Don't Listen to the Romantasy Haters

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Romantasy—the category of fiction in which the supernaturally gifted soar on the wings of love, and also sometimes of dragons—is incredibly successful.

Its reigning queen, Sarah J.

Maas, has sold about 75 million copies of her novels, my colleague Honor Jones reported in a recent Atlantic essay .

The appeal of the genre, Jones found, isn’t just chiseled abs, smoldering gazes, and faerie frippery.

Yes, there are hyper-athletic magical trysts, but “far more significant are feelings and friendships between the heroes: enchanted beings with relatable self-esteem issues who don’t just seek and fight but also yearn and banter as they face down enemies,” Jones writes.

Readers stay for engaging and emotionally effective stories featuring characters they love.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic ’s Books section: Good villains are hard to come by.

This one’s great.

The journalist and the manipulator Immigration is a poorly oiled machine.

The man who wanted to understand every aspect of Jewish life Romantasy fans generally know that books like those in Maas’s mega-best-selling A Court of Thorns and Roses series—popularly known by the acronym ACOTAR —aren’t going to win the Pulitzer Prize.

And they know that fantasy isn’t real life.

“But if they’re snowed in—­or trapped by a pandemic, or up with a nursing newborn, or stuck in any of the ways humans tend to get stuck—­it can help to imagine” the possibility of magic, Jones writes.