How Romantasy Seduces Its Readers

Summary

Podcast Summary: Critics at Large | The New Yorker

Episode: "How Romantasy Seduces Its Readers"

Original Release: February 2025 | Aired: May 14, 2026 (Archive Episode)

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Overview

In this lively, in-depth episode, hosts Vinson Cunningham, Nomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz join guest staff writer Katie Walman to explore the extraordinary popularity of "Romantasy"—a literary genre combining romance and fantasy. The panel investigates what sets Romantasy apart, why it's resonating globally (especially with women readers), and how BookTok and social media are shaping its rise. They share personal reading adventures, discuss major tropes, examine community aspects, and unpack the role of escapism in uncertain times. The episode features notable quotes, cultural context, and listener perspectives from dedicated Romantasy fans.

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Main Themes and Purpose

• Define "Romantasy": Exploring the fusion of romance and fantasy, its origins, and why the genre is anything but niche.
• Phenomenal Growth: Understanding its rapid ascent in publishing, with bestsellers like Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros dominating the market.
• Personal Exploration: Each host reads a key title to report back on the genre's appeal and mechanics.
• Tropes and Craft: Dissecting the common story elements, literary style, and what makes them addictive.
• Community & Social Media: Examining how online communities, especially BookTok, catalyze trends and influence authors.
• Societal Resonance: Probing why Romantasy connects so deeply now—escapism, empowerment, nostalgia, and the search for communal experience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Romantasy’s Meteoric Rise (01:07–02:29)

• Romantasy is no longer niche: “Shockingly... Romantasy is a worldwide phenomenon.” — Vinson Cunningham (01:11)
• Major market data: Five of the ten top-selling adult books in 2024 are Romantasy, dominated by Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros. (01:29)
• Reader appetite is surging: Print sales of romance novels more than doubled between 2020 and 2023. (02:14)

2. Host Confessions: Personal Entry Points to Romantasy (03:44–05:13)

• The hosts admit to being Romantasy novices, paralleling typical Romantasy heroines—“newcomers who get tough fast.” (02:29)
• Alex Schwartz reminisces about Tamora Pierce’s "Song of the Lioness" and childhood favorites, noting that similar tropes now target adults. (04:33–05:13)
  • “Brave girl who’s not totally feminine, but later discovers her feminine side... There is magic, princes, fighting. Reading Romantasy brought me right back to that.” — Alex Schwartz (04:33)

3. Meet the Expert: Katie Walman (06:22–08:17)

• Walman notes the genre’s “trope-driven” nature and discusses a lawsuit between authors over similar plotlines, spotlighting the engineered quality of Romantasy:
  • “You can almost imagine the books being sort of engineered out of pre made parts... unbridled fantasies about human women... who fall in love with and have sex with supernatural creatures.” — Katie Walman (07:14)

4. Romantasy in Practice: The Host Book Assignments

a) A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) by Sarah J. Maas

Recap: Alex Schwartz (08:37–14:24)

• Classic setup: Poor mortal girl Feyre, family drama, magical realm, “enemies to lovers” trope.
  • “There is magic, there are princes, there’s fighting... enemies to lovers. Major romantasy trope.” — Alex Schwartz (10:59)
• Notable insight: The book is “repetitive... not the highest of literary experiences... but it brought me back to this deep childhood state of total absorption and pleasure.” (13:24)
• The addiction: “…I couldn't put this goddamn book down. Even it was 11:45 at night… must keep going. So that's how I knew that this book had me good.” — Alex Schwartz (13:04)

b) Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

Recap: Vinson Cunningham (20:17–23:31)

• Plot follows Violet, a reluctant dragon rider, and her bad-boy foil Zaden. Modern slang abounds in the fantasy setting.
• “She has to remind herself… I do not like toxic men. So there's a lot of contemporary diction happening in this dragony world.” — Vinson Cunningham (21:48)
• Common Romantasy dynamic: Nepo baby struggles, discovers (of course) she has rare, special powers, and draws the attention of the most desirable mate.

c) Crave by Tracy Wolf

Recap: Nomi Fry (28:43–32:11)

• Teen Grace, orphaned, sent to a spooky Alaskan boarding school filled with vampires, dragons, and more.
• Humor and critique: “I can't emphasize enough how repetitive it is, like every 10 pages, Grace almost gets killed and Jackson saves her.” — Nomi Fry (32:11)
• Over-the-top tropes: Too-naive heroine (“too dumb to live”) and a love interest named Jaxon with an X.

5. What’s Driving the Craze? Listener Voicemails and Hosts’ Analysis

The ACOTAR Effect (14:33–17:29)

• "I was embarrassed to be reading it. But I also… couldn't put it down." — Listener 1 (15:11)
• “It's empowering... women should be allowed to want strength and pleasure for themselves, and that is what these characters often want.” — Mel (16:17)

Fourth Wing: Animal Bonds & Community (25:04–27:33)

• “These characters’ relationship with the dragons… it reminds me of what it would feel like having a relationship with a horse.” — Cece (25:08)
• Another listener highlights the joy of fandom, world-building, and the “community that it brings” (Ella, 26:42).
• BookTok and book-themed events in bookstores cultivate IRL and virtual connections. (27:32)

6. Social Media & Tropes (33:00–35:43)

• TikTok/BookTok drive the market: “They’ll [readers] make a video about it and... mark [posts] by hashtags that correspond to particular tropes... like ‘enemies to lovers.’” — Katie Walman (33:17)
• Authors tailor content to real-time reader desire—effectively “customer service wrapped in self-care wrapped in literature” (35:43).

7. The Escapism & Empowerment Debate

Why Now? Societal Reflections (37:57–48:22)

• Romantasy as modern self-care and affirmation, but also nostalgia for when “girl power” seemed more straightforward.
• "Isn’t it nice to spend some time in a magical realm where, you know, real darkness and pain and danger and stakes exist, but you can get stronger by being true to yourself...?” — Listener 3 (38:33)
• The hosts debate whether genre’s popularity is tied to a cultural sense of disillusionment and longing for valor, heroism, and connection lost in contemporary society.
• Discussion weaves in classics (Dracula, Game of Thrones, even Nora Ephron films) to highlight Romantasy’s appeal as both escapist and familiar.

