The Role of Sex in Romantasy

The first few moments were a blur of the snarling of a gigantic beast with golden fur, the shrieking of my sisters, the blistering cold cascading into the room, and my father's terror-stricken face. Somehow I wound up in front of my sisters, even as the creature reared onto its hind legs and bellowed through a moor full of fangs. Murderers ! But it was another word that echoed through me. Fairy . Who killed him? The creature stalked towards us. I stared into those jade eyes. I did. It was that flash of understanding that had me angling my remaining knife at the beast. What is the payment the treaty requires? His eyes didn't leave my face as he said. A life for a life. Any unprovoked attacks on fairy kind by humans are to be paid only by a human life in exchange. I couldn't escape this, couldn't outrun this, couldn't even try to run, since you blocked the way to the door Do it outside. Not here . Not where my family would have to wash away my blood and gore if he even let them live. The fairy huffed a vicious laugh. Ha for having the nerve to request where I slaughter you, I'll let you in on a secret, human. Prithian must claim your life in some way for the life you took from it. So as a representative of the immortal realm, I can either gut you like swine , or you can cross the wall and live out the rema inder of your days in Privean So that was of course from Sarah J. Mass's long awaited a court of thorns and roses , the first in her five book series, and that was published in 2015 . And this is surely the most hotly anticipated episode that we've ever done on the book club. Surely. So the book known as Akata to its army of adoring fans, was at the forefront of the rising tide of romanticy, and this is one of the fastest growing and most commercially successful literary subgenres in the wor ld. It's I mean, it's a phenomenon. It's famed for these fantastical narratives featuring mythical creatures and magical worlds, everything that you'd kind of expect from classical fantasy, but then combined with a massive dollop of romance and it's the romance and the actually the explicit sex scenes that drive the plots. So this is why you know in some you know, corners of the internet, it is known as fairy porn. Um, and we will definitely be digging into the phenomenon itself after the break. Yeah. But I mean, just to give a sense of how massive it is, the romanticity tag on TikTok has almost a billion views. With billions for Mass's books alone, she is now one of the best-selling authors in the world. She sold more than 75 million copies of her books worldwide, and this series alone has sold an estimated 13 million copies since its publication. Um, and we'll be exploring why it is that this is such a massive hit. But before then, Dominic, I know that you're a longtime lover And have a particular penchant for sexy goblins and tights. Well. So without further ado, what did you make of this? What did you make of a Court of Thorns and Roses? So do you know what? Um we've done a lot of books so far on the book club that are canonical, that are extremely well known. We've done Frankenstein in nineteen eighty four and The Great Gatsby and so on. But we always wanted when we did the show to have a kind of mixed diet, to have um bo oks that lots of people actually genuinely read that you'll see people reading on the tube or whatever. And this is a really good example because as you say, it's a phenomenon. And um I'll be honest, until I did this show, there was no way I would have read these books. 'Cause they're really not aimed at me. I mean, I'm not the target No. I'm not the target age and to be honest, I'm probably not the target gender, 'cause I think they're very they they appeal overwhelmingly to women, don't they? Yeah, I'd say so. Um, so I thought it would be boring for me to sneer at it. That would be boring. There's no point in doing the show if you're going to sneer at books. So I approached it in a spirit of open-mindedness. And I have to say, this will surprise some listeners, but please, the army of Sarah J. Mass's fans, the certainly the final quarter of the book, I read it all in one sitting and I was, I was, I mean, I was pretty addicted to it. I was very keen, not just because I was keen to finish it, but I was actually keen to find out what happened. And um so I enjoyed the the I enjoyed reading it a lot more than I thought I would. And I will say no more. I shall leave my penetrating analysis. Not sure whether penetrating is the word you want to choose when it's this kind of book. Oh yeah, poor choice of words. But anyway, I will leave I'll leave my incisive analysis till later in the episode. You love this stuff, don't you? Or am I being am I caricaturing you? I think you're caricaturing me. I think you're you're making the mistake that so many people make about romanticity, you know, assuming because I am a young woman. I love it. I actually read it uh first during lockdown, because it's it was really, you know, rising to the fore at around that time, this series in particular. A lot of my friends were big fans. I was obviously curious. And I thought it was a lot of fun, like uh anything that kind of features fantastical worlds mythical beasts I'm kind of there for it didn't change my my life I would say uh you didn't fall in love with it the world and I wouldn't say that I fell in love with it I I think maybe there was a situation in which I might have done, but I found the um inclusion of like very real world themes. I mean all all like fantasy generally has something to say about the real world, whether or not the authors deny it or acknowledge it or not. But this was so on the nose, you know, the inclusion of kind of fluffy slippers and, you know, real world social media driven terminology, that suddenly got in the way of the escapism that I look for when I when I go when I read fantasy. Nevertheless, it was on the whole very enjoyable. But you're right in that this is not an episode in which we're going to spend our time tearing these books apart or snaring at them. Because there is some really, really interesting kind of backstory to them. The way that they y meld kind of high fantasy with folklore, with fairy tales. So we're gonna be digging into into all that during this episode. Right. Because I think there's lots of different elements to this. One is um the extent to which uh the books draw on long literary traditions. So we'll be talking about the story of Cupid and Psyche, we'll be talking about Beauty and the Beast and so on. So these books are kind of rooted in um in a genuinely really interesting kind kind of cultural tradition. But