Fairies, foxtrots and sauciness: my night at the romantasy ball - The Saturday Story

Manveen Rana (0:01)

From The Times and The Sunday Times, this is The Story on Saturday. I'm Manveen Rana.

This week, a literary storm hit Britain. The hotly anticipated sequel in Sarah J Maas's romantic fantasy series hit the bookshelves, and Waterstones held special events across the country to mark the moment.

If, like me, you haven't heard of the Court of Thorns and Roses novels, you need to hear this. Because the series is not just a blockbuster hit, but it's also shaping a whole new literary genre, Romantic Fantasy, or Romantasy, which is worth 54 million pounds a year in the UK alone. And Sarah Maas is its undisputed queen. So what is it about fairies and highlords that has so many fans rushing to the bookstores? Times contributor Sarah Ditum went to a Waterstones on the eve of the release to find out. And we asked her to read her piece about the experience.

Sarah Ditum (1:21)

It's 9pm on a dark, damp October evening in Bath, and the door to Waterstones does not look much like the portal to a fairy kingdom.

Inside though, an enchantment has fallen over the low pile carpet and shelves of paperbacks, as about a hundred women in ballgowns, bustiers and pointy ears, plus a few token men, gather for the midnight launch of the latest Romanticie blockbuster from Sarah J Maas. If you're not already a Romanticie fan, the name is a portmanteau of romance and fantasy. The significance of this gathering may be lost on you, but the genre is big business.

SPEAKER_3 (2:06)

Listen, Romanticie books are coming out left and right. This is the Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J Maas. She is the queen of Romanticie.

SPEAKER_4 (2:16)

Someone told me you want to start reading Romanticie this year and you don't know where to begin, so I'm about to help you.

Sarah Ditum (2:21)

Having taken off in earnest during lockdown with the help of book influencers on TikTok, by 2022 is accounted for 794,000 sales in the UK with a value of £8.6 million.

By 2025, that figure had ballooned to 5 million in sales and £54 million. This year is on track to beat that record due in no small part to Maas, the undisputed queen of Romanticie. In the past five years, she has sold 4 million books in the UK. She even has the power to move the stock market. Shares in her publisher, Bloomsbury, surged by 20% in March when it announced two new installments in her A Court of Thorns and Roses, Akatar, series.

The Bath event was one of more than 60 that Waterstones hosted across the country for A Court of Splintered Harmony, the sixth Akatar book. The seventh, A Court of Forgotten Melody, will arrive in January. With tickets from £15, it's on the modest end of Maas fandom. In London, entry to the saucy Starlight Ball would set you back £235 with no book included. Yet despite all the passion and all the cash Maas generates, she's still treated with more than a little sniffiness, as Jennifer 37 explains to me while she paints a candle in a crafting room in the first floor cafe. Dressed in a lavish purple velvet gown, she's typical of Romantic fans in that she grew up on Harry Potter before graduating to the adult pledges offered by Maas. In fact, she named her son after JK. Rowling's hero.

After discovering Maas, she says she finished the whole series, five books at that point, in three weeks, entranced by the themes of female empowerment and the epic character development and world building. But she says wearily, all that seems to be overshadowed by Maas' reputation for Spice. People just make jokes about fairy porn, she says.

Over at the Prosecco Glass Decorating Station, I talked to Keira, 30, a tattoo artist who is dressed in a striking black corset with heavy winged eyeliner. The base of her throat is inked with a small star, a motif from Crescent City, another Maas series. She's here with her aunt Debbie, who is 59 and works as a health and safety officer. Tonight, she is crowned with an elegant tiara.

I've been so waiting for this, Debbie says excitedly. The next few days of their lives are planned around Maas. They have taken time off work to read the new book, and Keira has put together pyjama and snack packages for their binge read. Not a second of potential Akita time will be wasted. Keira even has the audiobook pre-ordered, ready for the 40-minute drive back to her home in Westbury, Wiltshire.

They are true obsessives, trading fan theories about the sprawling, complicated plot of human-fairy love and war. Debbie even keeps a spreadsheet to keep track. Keira says many of her clients are fans, and she loves talking to them about the books while she works. It's great fun to talk smut all day and scandalize the men, she says, laughing. But what pisses me off is the male snobbery. It's only female smut that gets treated like this, says Debbie. After all, it's not as though fantasy books by men are all that innocent. No one who has read George RR. Martin's rape and incest-tastic Game of Thrones series can pretend to be shocked by the savouring licks, pumping hands, dripping seed, and wing play of Maas at her filthiest.