8. Critiques and Uncertainties

• The repetitive, “trope-shopping” effect: Is this still literature, or algorithmic entertainment? Nomi Fry: “This is what AI should be for in just this, right?... If you want a book that's about all these, like, highly, highly specific, like, fan service things, then, yeah, just go to ChatGPT.” (35:43)
• Debate over substance versus comfort: “Cliché is weaponized toward comfort.” — Vincent Cunningham (46:31)
• Is fantasy’s only value its relationship to reality, or can imaginative worlds be ends in themselves? (47:55)

9. Lasting Appeal & Future Reading (49:09–51:16)

• After their immersion, the hosts are candid about Romantasy’s addictive qualities—especially the sheer pleasure of narrative absorption.
• “That kind of gulping down feeling, it does reconnect me with my 90s girl self.” — Alex Schwartz (51:07)
• Will they continue? Curiosity remains high, tempered by skepticism over literary merit.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Romantasy is a worldwide phenomenon.” — Vinson Cunningham (01:11)
• “I describe Tamlin as a fairy lord. He is not only High Fae, which is—well, he’s High Fae, but he is a High Fae High Lord.” — Katie Walman, about Maas's attention to hierarchy (11:22)
• “They’re engineered out of pre-made parts... My husband the merman…” — Katie Walman (07:14)
• “...these books are about bolstering self-esteem and providing validation... They're like customer service wrapped in self-care wrapped in literature.” — Katie Walman (35:43)
• “Cliché is weaponized toward comfort.” — Vincent Cunningham (46:31)
• “That kind of gulping down feeling, it does reconnect me with my 90s girl self.” — Alex Schwartz (51:07)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |--------------|------------------------------------------------| | 01:07–02:29 | Genre definition, market stats, rise of Romantasy | | 03:44–05:13 | Hosts’ Romantasy experience, personal background | | 06:22–08:17 | Introduction of Katie Walman, genre analysis | | 08:37–14:24 | ACOTAR summary and reaction (Alex Schwartz) | | 20:17–23:31 | Fourth Wing summary and reaction (Vinson Cunningham) | | 28:43–32:11 | Crave summary and reaction (Nomi Fry) | | 14:33–17:29 | Listener feedback: addiction, empowerment | | 25:04–27:33 | Listener feedback: animal bonds, community | | 33:00–35:43 | Social media, BookTok, “shopping” for tropes | | 37:57–48:22 | Motivations: escapism, nostalgia, and cultural resonance | | 46:31 | “Weaponized cliché” and comfort | | 49:09–51:16 | Will the hosts keep reading Romantasy? |

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Tone & Language

The hosts maintain a witty, conversational tone—part skeptical literary critics, part invested readers, and part cultural anthropologists. They balance academic analysis with playful banter, insider references, and frank confessions about their own enjoyment and doubts.

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For Newcomers: Why Listen?

This episode provides a thorough, entertaining primer on Romantasy’s appeal, from the nuts and bolts of the stories themselves to the bigger social, psychological, and publishing trends behind the boom. The blend of critique, personal story, and vibrant listener testimony makes it essential listening for anyone curious about why millions are suddenly obsessed with dragon-riding, sword-wielding, love-struck heroines—and the worlds that adore them.

Transcript

[Vincent Cunningham]

Foreign.

[Nomi Fry]

Hey, listeners, it's Nomi. Critics of Larch is taking the week off. But don't worry, we'll be back in your feeds next Thursday. In the meantime, we're surfacing a show from our archives. We ran this one in February of 2025, and it's all about the literary phenomenon known as Romantasy. And if you don't know what that is, we. Well, then go ahead and listen on.

Enjoy.

[Alex Schwartz]

Welcome to Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz.

[Nomi Fry]

I'm Nomi Fry.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And I'm Vincent Cunningham. Each week on the show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now, or in a land far away, full of dragons and heraldry and hunky weirdos. And how we got here. How are you?

[Alex Schwartz]

Couldn't be better. Simply couldn't be better.

[Nomi Fry]

Looking forward to the discussion today.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You're both smoldering. I wonder why. Today on Critics at Large, it's Romantasy Day.

[Nomi Fry]

Duh, duh, duh.

[Vincent Cunningham]

We're talking about, yes, the literary genre known as romantasy. The term is a portmanteau of romance and fantasy. And even though that might strike you as rather niche, it's really anything but. Shockingly, thanks to all kind of factors that we'll get into today, Romantasy is a worldwide phenomenon.

[Nomi Fry]

Some of the stats about this genre were staggering to me at least, but I think just staggering in general. Last year, apparently five of the ten top selling adult books were written by the two biggest Romantasy writers, Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros. Five out of ten of the most popular. Crazy.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, yeah. I mean, on that front, I just have a number that I'd like us to sit with for a second. The number is 2.7 million million million. That is the number of copies that the latest book by Rebecca Yarros, which came out last month, sold in its first week.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Wow.

[Nomi Fry]

Wow.

[Alex Schwartz]

That makes it the fastest selling adult novel in 20 years, which, by the way, is when they started even keeping a tally of these things. So we can pretty much say on

[Vincent Cunningham]

record it's the fastest. That's it. Yeah. And print sales of romance novels more than doubled between 2020 and 2023. Not only huge, but on the rise.

[Nomi Fry]

It's a romance bonanza.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And so obviously this genre is resonating in a huge, huge way. And what we're trying to do today is figure out why. Let's just put our cards on the table and be honest. The three of us are relative newcomers to this world are absolute. Much like the young people who populate the pages of these books. They're always newcomers, and they get tough fast, I've learned. And so we are getting some help from our fellow staff writer Katie Walman, friend of the pod, who has written in depth about Romantasy for the New Yorker. She's gonna join us momentarily to talk about the big titles. We'll talk about the booktalkofitall. And as many of you know, we put out a call to you listeners to tell us about your own feelings about these books. So we'll also be hearing from all of you Romantasy freaks. That's today on Critics at Large, the modern love affair with romanticy. All right, just to level set here, let's start off. Let's not get too flustered too fast. I want to know what had been your exposure to Romantasy before today's.

[Nomi Fry]

So, yeah, I hadn't even heard of the term until Katie published her big Romantasy piece last month in the New Yorker. And so I am starting to know a little bit more about it, but I'm so thankful that I'm not doing it alone.