also the the the phenomenon of romanticy and what it says about readers in the twenty tens and twenty twenties is actually it's genuinely very interesting. It's so interesting. Future historians will find it a brilliant window into the preoccupations of our own moment. So we'll talk about all this. So I'm guessing there's quite a lot of people who are listening to this show who have never read these books. You know, because I I mean I know some of them and I know they would never read a romantic book in a million years. Our producers. Right, exactly. So shall we explain exactly what the book is about, first of all, give a sort of sense of the of the plot of the book. Yeah, let's and flesh out the world a bit. You s you set us off, Dominic. You take us. Let the adventure begin. The adventure begins. Okay, now uh there will be some spoilers inevitably, but we're not we're gonna try to do it so that we don't if you want to read the book we're not gonna ruin it for you. So our heroine is called Ferah, which I think is a slightly weird name, but there you go. I love that name. Okay, very good. Um so I've stand corrected. She's nineteen years old . She is a huntress and she lives in a kind of medieval world on one side of a magical wall that separates the world of humans, the mortal Lands, from the world of the fairies. Uh and that the world of the fairies is called Privean. Now just on fairies, if you're thinking about the kind of c characters that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thought existed in the Cottingley photographs, so little tiny things with wings. That is a mistake. They're not like that. Fer they're basically elves, Tolkien's elves. Is that fair, Tabby? Yeah, well there's two um sort of subsections of fairies. You get the high fee. They are essentially Tolkien they're immortal , they're beautiful, they have powers. And then you get kind of the more common fairy folk, and they are more like something from Goblin Market or whatever by um Christina Rossetti. Yeah, because they they more goblin-like in their wings sometimes and or whatever. Yeah, exactly. There are lots of different types and kinds and and some wicked, some malevolent, some good. You know, it's quite narnir in that way. It's a strange mishmash of kind of folklores. Um, but they they always have a side. So Ferah lives with the humans on one side of this barrier. She is mortal, it's it's important to say. Yeah, of course. And um we meet her, we're we're right we're plunged right into the action from the very beginning. She's off hunting'.s She a brilliant kind of huntress. She's very athletic. She's very brave, all of these kinds of things. And she has gone hunting to feed her formerly wealthy but now impoverished family. So this is your classic, I mean, people to to give away what we're going to be talking about, this is a story obviously written from the pages of fairy tales. She has a useless father and two spoiled selfish sisters, and they live in this rundown cottage . And she's out hunting, and she ends up in the first section of the book. She shoots this great white wolf. And at the time she thinks, Oh gosh, is this basically one of the um one of the fee, one of the fairies. Because the the these fairies can kind of disguise themselves as animals or whatever or take animal form. And if she has accidentally shot a fairy, then she will be in breach of this treaty that divides the human and the fairy realms. So that's a bit of a worry for her. And actually, in the scene that we performed, I think performed rather than read. Yes, performed. The scene that we performed, this bloke basically bursts into her cottage and it turns out she has shot one of his friends. He's in the form of a terrible beast though, isn't he? He's terrifying. He is, exactly. A sort of feral beast that's like bear, wolf, you know, it's har hard to pin down exactly what it is. Yeah. And he's come to get revenge and basically the her punishment is she will be brought back to the fairy realm, which is Prithian, to live out the rest of her days with this beast. Yeah. So he takes her over the wall, the dividing line between these two realms, and it turns out that he is a member of the high fe, which we spoke about just now, you know, beautiful immortal. He's called Tamlin. And he is in fact the High Lord of the Spring Court because Prithian is divided into different kind of courts, which are different kingdoms. So you have the night court at the top, you have the autumn court, the dawn court, the winter court, the spring court, and the summer court. Yes, exactly, exactly. And um there's something clearly very, very wrong with Tamlin's lands with the spring court. For one thing, they all have to wear masks. So this automatically for Fairer stepping into unknown territory, she doesn't entirely know who everyone is. There's like an element of um disguise to everything. And Tamlin is the manifestation of spring, kind of in human form, you know. He's tall, he's blonde, he has green eyes, his powers are kind of tied up with nature. He's a hunk, isn't he? He is he's a massive hunk. He's uh he's not my type in truth, but he's definitely he's definitely a bit of a hunk. And he, his right-hand man is another high fe called Lucian, and he is the manifestation of autumn, because he's originally from the autumn court. And they live in this vast mansion. This is the kind of the hot spot of the spring court, this is like this is like their castle, if you will. And over time, Farah goes from loathing Tamlin and living in fear of the fairies, to quite liking it and to finding that she's attracted to Tamlin and he's ripped and she can't resist him. He's he's ripped, yeah, exactly. And they end up falling in love. So it's your classic kind of enemies to lovers, and they ha they sleep together. But then what happens is that this strange, mysterious stranger arrives in their midst. It's a guy called Rassand. He turns out to be the high lord of the night court. He too is kind of the physical manifestation of of darkness of night. And he warns Tamlin that some mysterious she has has sent him to tell Tamlin that his time is running out. We don't know why. Fahrer doesn't know why. But it seems that the blight that is afflicting this land is building, growing darker, and time is running out. So Tamlin sends Fera back home to her family who are now wealthy again. So she goes home. With this bloke who who occasionally is like a kind of wolf-like bear. He lets her paint, which is very kind. Yeah, they've been painting, they've been going for lovely country walks, they've been sleeping together, it's wonderful. Anyway, um, she goes back