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New Statesman
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
The romantasy infatuation
Fairy tales, it seems, are out of fashion. After all, what do they have to teach a modern reader? Finding Prince Charming is passé; we should be getting comfortable with our own company. Evil stepmothers aren't such a problem when you can just go no contact. And going to sleep for 100 years no longer has to affect your career arc – we're all on our own timelines! Yet look a little closer and you might find that a new kind of fairy tale is alive and well. Because what are most of them if not love stories, set in magical worlds? Romantasy, a relatively new literary genre that offers exactly that, is, largely thanks to its popularity on TikTok, having a seismic effect on the books industry. As the name suggests, the genre combines fantasy realms, drawn from the depths of folklore, Gothic fiction and mythology, with a romantic plot – and readers cannot get enough. Science fiction and fantasy sales were up more than 40 per cent in 2024. Romantasy author Sarah J Maas, whose book A Court of Thorns and Roses was released in 2015, was the best-selling author in the US last year, selling 7.7 million copies, and Fourth Wing (2023), the first in romantasy star Rebecca Yarros's Empyrean series, was the seventh bestselling book in the UK across all genres. In January the third instalment of that series, Onyx Storm, became the fastest-selling adult title ever, selling 2.7 million copies in its first week, after people queued in bookshops at midnight dressed up as their favourite characters to buy it on its day of release. These authors find themselves in a curious position (as well as unthinkably rich). Harry Potter and true fairy tales are, of course, for children. But as much as romantasy has inherited the feverish fandom that often comes with an absorbing magical world – fans of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are some of the most obsessive in the world – it is also the natural successor to Mills & Boon, Jilly Cooper and 50 Shades of Grey. 'Dragon porn' has become shorthand for romantasy; steamy sex, or 'spice', to use TikTok parlance, is part of the happy ending. In these fairy tales, the heroines can have it both ways, winning authority over the entire magical realm and a handsome stay-at-home fairy husband. Violet Sorrengail, the breathless narrator of Yarros's Empyrean series is a typical romantasy heroine. She's in her early 20s, studying at Basgiath War College to be a dragon rider, despite being smaller and less physically fit than others in her 'quadrant' (this is widely thought to be a nod to the fact that Yarros suffers from Ehlers-Danlos syndrome). She can 'wield' lightning, communicate telepathically with her two dragons and loves nothing more than riding them – except perhaps allowing her classmate, previously sworn enemy Xaden Riorson, to fuck her senseless. Xaden – who also rides dragons, and with whom she can also communicate telepathically due to a dragon-related loophole – is her spiritual and sexual soulmate. 'Xaden is mine,' Violet thinks. 'My heart, my soul, my everything. He channelled from the earth to save me, and I'll scour the world until I find a way to save him right back.' Such lines are unfortunately characteristic of the genre's prose. 'He hasn't kissed me like this since before the battle at Basgiath,' Violet notes. Yarros's dialogue comes thick and fast – at times it's more like reading a script than a novel. Where the authors diverge in fantastical creatures they coalesce in style: in Onyx Storm (dragons) but also A Court of Thorns of Roses (faeries) and The Serpent of the Wings of Night (vampires, by Carissa Broadbent), line breaks and full stops are used liberally for dramatic effect. ('Fast. They're too damned fast,' says Violet as she encounters some 'venin', AKA the baddies of Navarre.) Violet's warrior status, her appetite for danger, her courage, her unbridled sexual desire, put her in a different category from the hapless virgins of Disney and the Brothers Grimm who are, all these years later, still stuck in their dusty old volumes fannying about with spinning wheels and dwarfs. Feyre, the narrator of Maas's bestseller A Court of Thorns and Roses, is also a scrappy little fighter, one who carries daggers and arrows and scoffs early doors at her sisters 'chattering about some young man or the ribbons they'd spotted in the village when they should have been chopping wood'. When Feyre unknowingly kills a faerie, and is captured and taken away from her family to the dangerous faerie kingdom over the border and forced to live in the lap of luxury, she protests at the princess treatment: 'I hadn't worn a dress in years. I wasn't about to start, not when escape was my main priority. I wouldn't be able to move freely in a gown.' Both Maas and Yarros's heroines are strong and independent – and yet in both cases they are bound to the man they love, or will grow to love (most romantasy relationships begin as enemies), through life and death. 