[Alex Schwartz]

So I have not really been exposed to Romantasy at all until now, in some ways in the literary form as an adult. However, as I was dipping into our prep materials, which we will soon discuss for today's episode, I realized that there has indeed been Romantasy in my past. Although it's probably like a romantasy avant la lettre, it's, you know, before the title really got made. I just want to give an immediate shout out to Tamora Pierce. Does that name mean anything to anyone in this room?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Absolutely not.

[Alex Schwartz]

Okay.

[Nomi Fry]

It does.

[Katie Walman]

Not to me either.

[Vincent Cunningham]

No.

[Alex Schwartz]

Wonderful. Tamora Pierce was a popular YA writer in the 80s and 90s, and her first series, which is called the Song of the Lioness, was absolutely huge for me as a child in the 90s. And there are. I'm sure I'm going to talk about this more in this episode, but there are elements of the quest of the young brave girl who's not totally feminine, but later discovers her feminine side. There is magic, there are princes, there's fighting. Reading Romantasy brought me right back to that. And we will get more into why, but as an adult, no, I had really associated it with a previous part of my life.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I mean, for me, not at all. My agent is the person who introduced me even to the name, to the idea. I was asking her, you know, what sells these days, and she's like romantasy.

[Nomi Fry]

And you're like, what?

[Alex Schwartz]

What now? She was like thoughtful literary novels written in the first person.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Not as much as romantasy. So we thought that we needed to call in a true expert.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, my God. Is that the flap of dragon's wings?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Katie Walman is.

[Alex Schwartz]

Could it be the flash of skirts? Hello at the ball.

[Nomi Fry]

There she is.

[Katie Walman]

Good to see you guys.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Good to see you. All the way from Washington D.C. just to talk to us about the romanticity of it all.

[Alex Schwartz]

By the way, I'm just gonna tell you something right now. Katie Waldman seems to be wearing a dragon's tooth around her neck.

[Nomi Fry]

Wait, really?

[Alex Schwartz]

There's some kind of amulet situation, so

[Katie Walman]

I was seeing it as like a talon.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Katie Wald even dressed the part. This is what the heck I'm talking about. Welcome back to the show. Of course, for true critics heads, they will know that Katie Waldman was with us for our episode about the office drama. She is back for an episode about a different kind of drama.

[Katie Walman]

It's so good to see you guys. Thank you for having me back.

[Nomi Fry]

Thank you for coming.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So happy. So you just wrote a big piece on Romantasy from the New Yorker about intrigues, lawsuits, incriminations, lawsuits, accusations. How did the romantasy phenomenon first come on and why? Like, what made you want to write about it?

[Katie Walman]

Yeah, so I came across this specific lawsuit that I ended up writing about.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Okay.

[Katie Walman]

And basically what had happened is an unpublished author had created a manuscript. A young, you know, a high school girl falls in love with a paranormal hottie. She wasn't able to sell it. She put it in a drawer. And then 10 years later, a different author, Tracy Wolf, who I think we're going to talk about, published a book that was remarkably similar. You know, teenage girl falls in love with hottie, paranormal adventure, et cetera. The first author, Lynn Freeman, got suspicious and ended up bringing a copyright infringement suit against the second author and the agent and the publishing company. So I like plunged into this ecosystem and it's like this incredibly trope driven form where you can almost imagine the books being sort of engineered and assembled out of pre made parts. You know, I married the Manticore or like Taming the Dark wolf or like my husband the merman. It's just like these real sort of unbridled fantasies about human women usually, although like badass human women usually who fall in love with and have sex with like supernatural creatures.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So, Katie, you have helped guide our journey into the romantasyverse by sending us in a few different directions to explore. We all read a different book at your instruction that is contributing to this genre in a big way. So we're gonna talk through those with you. Is that okay?

[Katie Walman]

That sounds amazing, my little pretties.

[Vincent Cunningham]

There we go.

[Nomi Fry]

It's important to ask for consent in.

[Alex Schwartz]

Not always in a reality, by the way.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, you know. Well, they are animals, fantasy.

[Katie Walman]

There's some mind control, some sexy mind control.

[Vincent Cunningham]

There's all kinds of weird stuff happening. Alex, would you kick us off? My lord, My lady, would you kick us off?

[Alex Schwartz]

It would be my greatest honor. All right, so this assignment clearly depended on us all getting matched with a book that might or might not have suited us. And I am very curious to find out if Naomi and Vincent's book suited them. My book is A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas. This assignment could not have found a better reader.

[Nomi Fry]

God, I just love this.

[Alex Schwartz]

I got ACOTAR pilled.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, we should know that. ACOTAR is.

[Alex Schwartz]

Acotar is the acronym for a court of thorn and Roses, which. Okay, so ACOTAR now consists of four books, five books. I don't know. Will I find out? I might. I might be ordering the next one. A Court of Moss and Fury. I think it's called Craven Mist. Even better.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Wow.

[Alex Schwartz]

Wow. All right, so let me just give you a little breakdown here. We got, of course, a mortal girl, Feyre. She lives in poverty, very picturesque, very sad. In a little hovel with her father. Poor man, he used to be a merchant, but he got kneecapped and now he's just no good.

[Nomi Fry]

Is this contemporary?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well.

[Nomi Fry]

Or is it kind of vague when this.

[Alex Schwartz]

Vague, super vague. It seems to be pre industrial. I hear that later. Industrial. Like, I was reading a Reddit about it, and someone was like, she vomits into a modern toilet. Like, you know, so there is so

[Katie Walman]

much vomiting in these books.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, yeah, you have to. Well, emptying your stomach, of course. All right, so Feyre lives in picturesque poverty with daddy, used to be a merchant, got kneecapped. Now is no good. Her two younger sisters, one of whom is a bit of a bitch, the other whom is a bit of a simpleton. And of course, it depends on Feyre, who we discover is 19. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and say it. She's legal, everyone. She's a huntress. She goes into the miserable woods to hunt for her family. On one of these expeditions, oops, she kills a wolf who actually was a fairy, and she's taken over the wall north of the mortal lands to brythian that is where the fairies live. They all have different little kingdoms. And she is taken by a High Fae, Tamlen. And it soon becomes apparent both that Nott is all well in his kingdom. There is a blight. There are some problems. His magic has suffered. Something bad is going on. It may come to infect the mortal world. And also. And here's one of the tropes that Katie is talking about. Feyre doesn't want anything to do with the fairies. She's been told they're bad. They're ev. These two enemies might become lovers. Enemies to lovers. Major romantasy trope.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Big one.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Katie Walman]

So I love this. I do have to make a correction because when we were fact checking my piece, Sarah J. Maas through her people also made this correction.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh my God.

