Romantasy, a portmanteau of romance and fantasy, is a relatively new genre term. Though love stories that take place in a fantasy setting are long-established (as opposed to fantasy with romantic subplots, which bear less resemblance to romantasy than a narrative with a dominant romance plot), romantasy, as a term and as a genre, has seen a boom in the early 2020s.

Though a report from The Guardian cites the first reference to “romantasy” appearing online in 2008, the subgenre became mainstream largely due to the BookTok community on social media platform TikTok (Creamer, Ella. “A Genre of Swords and Soulmates: The Rise and Rise of ‘Romantasy’ Novels.” The Guardian, 2 Feb. 2024). Titles like Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (2015), for example, saw massive boosts in sales after becoming popular on the video platform—even though the book was billed as “high fantasy” when released, due to the relative unpopularity of “romantasy” as a term at the time. Quicksilver also gained significant popularity via BookTok; though the book was initially published in June 2024 on Amazon KDP’s Kindle Unlimited platform, the novel’s runaway success led to a publishing deal with Forever, an imprint of Hachette, re-released December 2024.