to me is very, very troubling about romantasy. And I very much hope to see that change. 

Dan Hartland: It's interesting to think about romantasy as a kind outgrowth of a return to conservatism. I don't have fully formed thoughts on that, though.

So instead what I will ask is: Do we have any thoughts on how these books are written? Jenny is gonna say, it depends, OK, so I don't even know why I'm bothering!

Jenny Hamilton: I've just zipped my lips and thrown away the key! 

Dan Hartland: Our last episode in the podcast was about style, so I wanted to try and keep that thread going for at least a couple of months.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about the styles that operate within romantasy, because of course, again, the stereotype of the romance prose style is that it's prolix and phatic and overwritten. But what interests me about quite a lot of the—I say quite a lot of the romantasy I've read, the small amount of romantasy that I have read!—is that it seems a lot leaner than that. And I don’t know whether that's the kind of YA sort of influence in part, but the character of how these sentences are written is actually really often quite clear. The clarity of the sentences and the paragraphs is often greater than some of the stuff that I read in quote-unquote more literary SF. So do we have any thoughts on that? Do you see any trends in your kind of wider reading than mine of the style in which this stuff is written?

Jenny Hamilton: Okay. I won't say it depends! I will say I have seen—and this may be … I've, I've wondered about what this is about, and I've chalked it up to maybe editors having less time—but across a number of genres that I read, I am seeing more of a tendency to write as if they're intended as second screen viewing where they're sort of overexplaining everything. And I'm not just seeing that in romance, although I read a lot of romance—so you know, that's one space where I've noticed it—but I'm seeing it in other genres too, in mystery, or crime rather, and in SF: this sort of tendency to do an emotional beat and then explain what just happened in the emotional beat.

I don't think that's unique to romantasy or romance. I'm, I'm seeing it more in books across genres that I read. 

Anushree Nande: So actually just yesterday, I think it was yesterday or day before, there was a thread on BlueSky from K. J. Charles, and she was talking about, you know, just sort of the way that it seems that editors are asked to be like … there are either not as many editors for the jobs that are needed or they're asked to take a light hand. And then writers are just supposed to, you know, hand in a manuscript—I don't know how true this is, obviously—but to hand in a manuscript and then not have as many revisions.

Because there's so many times I read—in the past few years, especially—I've read books and—because I've also worked in editorial, I'm an editor so I've been on the other side of the table—and there's some very basic things that, you know, you would think that if there is any editor who has looked at these things, that it's hard to imagine that they wouldn't have caught that.

And it just … it seems to be like a, like you said, a trend across genres and not just in, you know, romance books. And I just find, like … I don't know how many time pressures, more time pressures, or if there are less editors … I don't know. 

Jenny Hamilton: Yeah, I agree. And also it seems like because this trend— romantasy is not going to last like any trend, it's going to fade—I wonder as well if there's a rush to get the books out quicker, especially for trilogies or series. And a lot of these are trilogies or duologies. So I would imagine there is a significant time pressure to get the books out. 

Anushree Nande: Yeah. Because you know how many times you read a book and you're like, “This could have just been a hundred pages fewer.”

Jenny Hamilton: God, yes.

Anushree Nande: It would've been like, you know, “Where's the editor?” Like, I have this thought on a regular basis and I shouldn't, because these are very traditionally published and otherwise well-written books. And I was like, you know, “What's happening?” But it's been more prevalent in the past few years than it used to be. I don't know what's happening. 

Jenny Hamilton: One thing I'll just add, and again, it really does depend, sorry! But I think one thing that I've seen a lot, and maybe I'm just seeing this because I'm a romantasy critic, so maybe people are just mad at me personally, but I will see people who are romantasy readers being like, “Well, I'm not trying to think about it; this is my brain-off reading.” Again, I don't know how unique that is to romantasy. I don't think it is, particularly. But maybe that's also a contributing factor to that quite clear prose that you mentioned, Dan. 

Dan Hartland: Yeah, it could be, I think so. One thing that you were both sort of talking about there was the, the trendiness of romantasy and how, like every trend that has ever existed, it won't last.

That brings me back to my wondering about the future of this. Which is: OK, so the trend stops, right? But we are presumably hopeful, as readers of this stuff, that it maintains an influence—that these kinds of texts continue to be written, but they're not seen as romantasy or perhaps are just not pushed through the pipeline that they currently are.

So what do we see as the future of these books? Once the kind of trend dies away, what happens to the texts, what happens to their authors? Do we see the emotional elements of these texts, do we see them sort of filtering through more widely to other types of text? Or do we see it continuing to be its own kind of subgenre that sits to one side just with less spotlight? Do we have a sense of that? 

Jenny Hamilton: I mean, I think that we have—as the genre of science fiction and fantasy I think we have—an opportunity to welcome in some of these new readers, and share books that we love in our genre that aren't romance-focused. And I think that the extent to which this type of book remains siloed will probably depend in part on how welcome those readers feel in SF spaces—which is, you know, a reason that I encourage people to come to me, my social media channels or email me at any time. I would love to make recommendations for you based on your personal reading profile—truly, I would love to!—of books in their romantic space, because I think there's a lot of great stuff out there.

I hope the books get weirder as time goes on and it’s less trendy. I'd love to see more kind of weirdness. I do think that push from publishers and marketing departments to make everything sort of framed in terms of tropes is ultimately hurting us. So I'd like to wriggle away from that a little bit and just let the books get weird. That's one thing I'm hoping for. 