[Katie Walman]

I describe Tamlin as a fairy lord. He is not only High Fae, which is. Well, he's High Fae, but he is a High Fae High Lord.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh my God.

[Katie Walman]

He highs. Oh my God. Right? And so the copy editor called

[Alex Schwartz]

like

[Katie Walman]

High Fae High Lord. It's like, yeah, yeah, that's it, man. Like not only is there the High Fae, which is sort of like the upper class of the High Fae Lord, but he's the High Lord of the High Fae.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So we're learning that. Sarah J. Maas, we're learning you kind of broke some news here that like this is a person who's very interested in and devoted to her own taxonomies

[Katie Walman]

and to the hierarchy of the fairy world. Because these books are all about status, status and power. And like, if you try to drain away some of like the kick ass magic awesomeness, dominance of any of these very attractive fairy men, you're in trouble

[Vincent Cunningham]

in the firmament of the Romantasy world. Like what is Acotar's place in that crown?

[Katie Walman]

It is the one that sort of started the boom off. It popularized all of these big tropes. And Alex did such a great job of talking about them. But I would add that once the ordinary girl goes into the rarefied world and she's surrounded by all of these devastatingly handsome supernatural creatures, they engage in witty banter and taste ambrosial food and there's lots of intrigue, it's a bit of a.

[Nomi Fry]

It's a bit of the kind of the perfect boyfriend fantasy.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, totally. I mean, do you guys want to know how I felt about it? I mean, I already told you a little bit. Yeah, I need to just narrate my own journey for a second.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Please.

[Alex Schwartz]

Can I tell you about my own journey.

[Nomi Fry]

How did you become pilled?

[Alex Schwartz]

Because, well, I became pilled when I realized that I couldn't put this goddamn book down. Even it was 11:45 at night, and my own human child would be waking, you know, in a number of hours. And I was like, must keep going. So that's how I knew that this book had me good.

[Nomi Fry]

And what was it about it? Like, why could you not stop?

[Alex Schwartz]

All right, so one is the narrative ease of this book. It is impressive. Like, could I make a critical case for it? The writing is repetitive. It's not the highest of literary experiences, that's for sure. But it did bring me back to this deep childhood state of total absorption and pleasure. And some of these tropes that we're talking about really do remind me of books that I read as a tween. Not just the Tamora Pierce books, but also a book like Ella Enchanted. Don't know if anyone here knows that. By Gail Carson Levine, because both of them are Cinderella stories. They're both about being totally poor in a very picturesque way, in a way that has nothing to do with modern poverty. And I in my bedroom as a child on the upper with nothing to want for love, to pretend that I was in a wood. You know, my whole family depended on what mushrooms I could pick that day and if I would, you know, run into the wizard or whatever. And she's made bank on that conceit.

[Nomi Fry]

Good for her.

[Alex Schwartz]

Good for her. I'm kicking myself.

[Vincent Cunningham]

There you go. I think we have some voicemails that might further open up the rose of Sarah J. Maas.

[Alex Schwartz]

Hell's yes. Come to me, listeners. Let me hear you.

[Listener 1]

Hi, critics. So my experience with romantasy was that in 2020, I sort of lost my ability to read. I think it. It was just isolation kind of messed up my brain, and I just kind of gave up on reading. Cause I couldn't do it. And then in 2021 on social media, I'd been hearing some buzz about these, like, horny fairy books. So I get acotar and I'm reading it and I'm like, this is so cheesy. But I also couldn't put it down. Like, I was embarrassed to be reading it. But I also, like, like, had this.

[Alex Schwartz]

Thank you.

[Listener 1]

I don't know, primal part of me that was like, ooh, I love it. I love how horny they are. I love how, like, predictable this is. Like, I love how kind of idealized the characters are and how self insert y the main character is. Now I'm Kind of able to read again. And Romantasy is a regular part of my reading activity.

[Alex Schwartz]

I love it.

[Katie Walman]

I don't know.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, I totally get that. I mean, there's a certain kind of pleasure from just binging a book that is very different than sitting and passively binging a television show. And I do think it's about that childhood long summers in the hammock, whatever it might be under. And I can totally understand why Acotar brought that back for this reader.

[Vincent Cunningham]

We got another voicemail. I think we're gonna.

[Nomi Fry]

Let's listen.

[Listener 2]

Hello.

[Mel]

This is very exciting. Also.

[Listener 3]

Hello.

[Mel]

My name is Mel. My venture into romantasy is that I had a friend recommend Acotar to me during COVID There is so much I have to say about the romance and romantasy genre, but I think it, like, all boils down to the fact that it's empowering. Like, women should be allowed to want strength and pleasure for themselves, and that is what these characters often want. I also personally realized that I'd never read an intimate scene written by a woman. Like, I'd never read a smut scene in my life before. And it was kind of like having an older sister tell me this is how it should.

[Alex Schwartz]

This is how it should go.

[Nomi Fry]

This is how it could go.

[Mel]

These are some things you could ask for.

[Alex Schwartz]

I totally get this about the empowerment angle. And I will just say, to complicate Mel's point a little bit, I don't know if this changes in the Acotar, the six books that I have yet to go through on my journey. I'm. Surely you will, and surely I will. But there is a very distinctive element, which is the girl can really be the only one of her kind. And that part is not feminist. A lot of it is the sense of, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it by myself, and I can be as tough as a man, but also soft as a woman.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And just before we move on, I think we should also acknowledge the growing theme here. One of the early stats we talked about is a doubling between 2020 and 2023 and the market share of this. And both of our listeners have talked about COVID already, that there's something about community, something about, to use a different growing industry term, coziness. There is some aspect of salving loneliness that this is sort of making a kind of intervention. And I think. In a minute. Romantasy Book Club continues. That's right after the break on Critics at Large from the New Yorker.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, the current Grok controversy.

[Kate Lindsay]

So webkinz has been in fied.

[Katie Walman]

How old is this person anyway?

[Alex Schwartz]

And then it's like finger princess moment. My first Internet memory.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's like asking, what's the first time I ate food?