home, she's a bit miserable. She finds that her family, while she's been gone, have been elevated to wealth and status, which is his doing. Isn't that nice of him? Um, but then she comes back. She can't resist. She comes back across the wall, back to the castle. She's worried about him. She's worried about him. That's nice. And um she discovers. Now this is a big you know, if you're really going to read this book, you could stop listening now because this is a slight spoiler. Come back for the analysis though. Yeah, do don't don't stop listening. He has been taken prisoner by this evil queen called Amarantha. And basically everything that Farah thought about the plot so far was a mistake. This is do you know, reading this, it genuinely was a surprise to me. I thought this was a great twist. She's told this by a maid servant. Basically, there's no blight and plague like she thought, which is why they wear masks. Actually, what happens is Tamlin and Co have been cursed by this evil queen who's basically come from Ireland. She's come from a place called Hibern, this island off the coast of uh Prithian. Unbelievable. I mean I'm not being a I'm not being hibernophobic, Tabby. This is this is the truth. This is the truth. Actually in this book, you're kind of encouraged to be hibernophobic, so maybe you are. Yeah. So for complicated reasons, this evil queen called Amarantha tricked all the other fairies into giving up their powers almost or sort of That are the High Lords and High Faye, yeah. Sorry, Tabby's gonna keep correcting me whenever I make mistakes with the uh the precise details of this world. Um the masks that they wear are symbols of their loss of power, they're emasculation , I suppose, for the for the male fairies, I guess. They're loss of their loss of autonomy. The amazing thing that we discover is that all that stuff with like the hunting and the beast and like offending the tre aty and being taken back. That was all a bit of um a bit of a con. It was engineered. Yeah, it was engineered. Because basically under this curse, Tamlin was given forty-nine years to find a human girl who hated fairies and make her fall in love with him. And he had basically taken Farah, and this was his attempt to break the curse . And Ferra is really shocked by this . Gosh, you know, a poor guy, what a terrible thing. And she decides I'm gonna go on a quest to rescue my love, who's been now taken prisoner by this evil queen. Under the mountain. Under the mountain. She's gonna go under the mountain. When she gets there she has to do a series of deadly trials and to solve a riddle to try to rescue him. And she's the one human there and she's surrounded by these terrifying creatures, the fairies. Can she do it? Will love triumph? Um, will she get to embrace this incredibly ripped hunky guy yet again? And what's the story with the other bloke who you mentioned, Tabby? Rissan. The dark character called Risand. He's lurking in the background somewhere, sort of smoldering and brooding and looking dark and interesting. And you know, is there part of her that perhaps might fancy him instead? We will find You will find out after the break and the very dramatic cliffhanger that you left us on there, Dominic. Yeah. That couldn't be more appropriate because in terms of the way that this book is written, it is unrelentingly hyperbolic, unrelentingly dramatic. You know, so it's told from the first person, Fera is narrating it. And her language as narrator, and both, you know as a character when she speaks, it's full of very modern kind of colloquialisms. There's a lot of repetition. As the journalist Joanna Thomas Core says, they all sound like modern teenagers who talk about bathing and suffering from separation anxiety despite battling evil and wielding magical powers. Yeah, so she will shout at the fairies. They'll come at her and it this is not the Lord of the Rings. She will be like, back off, bit ch. And all of this kind of thing, which nobody says in Gondor. You asshole. Yeah, right. No one says that in in Tolkien 's world. You know what I actually found most unsettling of all? And that literally just kept pulling me out of the narrative. Was every time they kept referring to pants? Yeah. You know, as trousers, you know, it's not like jerkins or leggings, it's like his tight white pants. You know, I think a way you could get around that is by using the word britches. 'Cause that would solve the problem for both British and American readers. But I guess it's a very American book. You know, it's written for Americans. And maybe American well, I mean we ha I know we have American listeners, maybe they don't find the word pants off-pingutt in a fantasy book? I mean it is funny, you know, as you say, you have this language and yet you're set in kind of the legendary, mythological, folkloric world of kind of I don't know, old England or mythological England or whatever. It's very interesting. And the plot itself unspools very slowly. Not much happens with the first three quarters. And then as you said, the last quarter is incredibly dramatic. But I I quite like that. I like to spend time getting to know the magical world that I'm kind of reading myself into. And it builds she's very good at building suspense, Sarah J. Mas, I think. I found the first three quarters I shall give myself away here. I found them very slow. See, but I think that reveals something about romanticy , about the popularity of romanticity for women that we will touch on later, the aesthetics of it. Yeah, because right, because I think a lot of the female listeners are like brilliant, they're going off and painting again and going for a country walk and looking at the flowers. And that's not actually like patronizing or reductive, like I genuinely liked all that. I liked hearing about Fayra's gowns and and about the the way that the mansion looked and stuff like that. Yeah, whereas I just wanted fighting or you know more bedroom action. But you also mentioned the fact that Fayer is totally shocked by what happens to her because she is an unreliable narrator, isn't she? Yeah. Um I I like to be surprised. And I genuinely was surprised. Fayra is wrong about almost everything in the first three quarters of the book. She misreads all the characters, she misreads her own family, she misreads all the characters that are you know, there's only a small group of characters in this book. It's not the Lord of the Rings. We're talking about five or six people, and she gets all of them wrong. Tamlin, his mate Lucien, this bloke re-sand, all of this. They're all different from the initial impression. And actually , a theme of the book, I mean, maybe