'You're the only one capable of killing me,' says Xaden, who has been infected by venin as a sacrifice for Violet. In A Court of Thorns and Roses, a loose retelling of Beauty and the Beast, Feyre must fall in love with the 'High Lord' Tamlin to break the curse on his kingdom. Their every interaction is loaded with danger: Tamlin is a shapeshifter and could, if he wanted to, tear her to shreds with the huge claws that are at risk of appearing every time he slightly loses emotional control. Similarly, in Broadbent's The Serpent of the Wings of Night, the heroine Oraya is a human always endangered in a world of vampires. Raihn, her vampire love interest, could kill her, and she has a duty to kill him. 'I could open his shirt, slide my hands over the expanse of his chest, and thrust my poison blade right here – right into his heart. He could tear away this ridiculous delicate spiderweb of a dress and cut me open,' Broadbent writes. 'The two of us could burn each other up.' Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe This violent, exaggerated language persists across the sexual scenes. 'He's kissing me like I'm the only air he can breathe'; 'nothing existed but him'; 'My entire world constricted to the touch of his lips on my skin'. Orgasms are 'fracturing', 'splintering', 'shattering', 'unravelling'. The intensity and danger is part of the sexual fantasy – but the heroine in each case is in some way just as dangerous to the man as he is her. Readers will be reminded here of Twilight, the late 2000s young adult series by Stephanie Meyer that caused a similar frenzy among teenage girls. In Twilight a normal high school girl, Bella Swan, falls in love with a vampire, the sublime Edward Cullen. Bella was dangerous to Edward because he was dangerous to her – he loved her so much that he couldn't risk endangering her by 'losing control' (read: having sex and unwittingly tearing her body to shreds). But what made Twilight so compelling to young women hoping for a perfect love was the unique power Bella had over Edward, and the fact that he did stay in control despite his potential to cause her harm. A similar dynamic pervades A Court of Thorns and Roses: 'The full force of that wild, unrelenting High Lord's power focused solely on me – and I felt the storm contained beneath his skin, so capable of sweeping away everything I was, even in its lessened state. But I could trust him, trust myself to weather that mighty power. I could throw all that I was at him and he wouldn't balk. 'Give me everything,' I breathed.' Elsewhere, though, we are reminded of Feyre's pluck: she is not powerless against Tamlin. Rather, she chooses to sleep with him when she wants to, and doesn't when she doesn't: 'Don't ever disobey me again,' he said, his voice a deep purr that ricocheted through me, awakening everything and lulling it into complicity. Then I reconsidered his words and straightened. He grinned at me in that wild way, and my hand connected with his face. 'Don't tell me what to do,' I breathed, my palm stinging. 'And don't bite me like some enraged beast.' Though plenty of effort is taken to give gravitas to the imagined worlds they feel thinly drawn, like costumes and sets. Names for places and people lack the consistent and distinctive syntax of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, and immersion in the world is often reduced to crude signifiers, particularly adapted curse words. Yarros, for example, is careful only ever to refer to 'gods', plural, as in 'oh my gods' and 'godsdamn', usually deployed at moments of sexual ecstasy; occasionally she opts for 'by Malek', as in, 'by Malek, I fucking love you'. Maas goes for 'Cauldron boil me!', while Broadbent opts for 'Goddess', 'Mother', and the exclamation 'Ix's tits'. If all that feels silly, it's nothing on the fact that, despite stating at the outset of Onyx Storm that the text 'has been faithfully transcribed from Navarrian into the modern language' and yet the students of Basgiath War College still understand concepts like 'boundaries', 'overthinking' and 'hitting the gym'. You half expect them to return to their chambers from a great battle and crack open a can of Diet Coke. These are, clearly, very modern fairy tales – and, as that would suggest, full of contradictions. A handsome prince, yes, but one who does not control you, one over whom you maintain a sexual power, one who wants you to be free of the damage he could inflict on you. Intense sex, yes, but sex that is incredibly high stakes. A heroine who is powerful and independent but believes in and experiences the kind of true love that is increasingly being called into question by our rational, transactional world. That's the real fantasy: to be she who has it all. Who has the things that we once wanted and the new ones. The good bits of this and of that. The perfect man, and the perfect self. The danger and the safety. The pleasure and the pain. It's not surprising we need a magical land to imagine those things could be true. [See also: English literature's last stand] Related
Express Tribune
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
'Fourth Wing' TV series: Josh Heuston linked to Xaden role as Moira Walley-Beckett leads adaptation