[Kate Lindsay]

Hey, I'm Kate Lindsay and this is icymi Slate's podcast about Internet culture. Join me and a very smart, very online guest twice a week as we dive into the latest Internet news and trends you need to know but don't want a doom scroll to find out about. Follow icymi now, wherever you listen.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Before we get back to the conversation listeners, it's that time again. We're working on another I Need a Critic episode. We've come to really love this series because it gives us a chance to hear from you.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh yeah, you all know the drill at this point. But for anyone who doesn't, don't fear. All you have to do is record a voice memo on your phone with a specific cultural question that we can help you with. Maybe you're looking for the perfect book to read after you just had a baby and you have no attention span or time. Maybe you want to know whether book clubs are actually helpful. Maybe you want an example in media, the movies, what have you of an actually happy relationship.

[Nomi Fry]

I mean, who can tell really what you come up with?

And we can't wait to find out. You've got questions, we've got answers, Hit us up. Send your voice memos as always to themaileyorker.com with the subject line critics.

And now back to the episode. Okay, so we've gotten a taste of Acotar Vinson. You had your own assignment. Tell us about your book.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. Fourth Wing is about a 20 year old young woman named Violet Sorengale. And she is kind of a warrior. Nepo baby. Her mother is a high general in the warrior class of a kingdom named Navarre that has been at sort of perpetual war, we are told, for about 400 years. And you have to sort of choose a lane. In this world. You can be an infantry person. You can be a scribe, a medic, or a warrior. Her father was a scribe and Violet has been trained to be a scribe all her life until her mother capriciously says, nope. We Sorengales are warriors. We are riders. Riders, that is, of dragons. And therefore you will be one too. And she makes it through various trials. But because she is a Sorengel has many enemies in the Rider Like Academy, one of them is a huge, hulking, tall, sexy enemy. I'll tell you that Zaden, he's a

[Nomi Fry]

bit of a bad boy.

[Vincent Cunningham]

He's a bad boy who she assumes is going to try to kill her at every step, but weirdly keeps on helping her. And we see her sometimes and the diction is very contemporary, so there's a lot, like double standard for the win, like stuff like that. Or there's a moment when she has to. She's looking at this Zaden character in their second or third kind of weirdly flirtatious, negative encounter, and she has to remind herself and italicized thought, I do not like toxic men. So there's a lot of contemporary diction happening in this dragony world.

[Nomi Fry]

I do love the name Zaden.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's kind of like a zoomer. Like he would have Zuckerberg hair, right?

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

Let me just say this. You don't sound uninvested.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's, you know, it's got. It follows a template that we all kind of know. There's somebody who a lot of fantasy has a, like, you know, Harry Potter has this. The Nepo baby angle. My parents are somebody special, but I'm just this little quisling. And the sort of ancestral power has to rise within me. The sort of specialness of one figure or, you know, weirdly, the most powerful dragon chose me.

[Katie Walman]

It really, when I was reading these books, the theme that kept cropping up was like, I am special. I am unique. And they felt like kind of security blankets that were about propping up self esteem. And the reason that I think that they're so powerful and they provide such solace to us in these times of loneliness and vulnerability is because they tell us, like, you know, you're perfect. You're always right. You have the hottest mate, you have the sickest powers, you have, like, you know, the most beautiful dresses. And, like, I totally get it. Like, I fall into those reveries too. I think we all do.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And the pages just fly by. So, yeah, you know, by mid book I was. I wanted to know what happened, you

[Alex Schwartz]

know, so I learned something interesting about this book, which is Rebecca Yarros had published 20 books before she wrote Fourth Wing and before she started this series, and they. None of them, I think, did particularly well. This book comes out, it debuts at the very top of the New York Times bestseller list. It's absolutely huge. Of course, as we noted in the introduction, the latest in the series, Onyx Storm, is the fastest selling adult novel in 20 years. So, you know, plot twist.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Zaden's still in the picture.

[Alex Schwartz]

There you go. So, Katie, can you situate this a bit for us in the world of Romantasy. I mean, is this happening at the same time as Acotar? Are Yarrows and Moss kind of feeding each other success? Are they seeing, you know, what's the story here?

[Nomi Fry]

Are they enemies to lovers?

[Katie Walman]

Oh, my goodness. Oh, my gosh. A crossover universe.

[Vincent Cunningham]

There you go.

[Katie Walman]

I mean, I think that's a really. It's a really interesting question, like how they interlock, because Sarah J. Maas books sort of popularized these tropes, showed that there was like a really powerful market for them, and then sort of savvy marketers and publishers saw those tropes being celebrated and embraced on social media and basically like syringed them into their petri dishes. And I think, like another your observation that the sort of. There's the irony pilled Internet diction that that is true of Rebecca Yarros. It is not true of Sarah J. Maas.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Sarah J. Maas is not talking about Toxic man or whatever.

[Katie Walman]

No, absolutely not.

[Nomi Fry]

Cool.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Let's go to the viewers. What are we thinking?

[Listener 2]

Hi there, my name is Cece. I wanted to share my perspective on the Fourth Wing series. I first heard about it through a friend of mine, and I was asking her what she was reading and she was kind of sheepish, and she said, oh, I've been reading Romantasy, but actually I think you would really like this series. And the reason she gave was because I am a horse lover, I'm an equestrian, I ride multiple times a week. And she said, you know, these characters, their relationship with the dragons in the story, it kind of reminds me of maybe what it would feel like having a relationship with the horse. And so I picked up the book and I love them. You know, when you're galloping, when you're flying, when you're not flying, literally, but when you're jumping over jumps, it does feel like you're flying. So there's that element of magic, quote unquote. That for me was really evocative. I think that was certainly something that hooked me onto it, you know, more than other YA or romantic novels.

[Nomi Fry]

I mean, that makes a lot of sense to me, the relationship between humans and animals and the way it's depicted in literature. You know, I feel it's a rare thing to find kind of like a representation of that that speaks to one as an animal lover. And so, yeah, it totally makes sense to me. And the fact that it comes in as a kind of fantasy element, you know, animals are magic in a way.

[Listener 1]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

All right, Here goes another one.

[Ella]

Hi, my name is Ella, I'm 24 and I'm from New Zealand. So I got into reading Romantasy books pretty much, which is either for me the Empyrean series or Acotar maybe like a year ago. But one of the things for me anyway with both Acotar and the Empyrean series is the community that it brings with it and the world building. For me, it feels a lot like kind of how people used to go on Tumblr and create series for their favorite TV shows. There's Reddit pages, there's TikTok and being part of a community again that theorizes about all the possible things and is so deeply connected and understanding of one particular character, a few characters. Cause it's just so much fun.