people who are skeptic will be like, oh, does the book really have themes? It absolutely does. It does, it definitely does. A theme of the book is that people are what this thing about masks and people are hiding their true nature behind a mask , whether it's a physical mask or a sort of um a metaphorical one. And I I thought that element was very well done actually. Yeah, I agreed. Well just say a little bit about the author herself, maybe Tabby. Um to give people a sense of it, because we often talk about authors and it,'s easier to do when you're doing, you know, John Steinbeck or um Emily Bronte or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Um but Sarah J. Mass herself, so she's born in New York in 1986. She's, you know, a fantasy and mythology enthusiast. Uh she's married to another writer who's called Josh Wasserman. And if you look him up, he actually looks a lot like like a very kind of sort of slightly more mundane, much more mortal, Rass and. And a lot of fans of this series believe that he was the inspiration for Rissand because they shared the same birthday. And that's quite a big clue as to Rassanne's destiny in due course, I think. Oh, you're giving it a little clue then. That's nice. So her first book, which was called Throne of Glass, she wrote supposedly when she was 16 years old, and that was published in 2012. And this is basically the Cinderella story. So she loves a fairy tale um Genesis. It's the Cinderella story, but Cinderella, if she were an assassin. So she goes to the ball not to kind of dance with the prince and whatnot, but to kill him. And I actually haven't read this book, I'll be quite frank with you, but you have read it, I think, Tubby? Yeah, I I g I gave it a quick read. And it's um it's really interesting because it's it's much more kind of rooted in high fantasy. There's a lot less sex, and I think that's telling because Mass wrote it earlier when romanticy wasn't a massive genre yet, it wasn't even like a phenomenon yet. And so she's kind of-I think she was kind of feeling it out, but you can see in that book, I mean not o not even just the seeds, you can see the whole trunk of the world that will become Prithian, the High Fei, all of that, you know, that world has High Fei, beautiful a beautiful kind of kick-ass heroine. Right. And then her later series, Crescent City , also features this same kind of universe. So it's more of a multiverse, I think. And the same tropes are popping up in every single one. Kind of a dark brooding love interest, people not being who they appear. But Throne of Glass, just getting back to the romanticity of it all, Throne of Glass massively contributed to the success of A Court of Thorns and Roses because it built mass a fan base that then follow her throughout her career. And not all writers can say that these days, I think. It's an unusual thing. So Throne of Glass, when she started, it was what's called a young adult book. So YA. And Akatar, I was about to I mean you to using the uh technical term Akatar is aimed at a slightly older audience, I would guess, like people in their early twenties probably. As the series progresses older and older, I would say. Right. So she wrote this, she claimed, in five weeks. Uh, and I quote, I wrote book one back in two thousand and nine. It was one of those can't write fast enough books, a magic book. I got the idea, and then bam, I couldn't stop writing it for the next few weeks. It's still the fastest I'm a little bit skeptical of that, I think, because the thing is that romantic books are famous for their rapid turnarounds. People write them very, very quickly. I think maybe the writing suffers for that. But because they are pushed to because they have these clamouring fan bases that are hungry for more, more, more. And I think the publishers, you know, are part of that. So I was interested to I was You found a fascinating fact about Sarah J. Mass, didn't you? Go on. I was trying to find a fascinating fact. I was trying to find a good fact that would give us a clue to s to Sarah J. Mass's writing. I think this is very indicative of who she is. And to the appeal of uh the appeal of her books. The tremendous sales. I mean, there are so many writers who would get anything to have her success. Yeah. And the the the the single most interesting fact I could find about her was, and I quote, Sarah has an entire shelf in her fridge dedicated dedicated to cheese. Yeah, well, that's just good sense. And maybe that's where a lot of writers are going wrong. Yeah, but maybe that's giving her maybe that's triggering like mad nightmares from which you know, these books are born. Artistic inspiration . Anyway, let's get into the world itself a little bit. Yeah, let's forget the cheese, get into the world. Yeah. So the first thing I said to you when I started reading this, when I kind of texted you about it, I said I've literally opened the book and it's got the map of Game of Thrones Yeah. And you rightly pointed out to me, don't be such an idiot. Basically the map of Game of Thrones and the map of this book is the same because they're both the maps of the British Isles. Exactly. Because h people like to root , I think, fantasy in like this mythological old England. I don't know whether that goes back to the Arthurian legends or something. It kind of gives it a credibility, I think. It's it's Tolkien, right? They're getting the influence from Tolkien. Yeah, definitely. And we'll touch on Tolkien's influence actually in a bit. But so we've we've said it's Prithian is made up of these courts. And um you can see Mass manages to kind of tell us all about the world in one small paragraph when Fayer is looking up at this map, and it's the six other courts of Prithian occupied a patchwork of territories, autumn, summer and winter were easy enough to pick out. Then above them two glowing courts, the southernmost one, a softer, redder palette, the dawn court. Above in bright golden yellow and blue the day court, and above that perched in a frozen mountainous spread of darkness and stars, the sprawling massive territory of the night court. So that's the geography of Prithian, neatly laid out for us at one go. Right. And I know that you're quite sceptical of of the world-building element of these books, which is so crucial to fantasy. But I actually really quite like it. I like the way that she plays with the way that whatever the court is, be it summer, autumn, whatever, the way that that is manifested in the environment of the court, the food of the court, the trade of the court, whatever it might be, the dress styles, the the way that its denizens look and the way that their powers