2024 Best of Romantasy

Image by Mark English

2024 Best of Romantasy

Back in February I wrote an impassioned defense of romantasy as a genre. This has been a year of getting back to my roots as a reader. Remembering to read for love and miracles not just for acquisitive knowledge.

I think that there are urgent things we need to communicate to audiences bigger than our social media echo chambers of like-minded activists. And I think that romantasy is a hardy and generous and attractive genre that will welcome us all.

As I think about what I desperately want to save – flowers, butterflies, mycorrhizal systems, chestnut trees, rivers, mountains – I must consider what is the best way to make people care about how alive the world is.

I want to claim Romantasy as a genre that is a sturdy and swift boat. It is a boat within which we place our most important cargo that we want to survive oncoming climate and social upheaval.

How do we get people to fall in love with the earth again?

I think it is through love stories and a healthy dose of smut. I think it is through propulsive storytelling that cares more for ecologies of relationship than for literary acrobatics.

Give me spice. Give me dragons. Give me romance. Give me back an earth where the mountains and rivers and trees can talk.

I then shared a list of my favorite Romantasy books you can access here.

But as the year comes to a close I’ve read many more books and I wanted to share a list specifically about my 2024 faves.

A Fate Inked In Blood by Danielle L. Jensen

Throne of Glass Series by Sarah J. Maas

The Court Series by Sarah J. Maas

(I’ll be honest I really wish it had ended after the third book. After that, the series lost me.)

From Blood and Ash Series by Jennifer L. Armentrout