[Listener 1]

That's me.

[Alex Schwartz]

Thanks guys. Bye. This is so spot on, that another part of the rise of Romantasy, and I think a really big part is that it's about community. It's a way of uniting people. Romance bookstores, absolutely huge right now. And their rise, I think is being fueled in large part on Romantasy readers. You know, these are places where people are coming together, often in costume, like they did at the release of Onyx Storm. It's really like, I'm very interested in that, in how people are leaving the hammock and getting out there. Because you wanna connect with other readers of these books. Because I think it, you know, you feel that something about yourself has been expressed.

[Nomi Fry]

Definitely. It's a kind of like, it's a bit of an underdoggy kind of phenomenon, right? Where it's like, oh, I'm. Which I totally identify with, right. As a reader, like, I misunderstood. Nobody has ever felt these things I've felt before, especially as a young person. You know, when you read a book and you're like, oh, wow. And then you talk to other people who felt similarly and there's something beautiful about it for sure.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You know what? I think it's time for Nomi to step up and tell us all about Crave, which it's all right there in the name, isn't it?

[Nomi Fry]

Oh, it really is. Ooh, it really is. Okay, so the book I was assigned by the group is Crave by Tracy Wolf. It came out in 2020, the first in a series of six books, I believe called like Crave, Crush, Court. But it's the Crave series. Basically the plot is, there's a young 17 year old girl named Grace, hails from San Diego. Her parents die in a shocking car accident and she is left all alone in the world except for her Uncle Finn. And Uncle Finn also happens to run a very mysterious boarding school in the wilds of Alaska.

And the school is, shall we say,

from the jump, a little bit odd. Right. All sorts of weird things are happening. You know, there's like chandeliers of bone, of human bone, you know, and like a chess set of, you know, with gargoyles and dragons and, you know, and she keeps being like, this seems a bit strange, but I'm not sure what's going on, like, for, like, literally 200 pages. It's kind of like. And it's like her cousin is like, don't talk to him. He's a Dre. And she's like. And her cousin is like, oh, I meant there's a lot of drama with him. You know, stuff like that. So it's just like, he's a drag queen.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm not a cousin.

[Nomi Fry]

So it's a bit. So it's a bit humorous, but also extremely clunky. And much like your book, the Rebecca Yaros book that you read, Vincent uses a lot of contemporary references. So, like, you know, like, apropos of nothing, suddenly her cousin puts on Harry Styles Watermelon Sugar in their dorm room. Stuff like that, you know, so, yeah, it's like.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's for today.

[Nomi Fry]

It's for today. Basically, the main thing that happens is that she falls in love with this very mysterious, extremely hunky, you know, strong of jaw, you know, dark of hair, scarred of face. He has a scar which is, you know, mysterious, but also weirdly appealing. And his name, guys, is Jackson with an X.

[Katie Walman]

Okay?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Makes all the difference.

[Nomi Fry]

It makes all the difference. So we have. She falls in love with Vanderpump. It's very Vanderpump. It's very bartender on Vanderpump Rules. Okay, it turns out Jackson is a vampire. And not just a vampire, but the heir to become the king vampire, because he also killed his brother Hudson, because Hudson was an evil vampire. And not only that, there's a lot of different. There's a lot of different cliques in this school because it's not just vampires. We have dragons, okay? One of the main dragons is named Flint, and he has, you know, beautiful curly hair and warm brown eyes.

[Vincent Cunningham]

The dragon does.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, when he's human form. In his human form, he's a hottie.

They're all, like, hotties.

They're all hotties. So. And then there's the kind of wolf shape shifters. There's witches and wizards. I can't emphasize enough how repetitive it is, like every 10 pages, Grace almost gets killed and Jackson saves her.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

And it's like it's either like a falling branch or an earthquake or. No, it's crazy.

[Katie Walman]

Yeah, I just. I have like, some trivia to add to that glorious recap. There is a trope that I stumbled upon in reporting this piece called the too dumb to live trope. Am I?

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, wow.

[Katie Walman]

Grace falls into the like, and it's sort of like a joke, like a frustration. Like, why are these ingenues, like, so naive and so stupid and like, why do we have to keep this simmering for so long? Don't you have any other ideas?

[Nomi Fry]

So long.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Now that we've kind of gotten back into the sort of whole paraliterary aspect of this, could you give us just a sense of where social media and specifically booktok plays into all of this? What is that community? Like, what's going on over there?

[Katie Walman]

Yeah, I mean, it's really fascinating. On the sort of consumer side. There are readers who are really like, championing these books and like, if they like something, they'll make a video about it and they'll like cry. And the other thing about these videos is often they're marked and sorted by hashtags that correspond to particular tropes like dagger to the throat or enemies to lovers. And I talk to some, especially self publishing authors in Romantasy who say, like, TikTok is such a resource for me because this is where readers are telling me exactly what they want to read. And like, I see the things that are being celebrated and uplifted on social media and I say, oh, all right, I'm gonna put this in my book.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, this goes to. In which direction the kind of like owing flows. Right. Do they owe us certain actions or certain affects, or do we owe something like attention or giving up ourselves to new experiences? It seems like the sort of, I don't know, social media as a marketplace as, I don't know, a place for haggling almost kind of further confuses that relationship between reader and character and reader and sort of even action.

[Nomi Fry]

It's crazy to me, I have to say. Like, I'm not for this on this level. I'm not against, of course, you know, readers engaging with books they love and encouraging other people to read them and hashtagging, even tropes or. But the idea that a writer needs to chase the Dragon's tale of the completely shifting and changing fashions or, you know, preferences of like an amorphous reading audience is like nuts to me.

[Katie Walman]

Yeah. And I would add that the specificity of the tropes, the way that like a reader can shop by very specific pleasure points. The thing I like to read about, forced proximity plus love triangle plus, like marriage of convenience, whatever. Like, there is this sort of like, customization, like, Netflix customer service aspect to this that like, makes me think, especially when coupled with the notion that Vincent was alluding to that, like, these books are about bolstering self esteem and providing validation and sort of like bringing you deeper into yourself and feeling affirmed. Like, it's sort of like these books are. They're like customer service wrapped in self care, wrapped in literature. Like, they're not.