Development of the Fourth Wing television adaptation continues to gain traction as speculation intensifies around actor Josh Heuston's potential casting as Xaden Riorson. The adaptation of Rebecca Yarros' bestselling Empyrean series is being produced by Amazon MGM Studios in collaboration with Michael B. Jordan's Outlier Society, with Moira Walley-Beckett attached as showrunner. First announced in late 2023, the series is based on the romantasy saga that follows Violet Sorrengail's perilous journey at Basgiath War College, where elite students are trained to become dragon riders. Set in a high-stakes fantasy world, the story combines military academy politics, magical warfare, and forbidden romance. No official casting has been confirmed, though Josh Heuston's name has been linked to either the role of Xaden or Bodhi. When questioned, Heuston commented, 'You have to ask the scribes, I suppose,' further fuelling fan discussions. Author Rebecca Yarros has publicly maintained her stance on accurate representation, stating that Xaden will be portrayed by a person of colour. 'They know how staunch I am against whitewashing Xaden,' Yarros said, reaffirming the series' commitment to diversity in casting. Moira Walley-Beckett, best known for her work on Breaking Bad and Anne with an E, has earned high praise from Yarros for her handling of the adaptation. During the launch of Onyx Storm in January 2025, Yarros confirmed reading multiple drafts of the pilot script and described it as 'phenomenal,' adding, 'I kicked my feet the entire time—I love it.' Production timelines remain under wraps, with no confirmed release date. The series is expected to follow the narrative arc of the five-book Empyrean series, which includes Fourth Wing, Iron Flame, and Onyx Storm. Books four and five are currently in development.
Telegraph
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
I may have found a cure for teen screen addiction: romantasy novels
My teenage daughter can't stop reading books. Two a week, at least. She's at it all the time: over breakfast, in the bath, meandering distractedly to the bus stop. If I try to talk to her, she raises one hand as a stop sign and gently shushes me, before bowing once more over the page. If this sounds like a middle-class boast – well, obviously it is. A bookworm in the family feels like a miracle in the smartphone age. But the credit does not belong to me. It belongs to a parade of strong and independent heroines, some with magical powers, who must fight to survive in assorted dystopian kingdoms peopled with dragons, elves and cruel but broodingly attractive princes. This is the genre known as 'romantasy ', which, over the past five years or so, has almost swallowed the publishing industry whole. As the name suggests, it's a heady blend of sci-fi, fantasy and romance, most of it written by and for women. It tends towards the formulaic, with dependable romantic tropes such as 'enemies to lovers' or 'fated mates'. Within the genre there are varying 'spice levels', ranging from chaste but yearning love stories, fit for the young adult market, to absolute faerie filth. Right now, many of the UK's bestselling novels are romantasies. One of these, Onyx Storm, by Rebecca Yarros, sold 2.7 million copies in its first week, making it the fastest-selling adult novel in the English language for more than 20 years. When Yarros does publicity events, her fans – thousands of them – come dressed as her characters, in a riot of medieval corsetry, albino wigs and nylon dragon wings. This is not, I admit, the path into bibliophilia I had anticipated for any child of mine. One of the vanities of parenthood is to imagine that you can shape your offspring's cultural tastes into a copy of your own. Or rather, a selectively remembered, suspiciously highbrow version of your own. Because now I come to think of it, I didn't read that many Edwardian classics either. My own literary addictions began with Enid Blyton, the unrivalled mistress of repetitive tropes and archetypal characters. At one point I refused to read anything but Malory Towers books, over and over, high on their delicious predictability. My parents, in desperation, locked the entire series in a cupboard, hoping this would force me to broaden my literary horizons. It worked: I moved on to The Twins at St Clare's. After that came Jilly Cooper's early romantic novels, which all had female names as their titles: Octavia, Imogen, Emily, Bella. They, too, were blissfully formulaic, with a gentle steaminess perfectly attuned to the sexual curiosity of a teenage girl. Cooper and Blyton taught me to read for pleasure. They made me want to read, not for reasons of self-improvement or intellectual display, but for the fun of it. Pleasure is habit-forming: once you know you can get the good stuff from a book, you are liable to keep going back for more. Everyone needs a literary gateway drug – now more than ever, with screens competing constantly for our attention. A survey published last week to 'celebrate' World Book Day found that almost 50 per cent of men had not read a single book over the past year. By contrast, 63 per cent of women still read, in part, perhaps, because they have found a genre that gives them pleasure. What men need now is a romantasy of their own.