manifest. I loved all this. I was very keen on it. Well do you hold on, you have a massive advantage over me because you've read other books in the series. So I'm just basing this purely on this first book. Yeah, and the other books flesh out the world of Prithian much, much more, and actually it's old history. Because if I was being critical, and I don't want to be critical because I don't want to invite the wrath of Sarah J. Mass's f ans. Basically, I live in terror of 22-year-old American women attacking me. So I I shall restrain myself a little bit. But I would say that I found the world building in book one quite thin. Um I felt that I I liked the fact that there's a slow reveal of information. She doesn't do it all in one big dump uh right at the beginning, which a lot of writers might be tempted to do . But I would have liked more about the deep history of the world. I would definitely have liked more about the culture. I didn't feel like I felt the culture was a tiny bit generic. It's sort of medieval and there's some fairies, but there's not much more to it than that. And so obviously I love we both love. I mean it's one of the things that we first, as it were, bonded over. Bonded over. Isn't that nice? That's nice for you to make you could have said that slightly less cynically, but uh you chose not to. I actually couldn't. Um but it's the Lord of the Rings. And obviously in the Lord of the Rings, the world building is so sophisticated because Tolkien basically never went out, and that was what he did. The point for him was the world building. Like that's what came first. Yeah, more than the more than the narrative, exactly right. In this, I felt that it didn't have it clearly doesn't have the depth and consistency of the Lord of the Rings. Maybe it's unfair to expect it. And I the way that that was so glaring for me, we've already mentioned it. I felt all the time, characters who live in a world like this do not speak like this. They do not say, back off , you know, you know, you suck or whatever. I mean, I'm not saying anyone does actually say you suck, but they say stuff like that again and again. And I found that jarring. Well, I think this brings us nicely onto the influences behind it, because first of all, this book, I think maybe it didn't need as much of a backstory because it's basically a retelling of a fairy tale, and we'll get onto that. But also, Ma said of her earlier series, Throne of Glass, that the main character, Selena Sardothian, was inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Kill Bill, Han Solo from Star Wars, and Disney Princesses. And you can see that all the mishmash of those influences in the language and the world building of um A Court of Thorns and Roses. There's a really good example, actually, which I know you could not hardly be more familiar with, of a super popular genre that basically a mesh mash of sources, and that's Harry Potter. Yeah. So she's basically doing the same kind of thing, which is taking loads of stuff and putting it into a blender. I mean you could argue that lots of writers do that. I don't mean that harshly. But I think I think that's that's so much of what like fantasy writing is. It's it's it can't be original, really. But let's get into, for instance, what some of the things that inspired Accord of Thorns and Roses, because I think this is really interesting. So folklore was a massive driver for Mass, and she's acknowledged this. She says that she's done it. A bunch of research. I love that. This this is the way they write that they speak in the book as well. She says if a story is inspired by classical literature or folklore, I'll do a bunch of research on it first, decide what parts I want to keep or discard. And you can see this. But there's one glaring example for um a call to thorns and roses, and that's Tam lin. So obviously the main playous love interest in this is called Tamlin. And this is a Scottish ballad which dates back to at least the 16th century . And I actually remember it. I had an illustrated version of this when I was a child. And it's the story of a this guy called Tamlin , and he lives in the forest of Cartahau, and he's rescued by his love, who's called either Janet or Margaret. And they rescue him from servitude to the Queen of the Fairies, just as Ferah rescues her Tamlin from Amarantha. And then there's also a big bucket of Greek m ythology in this. In some ways, it's a retelling of Hades and Persephone, but that element actually unfolds much more in the later books. And I also noticed, I looked up Mass's most recent series, the Crescent City books, and they are just jam-packed with mythical creatures, satyrs, fawns, manticores. So this is clearly something that Maas has in her mind, in her kind of worldview anyway. I mean the thing that jumps out at me from this story story is the of Cupid and Psyche. So Cupid and Psyche for people who are not familiar with it, the original version is in a book called it's either Metamorphoses or the Golden Ass, depending on the translation you have, by Apalaeus, and Apollaius was a Roman writer, second century AD, who lived in Numidia, so in North Africa. And this book that he wrote is basically the only novel in Latin that survives intact. And it's a sort of baudy pictoresque novel. And there's a story within the story, and the story is of this girl called Psyche. She's one of three sisters. So already we can see the parallels. She's very beautiful. And Venus sends Cupid to shoot her so she falls in love with something horrible. Um to sort of punish her because Venus is jealous. And um Cupid scratches himself with his arrow accidentally and he falls in love with her himself. I mean you'll see how the similarities. She ends up being transported to this beautiful house, this kind of castle, where a beast, who is actually Cupid in disguise, sleeps with her. She finds out eventually how beautiful he is behind the mask, and he runs away. She goes back to her sisters but they reject her, and eventually Venus sets her a series of trials and tasks which she passes, the last one being to descend, as it were, under the mountain to the underworld. And at the end of the story of Cup and Psyche, Psyche is rewarded by Zeus. She is elevated to the ranks of the immortals, and she and Cup id are happily married. So Tabby, I mean you can obviously see the the parallels with the Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but you can also see a very, very strong fairy tale element in um in a Court of Thorns and Roses. So fairy tales, there's a there's a brilliant definition of them by an American critic called Stith Thompson, who was the late 20th