[Nomi Fry]

Well, it's not even literature anymore. You know what it is? It's AI it's exactly made for AI this is what AI should be for in just this, right? Like, if you want a book that's about like all these, like, highly, highly specific, like, fan service things, then, yeah, just go to ChatGPT. I don't know, like, I. It seems like that would be a sol. Let's like, solve that problem, eh?

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm not quite as concerned as you are, I gotta say.

[Nomi Fry]

I mean, I'm not concerned.

I'm not losing sleep.

But I do think it's like, not. This is not what I think literature is.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna take a break and when we're back, we're gonna talk about why this show is exploding right now. But we also have to say thank you so much to the illustrious Katie Ballman.

[Nomi Fry]

Thank you, Katie.

[Katie Walman]

This was so fun. I want to continue talking about this.

[Nomi Fry]

I know, it's really interesting.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Thank you for joining us.

[Katie Walman]

Okay, bye.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Critics at Large from the New Yorker will be right back.

[Wired Podcast Narrator]

Wired has always put a microscope on the people, power and forces shaping our world. Uncanny Valley brings that same fearless reporting straight to your feed. Is DOGE finally over? Will AI actually democratize American healthcare? Each week, Wired journalists from across the newsroom are going to unpack where politics, technology, and Silicon Valley collide. From conversations with tech leaders across Silicon Valley, Internet fandom investigations, and government crackdowns on rigged gambling, we're taking you all over the news cycle, going straight inside the priorities, pressures and power plays driving today's biggest decisions. Uncanny Valley tackles the questions keeping you up at night and helps make sense of the future taking shape right now. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Vincent Cunningham]

We've already gotten a lot of these theories about why this genre is Kind of taking off in the way it is, But I think we should also just try to maybe synthesize them. But first we're just gonna hear from a few more listeners.

[Listener 3]

So when I started reading, I was just consuming all these stories about spunky, brave girls who stow away in ships or cross the prairie, pretend to be boys and become knights, fall in love and bring justice to the realm and to the kingdom.

[Nomi Fry]

Alix is nodding.

[Listener 3]

And so for, you know, a magical girl from the 90s, the message was very clear in a lot of that literature. You know, girl power, try hard, work hard, be brave. But when you cross the threshold into adulthood, you know, it changes. You know, I now work in a field where I see a lot of inequality, and I work with people who have spent their entire careers fighting for small reforms and larger systems and making absolutely no progress. So isn't it nice to spend some time in a magical realm where, you know, real darkness and pain and danger and stakes exist, but you can get stronger by being true to yourself and you can grow and cleave to your friends and make real change? You know, isn't that nice? Just with these stories, I think that you're going to get a lot of the experience and the life that maybe you were prepared for as a 90s girl.

[Alex Schwartz]

As a millennial, the 90s girl becomes a disappointed woman and seeks refuge in Romantasy.

[Nomi Fry]

I love our listeners. I just want to say, so good, so intelligent and so, like, articulate. Okay.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, I think it's a good theory. I think that, you know, this is why I keep coming back to these books that I read in my own younger years. I think this was absolutely a huge thing. It was the girls can do anything moment. You were getting that messaging. Yeah. I think this listener has brought up the interesting that reality does not always live up to these expectations. And so in a fantasy world, you don't have to deal with those problems.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. I mean, this is a question, though, because to the listener's point, I have wondered why it's not just about an amazing career woman making her way to the top of the ladder and, oh, also her male secretary creeps under her desk every once in a while or whatever.

[Alex Schwartz]

You're like, why isn't it, baby girl?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Which it basically is, why can't romance end like a sort of way around the real world happen within realism? I'm just wondering why it has to be dragons.

[Nomi Fry]

That's a really good question. I think maybe. I mean. Yeah. Just to go back to the insight from our listener in the voicemail we just heard, I think maybe many people right now, many women perhaps especially, feel as if the real world and the expectations we had of the real world have been tainted. I'm not gonna say beyond repair, but tainted, at least at this moment. And there's a real need to escape.

[Alex Schwartz]

Vincent, I have a slightly different answer for you. I have to say, I think you answered your own question when you asked why we couldn't read a thrilling story about going up the corporate ladder. I mean, come on. Like, yes, there have been. We know that we love Working Girl on this podcast, Mike Nichols movie about exactly that, about a Cinderella story that does not take place in a fairy world, but actually in a corporate office in downtown Manhattan.

[Nomi Fry]

Capitalist movie that I accept as like, you know, mana.

[Alex Schwartz]

But I will say this is not just a women's issue. We have been hearing all over also in like, not just men's world, but specifically in the men's rights world, that there are not enough opportunities in our culture for valor, for heroism, for showing character, for excelling, not in a capitalistic way, but in a kind of older, honor bound way. The fantasy genre is really, really big for these reasons. And I think that some of this, I do think that these are legitimate. There is a legitimate sense of lacking in the society that some of these fantasies can fill. And like, on the whole, I. I do buy that readers can find these fantasies empowering. I also buy that if you put this into a more male lensed world, you get men's rights stuff. You know, I think there is a problem. We have a problem. And innocent fun fantasy is responding in the same way that, you know, some really, like legitimately dark figures in our own world are responding in their own way. And those things probably stem from the same place.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, well, yeah, in the men's rights context, they're going back to classical times and there is a sort of return to the classics as a way to express this. But then there's Game of Thrones, which is also huge entertainment, which is about also these kinds of, I don't know, a time of more. A time, a place, a dimension, a galaxy of more sort of strenuous way through the world that you have to sort of earn your way not just by, to your point, corporate conquest or whatever, but by strength and honor and dignity.

[Alex Schwartz]

100%. I think game of Thrones is absolutely the other crucial thing. To mention the enormous popularity of Game of Thrones. I will never forget just hearing the theme music waft through my window if I happen to open it at the right time. You know what I mean? Everyone watching this show, which was exactly that. It was about hand to hand combat, it was about dragons, it was about valor. It was, yes, about rape and sex. All of those kind of elemental things being packaged in very safe but exciting way. And so when these things kind of come up in the society, we do have to ask why, like, a lot of this has gotten me thinking about vampires in general.

