Every week, another batch of books gets labeled romantasy. Goodreads shelves them there, publishers market them there, and readers recommend them there. But every week, I find myself looking at the list thinking that some of these aren’t actually romantasy.
That’s not a criticism. Some of my favorite fantasy novels aren’t romantasy. The problem is that we’ve slowly started using “romantasy” to mean fantasy with romance, and I don’t think that’s helpful.
Genre labels exist to help readers understand what kind of story they’re picking up. If someone reaches for a romance-driven fantasy and instead gets an epic quest where the romance barely changes the plot, that’s not a reader problem. It’s an expectation problem.
That’s why I keep coming back to one simple question: if you removed the romance, would the story still basically work? If the answer is “yes”, I’m probably not calling it romantasy.
For me, romantasy isn’t about dragons, sprayed edges, shadow daddies, gorgeous covers, or even a little longing across the battlefield. It’s about structure. The romance has to be one of the engines pulling the story forward. If removing the romance doesn’t fundamentally change the novel, I’m probably putting it somewhere else.
So, let’s sort another stack.
All 15 books classified using The Romantasy Classification Standard
Whether each title is True Romantasy, Romantasy-Coded, or Too Early to Call
Whether each book is part of a series or a standalone
Where each book falls within its series
A brief explanation of why each title earned its classification
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