century expert on folklore. He said a fairy tale is a tale of some length with a succession of motifs or episodes. It's in an unreal world without definite locality or definite creatures, and it's filled with the marvellous, and then it's a never-never land, humble heroes, killing adversaries, they succeed to kingdoms, and they marry princesses.. Yeah So there's something sort of a fairy tale floats free of definition. It's in this sort of magical world where anything could happen. Um and it has the quality of a kind of fable. And Accord to Thorns and Roses, I mean obviously it feels very fairy tale right from the beginning, doesn't it? The cottage and the sisters and all of that stuff? Yeah, the two wicked sisters, Pharaoh being kind of brave and sacrificial, kind of your classic Disney princess. But it's actually really interesting, I was thinking about this. There was this massive trend of fairy tale retellings in the 2010s. And I was kind of wondering why that may be, I guess part of the reason that, you know, romantic is such a hit, and that's because it's kind of a f a familiar emotional entry point and it's a useful way to blend romance and recognisable character arcs. For instance, the latest season of Bridgetton is a retelling of Cinderella. So really it's obviously something that continues to appeal to culture and generation and society. But we mentioned that Beauty and the Beast is basically the inspiration for this book, and that is a very familiar entry point to a lot of people. Of course. So just on Beauty and the Beast. So Beauty and the Beast originates from the 18th century. Um the first version written down was by it's French, by a French writer, 1740, um called Gabrielle Suzanne Barbeau de Villeneuve. And she was writing in what was called the salon tradition, the kind of pres ieuse tradition. And what that meant was basically it's posh people in salons telling each other lovely little stories, often with a kind of moral um point to them. And they'd inherited this tradition from the the real the the the the godfather of fairy tales who was called Charles Perrot , who was an official at the court of Louis the Fourteenth. And Perrot basically invented fairy tales as stories told within the court . So Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Puss in Boots, Sleeping Beauty, and so on. We think of these as children's stories. And the original French tellers of them, I think, talked about them as though they were stories for children , but told them to each other. So it was like, here's a lovely children's story, but you're actually telling it to adults to to while away the evenings, you know, when you've got your gigantic wig. I love that. I think that would be un I mean, I'm gonna give myself a way. I think that would be an unbelievably boring way to spend an evening listening to some French Aristotle telling me a fairy tale. But you would love that. I would um so so Villeneuve writes the story of Beauty and the Beast, but the version we are most familiar with was an abridged version produced sixteen years later, and this was produced for children. And it's by another, interesting , another female writer, Jean-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont. And she writes the version of Beauty and the Beast that we are all familiar with. So just a very, very quick, simple, sort of simplistic recap: a wealthy merchant who has lost his money, as in A Court of Thorns and Roses. He and his family have been forced to relocate to a cottage in or near the woods. One of the sisters is beautiful, brave, and intelligent, the other two sisters are spoiled, they're entitled, they're greedy, they're horrible. There's this beast who is offended in some way by the father. The daughter must sacrifice herself and go with the beast to repay her father's debt as it were. She goes to the beast's house. There, the beast surprisingly treats her like a princess. Over time, she and the beast fall in love with each other, but eventually, the beast, because he's mellowed, he lets her go home to her family, and she says, I'll be back in two months. She forgets because she's gone home. She's gone home to her family, and the beast starts to die. His heart is breaking. She finally returns. She confesses her love for the beast. She says, I will marry you. And at that point, you know, with the kiss or whatever, Aaliyah in the chat, our producer is writing Stockholm syndrome, which I think is little Famously, yeah. Yeah. I think s Aaliyah is even more cynical than you, clearly, Tebby. Um she kisses the beast or whatever. The beast, wouldn't you know it? The beast transforms into a handsome hunky prince. It turns out that all along he was the prince and he was afflicted by this curse, by this enchantment, and they live happily ever after. And Tabby, obviously, you know, this is the plot of a court of thorns and roses to some degree. It literally is. I mean, you have Fayer, you know, she's kind of beautiful, slender, she has unusual eyes, very Disney princess in that. She's kind of got some special skills with within her that makes her different from other girls. She's got two kind of horrible spoiled sisters. She comes from an impoverished family. She goes to live with kind of the moody Tamlin, the beast. Yeah. And she teaches him to love. Yeah. And then you have Tamlin, who initially seems kind of arrogant and bad tempered, but then over time sp spent with his princess, with Fera , he but turns out he's actually quite a good guy. He's shy. He's misunderstood. He's kind, Dominic. Do you know I think I connoted that in my reading, in my performance? No, no, no, no. That was um that was all X-Men. That was all Wolverine. And his mask in this is is um it equates to the beast's, you know, horrible disguise, but obviously it's romantic, so the hero can't be ugly. It also serves to kind of hide in this Tamlin's emotional vulnerability because romanticy is kind of led by emotion rather than in a way that that classic fairy tales absolutely do not. And then Farah's sister, Nestor, this the mask device is used in the same way later on as well. So you have beauty, Fayra, the beast, Tamlin. Fahrer, like Belle, falls in love with her her um her imprisoner. Yeah. But there's a final kind of major influence in on this story, and I think for romanticity in general, and that's just you know, classic high fantasy, and Sarah J. Mas has acknowledged the debt that she owes to, you know, fantasy authors like Garth Nix, Lloyd Alexander, and of course the godfather of all high fantasy, and that's J.R.R. Tolkien. And there are tropes in this that you can map onto classical fantasy, you know, a reluctant