Crossposted from https://lemmy.world/post/48797836
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2026
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I fucking hate that Romantasy has become such a big thing. I go into the fantasy section of the bookstore and only find romance shit now. I swear the back-flap description of every single fantasy book at the last bookstore I went to talked about how the protagonist would have to come to terms with her feelings for some man she shouldn't be with.
I mean... there was romantasy before (for example the Rhodry and Nevin books, something Spell) but not nearly as vapid.
Edit Daggerspell, that's it. Katharine Kerr.
I have so many small book stores around me that all stock the exact same romantasy/fantasy/teen-fantasy catalog. I don't mind that it's there, but it bums me out that there isn't any bookspace ever dedicated to the non-fiction stuff I'm actually interested in. If there is, it's usually a single shelf of not very good over priced something or other off the New York Times best seller list.
As someone who likes the genre I'm just really happy there's so much content being made. Yea some of it is slop trying to recapture the fad of ACOTAR (the book pictured), but some of the stuff coming out of it is really good. Also, because of this, there's more romance in a lot of genres that didn't have much before (looking at you sci-fi).
Personally, I love love and reading romance brings me joy. Some of these books are cringy teen angst with unrealistic and toxic relationships (mainly the YA side), but I've found that most I've picked up have healthy relationships with interesting plots that don't revolve around just the romance.
That said, pure romance books (the pastel section of the store) have burned me too many times for me to bother trying anymore. Almost everything that this post complains about but 1000%.
Ngl, this post reminds me of the backlash that seems to follow anything coded for women that becomes really popular.
100% all of this! I used to hate romance novels back in the day. To me it was all boring nonsense with beefy long haired men on the cover. When romantasy became popular, more genres started breaking into the romance sub-genre. I realized that the reason I hated romance novels was because I don’t like reading contemporary fiction and that’s what the vast majority of romance used to be. I’m a total scifi girlie. I’ve watched scifi shows and movies my whole life. I prefer scifi over all other genres, scifi is and always has been my jam.
I picked up Hunt the Stars by Jessie Mihalik on a whim as a blind date book and fell completely in love with scifi romance. I read all of the Starlight’s Shadow and Consortium Rebellion by Kit Rocha trilogies, then I read the Mercenary Librarians trilogy (more dystopian). I’ve never stopped reading, but finding scifi romance reinvigorated my love of stories and books. I get all of my space opera scifi adventures and a good romance story to go with it. I’m extremely happy that the romance genre has broken out of just contemporary and historical fiction. I can walk into the local romance bookshop and find something that hits all the buttons and brings me joy to read. Scifi romance is my jam!
It does feel this way doesn’t it? I remember talking to a guy who said romance novels trashy and worthless with no storyline, therefore it’s a useless genre and women who read it are brainless. This came from a mid 40 year old man who hasn’t read a book since high school. Romance is the best selling genre and has helped keep authors and the publishing industry afloat, but women like it, so it has to be bad.
Romance isn't quite my jam (I prefer it to be the B plot to a good A plot, rather than the inverse), but sci fi and fantasy romance stories are much more to my tastes than the old school stuff because I too can't stand contemporary fiction.
And yeah I'm of mixed feelings on it. The backlash is real and feels very misogynistic, but also real is the slop and ravenous fan bases. But I can't judge, I prefer to read queer speculative fiction, and it's absolutely no better. In general I'd really just like a lot of these authors to consume something not deeply entiwined with fanfic and to step outside fanfic tags. A heavy fanfic influence can go awesome, Tamsyn Muir is one of my favorite authors, but a lot of authors that came up in fanfic could really use ths range to move beyond it as well.
And beyond that, I've seen pulp readers judge romantasy and that's funny. For all my criticisms of romantasy, pulp is worse. And even the so called golden age of sci fi had so much garbage. We remember the Dune and the Clarke and the Asimov and the LeGuinn, but a) for each one worth remembering there's a lot that isn't and b) (personal opinion) modern authors do a better job of making books easier to get into. Like I love LeGuinn, The Left Hand of Darkness is an all time classic, but it absolutely is throwing a lot at you without hooking you in until well into the book.
Ooh, thanks for the recommendations! I haven't read any of those yet.
I love scifi but have always struggled as some, especially some of the classic scifi authors, seem to write women pretty strangely. Just takes me out of it. My favorite scifi book recently has been Moonbound (not romance, just a great book IMO).
My current scifi/romance read is The Veridian Priestess. A little explicit, but it gives dune/chronicles of riddick vibes with a heavy space religion plot. For me it's also a local author which is always cool. I also have heard really good things about "Of Monsters and Mainframes". But yea, kinda sucks how some people view it. As a guy I've gotten a few sideyes from other men, but I've also had the occasional guy who also likes it. Bit of a mixed bag.
Honestly I have more of a complex over not reading 'proper literature', but I decided a while back that it's better to read for fun than to not read at all.
Edit: While we're talking about shitty books, behold the worst book I've ever read 3/4's of: He Who Fights With Monsters.
Had a friend swear up and down it was incredible, ended up sending him a mini dissertation on how unbelievably bad it was. Didn't realize it started as a Wattpad story when I read it. 😬
I will say, mixing in some books with more depth outside the romance genre every few books can be good for you and very enjoyable. Just like something like a Hugo winner (A Memory Called Empire was great) or something widely acclaimed (I'll always recommend Tamsyn Muir and Brandon Sanderson) or even a classic (LeGuinn is awesome).
Yeah the classic sci fi authors absolutely wrote women terribly, I'm dreading starting Dune despite knowing I'll like it for that reason.
That said, yeah reading at all is better than not
i dunno. twilight was really bad
Now come on, if you stick to reading it out of principle it sorta turns into X-Men and that's ok with me.
I worked at borders when the last book in the 4 part series came out. Manager told me to read it. So I speed read the first two
The only part I liked was the use of blank chapters to represent the passage of time during depression
The rest was so dullllll
I don't know if xmen in the 4th book would have saved me
When I watched the movie, I turned every line spoken by a vampire into a pickup line and it became fun again, but you shouldn't have to play games like that with your literature. Or cinema.
The whole "imprinting on a baby" thing I heard about, that really skeezed me out
But that baby is named with a portmanteau of the grandma names! It's so carefully thought out! /s
it's very illustrative of the culture the author comes from.
it's huge because real life romance is collapsing as people prefer imaginary romance.
the problem in real life is that if you are with someone you shouldn't be with, there are usually real negative consequences in your life.
A lot of romance was like Pirates and shit. It's not like it was ever really particularly grounded.
I also hate this trend. I've been reading a ton of SciFi the last few years because I fucking hate romantasy.
I don't mind love being part of a storyline either. But there's a huge difference between love as part of the story and fucking romantasy.