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Rebecca Yarros' bestselling fantasy book 'Fourth Wing' is being turned into a TV show. Here's everything we know so far.
Rebecca Yarros' "Fourth Wing" is being adapted into a TV series. Amazon MGM Studios and Michael B. Jordan's Outlier Society will produce the series for Prime Video. Although a release date and cast hasn't been announced, Yarros offered some clues about the show. Rebecca Yarros' "Empyrean" series about dragon rider Violet Sorrengail has never been more popular. When "Onyx Storm," the third book in the romantasy series, was released on January 21, it became the fastest-selling adult novel in 20 years, The New York Times reported. The first and second books in the series, "Fourth Wing" and "Iron Flame," sat right behind "Onyx Storm" on the bestseller list following its release. Yarros is taking a break before writing the fourth book in the series, but in the meantime, progress is being made on the series adaptation of "Fourth Wing." Here's everything we know about the show so far. In October 2023, Deadline announced that Amazon MGM Studios and Michael B. Jordan's Outlier Society were developing "Fourth Wing" into a Prime Video series. Yarros is also an executive producer for the show. Outlier Society produced Jordan's "Creed III" and is developing a slate of other series and films in addition to "Fourth Wing." In July 2024, Outlier Society announced it had hired Moira Walley-Beckett as the showrunner for the series. Walley-Beckett won three Emmy awards for her work as a writer and producer on "Breaking Bad," and she later created "Anne with an E." As of February, Outlier Society had not announced casting or a release date for the series. Deadline also reported in October 2023 that Amazon MGM Studios had bought the rights for the whole "Empyrean" book series. In a January interview with Variety, Yarros said she had shared the "five-book arc" for the "Empyrean" series with Amazon and Walley-Beckett. "They have the five-book arc and the general big points of what happens in between each book, but they don't have the specifics between Book 4 and Book 5, because I'm getting ready to go to my crazy plotting board and plot out every single event that happens in each book so that I make sure that I'm within my two books there," she told Variety. Although details about the series are limited, Yarros made a few comments about the show while promoting "Onyx Storm." Speaking at an engagement on January 24 in New York, Yarros told fans she had read the pilot for the "Fourth Wing" show — and loved it. "I read the latest version of the pilot last week," she said. "It's really nerve-racking when you read something like that because you're really — you're trusting someone else with your baby, right? And you're trusting someone else to say, like, 'Hey, this is important in your work, and this isn't,' and you kinda get your guard up." "But guys, I, like, kicked my feet the whole time," she said. "You're gonna love it." Yarros also praised Walley-Beckett, calling her a "brilliant writer" and saying she maintained the integrity of the book in the pilot. "All the lines that you love are there. And she really kept the spirit and energy," Yarros said of the pilot. "I can't say enough good things. It's phenomenal." Speaking at an event in London on August 30, 2024, Yarros said casting will ultimately fall on the show's staff, not her. She also said she intentionally hasn't shared any specific actors she hopes will be cast in the series. "I will never say who my perfect fan cast is because the cast is so diverse, and I want to open that up to more diversity," she said. "And I feel like the second I say who I think this character is, that's who everyone will accept. That's only who they will accept." "I kinda hope they find, like, an up-and-coming generation," she added. "But I would never put my fan cast in your heads." Although she won't be involved in casting the series, Yarros said at the same event that she has one hard-line casting request she has communicated to Amazon MGM Studios, Outlier Society, and Walley-Beckett. "They know how staunch I am against white-washing Xaden," she said. "I think that's the biggest thing." Xaden Riorson, Violet's love interest in the series, is described as having "warm tawny skin" in "Fourth Wing" and "tawny-brown" skin in both "Iron Flame" and "Onyx Storm." Read the original article on Business Insider
Washington Post
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
The Empyrean series writer of BookTok fame prepares for Hollywood