hero steps into this destiny and grows in their power, clearly delineated good and evil, some sort of quest, and then of course fantastical world building featuring strange creatures and and magic. and all that And I think the first instance of this that you can spot in um A Court of Thorns and Roses is is Lloyd Alexander's Prydion, isn't it? Which we both it turns out read when we were little. Yeah, so it's kind of the um the black cauldron, isn't it? And there's a guy called Taron who used to be a pig keeper. Yeah and rises to become high king. They're they're clearly they're American, they're rooted in Welsh mythology in the Mabinogion, and they are written obviously for children . I think they won a lot of awards in the 60s and 70s. I loved them actually. And Sarah J. Mask was completely upfront about it. I found I think that she'd written on Twitter when she said basically you know I loved those books. I got the name to Prithian comes from Pridain, which is in his books, which is basically an old Welsh word for Britain, I think. Um so there's that. Obviously the Lord of the Rings, the idea of the quest, the idea of the elves The High Fei. And the High Fei, exactly. Both of them have these objects of great power that kind of set everything in motion and needs to be destroyed. The ring, in this, it's the cauldron. You have this thing of immortal, mortal love, which is replicated in kind of cycles throughout the generations you have Arwen and Aragorn and they are kind of the um descendants of Baron and Luthian. In this Farah and Tamlin, it turns out are not the first mortal and immortal to fall in love because before them there was Clithia and Jurian. So this is very Lord of the Rings. Yeah, it is. Um the difference I suppose. So here's the difference. There there's the high fantasy element, there's the fairy tale, there's Greek mythology, there's all of this kind of stuff. But the other element I would say is I mean, there's high fantasy and high school. So when I got to the end of the book, I thought to myself, you know, this does feel very, very like a high school romance. So Faira is the outsider girl from the wrong side of the tracks. The evil queen Amarantha is basically the queen bee of the school. There's the school quarterback who is kind of Tamlin, who's hunky and blonde. Yeah. There's his sardonic mate, Lucian. There is the um the bloke who's a crony of the Queen Bee, but who actually turns out is quite interesting and he's got these kind of smouldering dark looks. And that's Resand. And at the end of it's not I I I don't want to spoil it, but basically end of it, the climax does involve the Queen shouting at Vera , say that you don't truly love him, admit to your inconstant heart. And this is kind of very much like the showdown and the ch in the training room or something. I'm not gonna lie, no one ever said that in glee when I was watching, but I know what you mean. The general You know what I mean. It's like basically they're fighting over this guy. Do you love him? Don't you love him? You don't really love him, all this kind of thing. Yeah. And I think that's obviously that is obviously a part of this the you know, it would never have occurred to Gerard Tolkien in a million if he'd lived to the age of a hundred thousand, he would never have he would never have incorporated a kind of teenage romantic tri love triangle. But then alongside this kind of high school element, you know, there is a big dollop of sort of classical romance, you know, the romantic element is is central . You know, like there's even something of you know La Belle d'An Son Mercy in this, you know, the Keats poem. Yeah. Traditional romance, people sitting in fields staring at each other, kind of moon-eyed, a lot of nature. So we can see from all this that the book is clearly a massive mishmash of all these themes, fantastical worlds, high school parlance and drama, folklore and fairy tales, classic romance. But what romanticity does is it um sprinkles in sex into all of this and that is kind of what makes it a bit different. And I think we should get to a break now, Domino, but after the break we'll be after that we'll be exploring kind of the purpose of sex in romanticity. Is there one? Is it just kind of shameless titillation? And we'll also be digging into romanticy itself and the massive plot twist at the heart of a Court of Thorns and Roses. So excited. Come back after the break. See you after the break. From working title, producers of Bridget Jones and Love Actually. I'm looking for this girl called Emily. I'll help you find her. Comes the truly feel-good British rom com that's being called a five-star instant classic. Tell me you didn't hack the school email. What message every Emily got? Hailed as hilarious and original. Hey Emily's. It's Notting Hill for a new generation. I don't think I was wrong numbered. She didn't number you, did she? Finding Emily. Only in cinemas May 22nd. Book tickets now. Hello, welcome back to the book club. Um all kinds of delights await, physical and intellectual. He went there. So Tabby. Um well let's start with the the plot twist. Let's start with the intellectual uh the intellectual side of things. So here's the big surprise, right? Basically for three quarters of the book, Fayra has been pining for one bloke above all who is the beast. And in love falling in love with, yeah. And she's fallen in love with him. And then she goes off to basically rescue him. And at that point he slightly fades from the narrative and he's just off stage all the rest of the time. Um he's just a sort of generic presence. Yeah, and he's surprisingly uncompelling actually altogether, Tamlin. He has literally no sense of humour and he's not as kind of dramatic and stylish as Sarah J. Maus's other romantic love interests . So this I mentioned before the break that he's a bit of the kind of the quarterback of the high school. But with all of that implies, right, which is that he's ultimately a little bit boring and one dimensional. But in the final court of the book, this bloke who's been hanging around, who's sort of, you know, a bit sinister and dark, and basically been sold to us as a baddie, who is called Res amed, he turns out to be more complicated and she starts to aga inst her will and against her better judgment, she starts to fall for him, doesn't she? Well, okay, so the thing that we need to be a little bit clear about here, particularly for those people that don't want spoilers, is this is never massively alluded to in this book. It is something that is hugely developed throughout the rest of the series, but the thing that does come through in this book is that