Anushree Nande: I think it's interesting you mentioned the tropes because that's, like, another thing. And I think that it's more of—again—a marketing thing: these tags and sort of labels help the marketing and the publicity side a lot more than they do the actual writing. But I think—because of the prevalence of, how many of, the importance of those—I don't know how much consideration the authors have to give to it while they're writing.

Like, as a writer myself, I don't think about … well, I try not to, but I usually don't have tropes or tags that this story might have in the future in my mind while I'm writing it. But I wonder, if you're contracted with a publisher and you're used to writing within certain labels, whether there is pressure of kind of continuing within those or having them in mind while you're writing it as to what labels could be attached.

But I do think, again, this is one of those where the intersection of the marketing and the publicity side with the writing side, like you said, is actually going to like long-term harm the genre and not just romantasy. I think every genre—because tropes have sort of infiltrated—I've seen crime fiction and other stuff as well. I've even seen some—I'm trying to remember what it was—some literary fiction, like, you know, “these are the tropes.” And I was like, “OK, this is crossed over here as well.” 

Having the writers not be hamstrung by these considerations—like you said, allow them to experiment more, be weirder and write things that don't fit into neatly defined tropes, I think is definitely one hope I have going forward.

Jenny Hamilton: And I do think and hope that the slipperiness of genre boundaries that we've been gesturing at throughout this conversation—both in terms of romance bleeding into science fiction fantasy, and vice versa, and frankly, SF having to accept that romance novels are part of the genre, but then also just speculative elements appearing more in literary fiction. A lot of the translated fiction that I read also has speculative elements or is speculative in nature. I think that genre bleed is really interesting. I'd love to see it continue. 

I think there has been in the past a tendency to think of yourself as like, “Oh, I'm a science fiction reader.” Or like, “Oh, I'm a romance reader.” And a lot of people are just multiple, like a lot of people just read across genres. And there's a lot to love in every genre, I think. 

Dan Hartland: Is there anything that reviewers and critics should be doing, that they're not doing, that would enable us to kind of welcome these texts in or even just understand them?

Anushree Nande: I think, for a start, having more spaces that allow detailed reviews or in-depth reviews. Because you know, as someone who reviews fairly largely across, across genres, even in India, it's mostly a lot of the stuff … like, most of the stuff I review and that gets published is in the literary or, you know—again, a term I hate—general fiction kind of thing. 

It’s hard enough I think to place fantasy and sci-fi outside of the … in the mainstream for sure. And the sort of outlets that let you publish it have sort of shrunk over the past few years, which is sad. But then, because the science fiction and fantasy space has a lot of these outlets, I think if they sort of broaden their sort of expectations of what they will cover, or what sort of pitches they will accept or, I think that would be a great start—because then you would get reviewers who have been reading romantasy for years, who have in-depth knowledge. 

And then that's the way it can reach readers, but it can also reach maybe other, newer reviewers, for example—like myself—in the space, who may not be aware of certain areas or certain, like, historical stuff that's happened maybe a few years ago. I may not be aware of it, but then this is a way to get to know it. So I think just having visibility for that kind of work is a good start. 

Jenny Hamilton: I know a lot of science fiction, speculative reviewers that I know—who are great!—haven't historically been romance readers and are nervous to review in a genre that doesn't feel like it's quite their area of expertise.

So again, I just … I encourage people to read a little more in the genre. Ask for recommendations from people you know, because there's a lot of good new and old stuff to discover.

[Musical sting]

Dan Hartland: Thanks for listening to Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons criticism podcast. Our music is “Dial Up” by Lost Cosmonauts. You can listen to more of their music@grandles.bandcamp.com. 

And you can let us know what you make of the podcast by emailing reviews@strangehorizons.com. There was a pleasing amount of discourse around our last episode, on style in SF.

Niall Harrison poked back a little at the idea, expressed especially by Paul Kincaid in the episode, that SFF reviewers and critics ignore style because to address it is “hard.” Niall suggested an alternative explanation: that SF demands different approaches from reviewers. In particular, because SF departs from consensus reality, Niall suggests, “there's an impetus to evaluate those departures.”

Also on the question of form and content, Nat Harrington quoted Delany from “About 5,750 words”: “Put in opposition to style,” Delany wrote, “there's no such thing as content elsewhere.” 

Cheryl Morgan and Matt Cheney noted that reception of style changes over time. “We laugh at Lovecraft these days,” Cheryl says, “but I've just been reading Arthur Machen and he does some of the same things.” Matt Cheney agreed that this style made sense within the context of Decadence and Symbolism at the time, drawing from Baudelaire and Poe; if genres make particular demands of us, these change over time. 

And, bringing us right up to date, Premee Mohamed commented that she writes her own works with an eye to whether a noticeable style is appropriate—whether she wants her reader to be reminded they are reading or not. Suzan Palumbo also noted, echoing Dawn Macdonald's view in the episode, that style can add real character to her work … but that, like any bold flavor, this can be polarizing. 

Finally, Matt Cavanagh, he of the Runalong Womble, expressed confusion about one key element of the pod. He was mystified by all the amazing office memos that Paul Kincaid had that were better than many books he's read. “What a fascinating workplace that must be!” 

Paul Kincaid will return to tell us more. But until then, see you next time.