In the interest of branching out from my usual, I'd like to dip my toe into Romance, and since I'm a Fantasy nerd, the idea of Romantasy appeals. I have made some very brief forays without success, I'm a self-described prose snob and couldn't handle the big names for more than a couple chapters. I'm not looking to unsnobify myself, if that's the style of the genre that's fine, it just means the genre is not for me. And to be clear, there is nothing wrong with liking that genre or those authors, if that's what does it for you, more power to you. It just doesn't do it for me. But I'm curious if there's anything out there that would.
So: modern Romantasy that's masterfully and artfully written with deep, nuanced characters and complex but ultimately healthy relationships. Is that a thing? Women loving women preferred. More mature characters preferred (please no teenagers, no YA/NA).
Examples of books I've read not in the genre with writing I've enjoyed immensely:
The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (is this secretly a romance? It's a love story, but in my mind those are two different things. Am I wrong?)
Circe by Madeline Miller
by obax17
2 Comments
You should look into the Riverside series by Ellen Kushner, especially Swordspoint and the Fall of the Kings.
**Some options to try:**
An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson
Bryony & Roses by T. Kingfisher
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
Song of the Six Realms by Judy I. Lin
Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor
The Witchwood Knot by Olivia Atwater
The Fireborne Blade by Charlotte Bond (sapphic)
Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall (sapphic)
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon (sapphic)
The Passion by Jeanette Winterson (sapphic, more magical realism, but it seems to match your tastes)
Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh (MM)
The Emperor and the Endless Palace by Justinian Huang (MM)