Next in Arts & Entertainment The Empyrean series writer of BookTok fame prepares for Hollywood By Arianna Rebolini February 11, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. EST 0 Sorry, a summary is not available for this article at this time. Please try again later. Four years before Rebecca Yarros published the book that would launch her into sky-high international success, she was making peace with the possibility that she would never really make it as a writer. Between 2014 and 2018, she'd published 10 contemporary romance novels that had garnered her a loyal following, but as she prepared to release 'The Last Letter' — her 2019 novel about a man who leaves the military to help his late best friend's little sister raise her twins — her publisher warned her that if this book didn't land her on the bestseller list, nothing would. It didn't. 'I remember this moment of collapsing,' Yarros, 43, recalls in a video call. 'My knees gave out. I felt like I'd poured my entire heart and soul into this career and I wasn't going to go anywhere with it.' She couldn't have guessed she'd soon become a household name. A longtime reader of fantasy, Yarros decided to try branching out of romance for a bit into new territory — that of dragons, to be precise. Her publisher, Entangled, was happy with the pivot. The resulting book, 'Fourth Wing' — the first in Yarros's five-book Empyrean series — would launch its new fantasy imprint. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Empyrean's instant success Each book in the series has been an immediate success: 'Onyx Storm,' the third book, published on Jan. 21 and is the fastest-selling adult novel in 20 years, according to Bookscan. Following dueling dragon riders at a military training school, the first installment, a 512-page epic, debuted on the New York Times bestseller list when it published in May 2023. With the sequel, 'Iron Flame,' which published in November of the same year, the series has dominated #BookTok, a sales-driving corner of TikTok, bringing in over a billion views across its related hashtags. Amazon MGM Studios acquired the rights for a television adaptation with Yarros as the executive producer, six months before the first book even hit the shelves. The second Empyrean installment launch drew massive crowds; fans lined up around city blocks to watch Yarros speak on panels. The experience was a surreal whirlwind, following two and a half years of writing for 12 to 15 hours a day. It was a grueling schedule that she says 'nearly killed' her, one she's long since abandoned. Throughout the buzz, the mother of six has survived by compartmentalizing her literary success from what she describes as her 'real life,' or her family and home. But home has multiple meanings for Yarros. After writing 'Iron Flame,' Yarros returned to a familiar, restorative base. 'Fantasy is probably my favorite genre, but as a writer, going back to romance is like coming home,' Yarros says. 'It's something deeply rooted, where I get to challenge myself and dig into story arcs and character development. It's often where I process what I'm going through in my personal life.' Author Rebecca Yarros in a conversation with moderator Laurie Hernandez about her book 'Onyx Storm' at the Town Hall on Jan. 24 in New York. (CJ Rivera/Invision/AP) Audience members hold copies of 'Onyx Storm' at the event. (CJ Rivera Invision/AP) These breaks are especially vital as Yarros grapples with an overwhelming degree of attention. (Even literary superstars struggle with insecurity.) 'When you have such intense scrutiny on every line and every word and every phrase, and people are shooting at you from every direction about what [the book] should be or shouldn't be, what you are or aren't, … it can shake my confidence in a way that I've never experienced before,' she confesses. 'In romance, I get my feet back underneath me, remind myself, 'Hey, you can write. You're a writer!' And I get to go back to Empyrean with a better center of gravity.' Even though Empyrean is often categorized within the TikTok-ified descriptor 'romantasy,' Yarros finds writing each genre to be distinct experiences. Indeed, she has 'mixed feelings' about the term itself. 'I love that there's a way to bring more people into fantasy using romance as a guidepost,' she says. 'But it also feels like a way of saying this book is written for girls and so it doesn't get to just be fantasy. Love and sex in fantasy isn't new. Look at Anne McCaffrey.' Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Revisiting romance In the break between the second and third Empyrean novels, Yarros wrote 'Variation,' a sizzling, interwoven story about a world-class ballerina who returns home only to be met by the child her late sister put up for adoption. That would be complicated enough, but the child is also her estranged lover's niece. It was published in November 2024 and was chosen as a New York Times book of the week. Yarros often pulls themes from her personal life: She and her husband adopted their youngest daughter after being foster parents. In 2019 they founded a nonprofit organization that provides clothing and school supplies to children in the foster system. Empyrean's Violet, like Yarros, has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Though it's never named within the books, the chronic pain and joint instability the character has is part of Yarros's experience of the connective tissue disorder. 'I struggled for years to recognize and accept my limitations and accommodations, just like Violet,' Yarros told Health in 2023.
