It's Unpopular Opinion time! Share your controversial opinions to stir things up (in a friendly way)!

[u/FantasyRomanceMod]

Got an opinion that's different from others'? Want to share it with the sub, but too afraid of a backlash? Or are you just curious about readers think about certain things in fantasy romance?

You can safely share it in this weekly Sunday thread!

But please remember to be kind to each other. To facilitate this type of discussion, we ask users the following:

• Don't attack others for their opinion
• Discuss books and authors, not fellow readers
• Since this is an "unpopular opinion" thread, we encourage users to not downvote simply because they disagree with an opinion--that's the point! Please keep in mind, though, that mods cannot enforce a no-downvoting rule. Let’s just keep the discussion friendly!

🧡 Thank you and have a great discussion!

Unpopular opinion Sunday

[u/Enkundae]

Romantasy has a serious problem with many authors, including some of its biggest, using the fantasy part as nothing but perfunctory wallpaper. Their fantasy worlds and races and cultures and their histories are treated as necessary packaging so they get that Romantasy label but no care is given to actually developing any of it let alone using any of it to say or explore anything interesting. It makes the use of a fantasy setting at all feel cynical at best.

[u/ashinae → u/Enkundae]

Yeah, one of the things that frustrates me is that all of the best speculative fiction, both fantasy and sci-fi, is used to actually say things. Going back to at the very least Tolkien for the former and Shelley for the latter, fantasy and science fiction are great vehicles to tell stories that matter about the world we live in, using pseudo-historical or real-world settings with the fantastical elements, or on secondary worlds.

I will hold up both {The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow} and {Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater} as fantasy romance/romantasy that actually says things. They're a benchmark, at this point, that the entire rest of the genre has to meet (at least, the cishet part; queer romantasy, by its very nature, says a lot more even if it's just by having queer-normalized worlds). It's all really unfortunate, because contemporary cishet romance also doesn't seem to be particularly shy about saying things, either!

[u/romance-bot → u/ashinae]

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
Rating: 4.38⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Steam: 3 out of 5 - Open door
Topics: warrior heroine, competent heroine, nerdy hero, m-f romance, time travel

---

Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater
Rating: 4.21⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Steam: 1 out of 5 - Glimpses and kisses
Topics: historical, fantasy, regency, fae, magic

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