[Nomi Fry]

Okay, say more.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, you know, vampires are a Victorian phenomenon, but they're also a romantic phenomenon, Capital R. You know, we first get vampires. Really? When? In summer of 1816, that kind of famous summer when Lord Byron and Shelley and Mary Shelley, you know, and others are all sitting around Lake Geneva feeling like it's too rainy and come up with their stories. That's how we get Frankenstein. And it's also how we get the vampire, which is an 1819 with a. Why. Which is an 1819 book by one John Polidori, who happened to be Byron's doctor. It's like, why are you here, John Polidori? Oh, because Lord Byron needed, you know, he had a club foot to be attended to.

[Katie Walman]

Yeah, exactly.

[Alex Schwartz]

Get Polidori in the house.

[Nomi Fry]

Never forget the club foot.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, my God. Get Polidori in the house and write about some vampires. And you know, the Polidori vampire, he only wanted virgins. He sucks their necks, you know, they die. He lives like, hooray. We now have.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's a great idea.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's a great idea.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Holidori shout out to you.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes. And then you get Dracula. And Dracula has never left us. And I think Dracula has to do so many things, so many social issues. It has to do with contagion. It has to do with, you know, problems between men and women. It has to do with immigration, this foreigner from the east with an accent who may be coming through your window.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I want.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes. At a time when all these societies are blending and mixing and becoming industrialized. Great change, you know, the anxieties are all wrapped up there. And so I do think Romantasy. I've gone far afield here, but I think Romantasy is speaking to some of that, but also making it cozy.

[Nomi Fry]

Yes.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And because these are all what's so interesting to me about. Yes. This genealogy that you mentioned. But also kind of the way that Romantasy is so hyper aware of the tropes that make it up. Right. It's not just a development. It's plucking from this and this. And maybe that is the coziness, sometimes cliche Is just because somebody can't think up anything better here. It's almost like cliche is weaponized toward comfort.

[Listener 1]

I think that's exactly the way you're right.

[Vincent Cunningham]

There's something you recognize and another thing you recognize and another thing you recognize. And we can bring them in closer congress with another which is like a. It seems it's not a novel. I mean, I guess like the B movie is something that does this as well. But it sort of takes the uncanny out of the context that made it truly address certain tensions and anxieties and puts it in a place where it's almost like hyper canny. Like you know exactly what this is. And this is the thing with fan so much of the utility of. And we talked about this. When we've talked about sci fi and other vehicles of travel away from realism. We're always asking, you know, what it has to do with the real world. And I guess there's a question of like, is the only value of fantasy its correspondences with the real world? Or is there a pure fantasy in the way that at the beginning of the 20th century we were asking, is there a. Is there a pure abstraction in literature? Or does Gertrude Stein, despite herself always with nonsense words and repetitions, is that always bringing us back to the world of signs and reference in a similar way? Are we missing a point here by trying to diagnose social ills or social anxieties by way of this literature? Is it just like. Is the point that it's just a way.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, I think.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Does that make sense?

[Alex Schwartz]

It totally makes sense. And you know, of course, because I'm so lily livered, I'm like both. I don't wanna commit. No. But I think the listener before who was making the point about the disappointments of modern romance, you can find answers to that outside of Romantasy. Also in fiction. That seems maybe a bit more realist to us. You can watch an Ora Ephron movie or whatever.

[Katie Walman]

Totally.

[Alex Schwartz]

And find that person.

[Nomi Fry]

Which would be my preference.

[Alex Schwartz]

Exactly. Because, you know, we love reality.

[Nomi Fry]

We love reality.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, we just love it.

[Nomi Fry]

Or Rooney as well.

[Alex Schwartz]

I mean, I think Rooney. Guys, it's crucial, I think. I mean, people have been saying this, but not until I read Romantasy did I understand how close she is. She is right there.

[Vincent Cunningham]

She's on the cusp of the.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, because you're getting soulful sex with often lots of. And hot sex with lots of disagreements between people. But a kind of fundamental can't quit you thing. And the intensity of it, the Sheer intensity of it. Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

And a fundamental knowing of each other.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's right.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. So given all that we've been through, given all of the rivers we've crossed and the river sticks, Dragon burns.

[Alex Schwartz]

We've.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, There you go. Will you continue your immersion in this genre? Can I tell you something quickly to answer this question a little bit for myself? And then the other night, I watched the first episode of a series called Outlander.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh. And there it is.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Which is like, it started back in 2014 on Starz, and it is about a World War II nurse after World War II who is suddenly reunited with her husband. And shortly thereafter, by some pagan magic, she's transported back in time to 1743. And after all this, make backup sex with her husband, starts to clearly have a romance with some 18th century Scottish soldier. And I was like, wow, am I. Am I back in the fields of Romantasy? Cause this is very much Romantasy. So the answer for me is, I'm not sure.

[Alex Schwartz]

But you might be staying with Outlander.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It sounds like I might be staying with Outlander.

[Listener 3]

Oh, yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

But how about the rest of you guys?

[Nomi Fry]

I have to say I'm curious about Alex's book. I'm curious about the moss book.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You might get acotarified.

[Nomi Fry]

I might get acotarified.

[Alex Schwartz]

Nomi's gonna hate it, and she's gonna be like, what is wrong with you?

[Nomi Fry]

No, no, no, no. But it's piqued my curiosity for sure.

[Alex Schwartz]

I mean, I'm disturbed. I'm disturbed by the degree to which even after I knew exactly what was going to happen in this book, I just kept flipping those pages. So it all comes down to this. Will I be going to a court of stones and sapphires? Whatever. The next one happens to be mist and a route. Yeah. A court of rhymes, grass and loathing. I might be. I might be.

[Vincent Cunningham]

We might have to check back in.

[Alex Schwartz]

I might be going there. Because that kind of gulping down feeling, it does reconnect me with my 90s girl self.

[Nomi Fry]

And that's a beautiful thing.

[Vincent Cunningham]

This has been a very fantastical, very special, sexy critics at large. Our senior producer is Rhiannon Corby and Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Alexis Quadrado composed our theme music, and we had engineering help today from James Yost with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of Critics at [e-mail] Critics foreign.

[Evan Osnos]

We are in uncharted territory.

[David Remnick]

Staff writer Evan Osnos on the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[Evan Osnos]

I think all of us right now are trying to make sense of an avalanche of news every day. And there aren't very many places where you can go and understand how something looks in the grand scope of history and context. That's what I come to the New Yorker for.

[David Remnick]

I'm David Remnick, and each week my colleagues and I try to make sense of what's happening in this chaotic world. And I hope you'll join us for the New Yorker Radio Hour

[Katie Walman]

from prx.