Restand has incredible charisma. He's quite witty, he's quite sardonic, he's quite teasing. So the dynamic between he and Farah is much more playful, much more enjoyable to read than that of Ferrah's with Tamlin. And I mentioned earlier the influence of kind of the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades. And I think that that will unfold, that does unfold between Fayra and Rissand. So it overtakes the beauty of the beast element of it all. Well you see that because basically he does a deal with her to help her recover during her trials. He does a deal with her. Exactly. She will have to spend one week a month with him. This is very Persephone and Hades, isn't it? Um she will have to spend one week every month with him. But not only is he doing that, you know, don't forget this is a book written in the twenty tens, so you know, very much has the sort of the gender politics and the sort of me too awareness that you would expect. He's also basically drugging her and making her lap dance for him. Yeah. During the final quarter, Tabby. I mean that seems a bit weird to me, frankly. There is an explanation for that though. And we will come on to that. Okay. But another obviously massive element of this dynamic is that the sex scenes, or rather the only real sex scene, because contrary to most people's expectations of romantic books, this book, Accord of Thorns and Roses, there isn't actually much sex. That will really disappoint some of our creepier listeners. But there's basically one big sex scene between um Fayer and Tamlin. As with many sex scenes in romantic, it's it's um that it's surprisingly full of kind of animalistic, sort of fairly bestial tropes. It's all about kind of claws and fangs, but being kind of wielded gently by the soft hearted, massively ripped male at the heart of it all. So in this, and I quote, I bit his lip in a silent command that had him growling into my mouth, says Fayer. And then, with one long claw he shredded through silken lace and my undergarments fell away in pieces, etc, etc, etc. And then completely yielding completely to the writhing wildness that had roared alive inside me. So this is very this is very like common for um the sex scenes in Mass's books, and and there's far more in them later. Yeah, there's basically there's an enormous amount of roaring, growling, claw action, but sort of surprisingly, as you said, surprisingly tender claw action. And the the prevailing sort of metaphors for the for Farah, there's a lot of heat, there's a lot of uh warm glows, there's all this sort of thing. Amounts of sex in most romantic books, less so in this one, does it actually serve a purpose? Or is it kind of just titillation to get readers through the door? Yeah. And I think it's kind of twofold. Yeah, I think it's kind of twofold because I think on the one hand, in a sense, it does serve to further the plot in terms of furthering these romantic relationships between characters and their dynamics. Because in the sex scenes themselves, you learn a lot about the dynamics between the male and the female in question, if, you know, that is the case. And that is because often the males themselves are very subservient to their kind of kick ass female lovers. So it's very much about, you know, female pleasure and the female gaze. And also, the sex is often used to demonstrate whether or not two characters in in mass's universe anyway are mates. Mates is like soulmates in this world. She really believes in the idea of soulmates. She totally does. And if the sex scenes are particularly kind of imbued with magic, if they're kind of explosions of magic, so there's this scene in the Throne of Glass series where when these two characters have sex for the first time, their magical powers literally explode out of them and that demonstrates to us that they are mates, they're soulmates. Okay. So Tamlin and Farah never really have this. No. I mean on the other side on the other hand, other romanticity books that I've tried, I think Mass is the best of them, like Rebecca Yaris's fourth wing. I actually, it was actually annoying after a while, just the constant injection of needless, pointless sex scenes, and that felt like a bit kind of exploitative almost. What about this issue of the the sexual relationships or the sexual feelings that Fayra has in a court of Thorns and Roses? They are, you could argue they're coerced. So A, she's been taken prisoner by Tamlin, and B, Rissand, the other guy who she kind of ends up fancying, sh he has forced her to come, he's gonna force her to come to his court one week every you know month. I mean Hades, when people tell the story of Hades and Persephone, nowadays people say, Well, this is a story of a rape. It's a he's a rapist. Um do you think I mean do you think that's true of the the scenes in the 'cause you were saying oh the men are submissive and all of this. I didn't read it that way, to be completely honest. I read it that he's a beast, Tamlin. He bites her at one point. This is before they sleep together. There's a scene where he bites her on the neck. I mean he's got his claws, he's a giant feral presence. I mean you, could argue this. I mean, clearly, Sarah J. Mass wants us to believe that this is very desirable and pleasurable for her, but you could argue, couldn't you, that actually he is the dominant partner, as it were, not her. Or am I misreading that, Abby? It's important to remember what stage of the narrative we're at and that this is a story full of you know development and emotional development and and stuff like that. So at this stage, Faira isn't at the height of her powers, you know, as as the book progresses , she will grow in to an incredible degree of kind of independence. It's all about tracing her emotional arc as much as anything. She's quite low status at this stage. And actually, we will discover later on in the series that she feels huge resentment towards Tamlin and kind of yeah, and he kind of at this point, you know, she sort of almost falls in love with him because he looks after her and he gives her things after she's had to look after others for so long. In terms of the you know, Rassanne getting her to dance, we learn that it's because he's saving her from something much, much worse. Oh okay. He's basically preventing her from being molested by other fairies. And in the end of the book, she is the one that saves Tamlin , not the other way around. To play devil's advocate again. I mean our story is narrated by it's obviously written by a woman, narrated by a woman, most of the readers are women. I mean is this basically I hate to use this sort of just like a jargon, but the basic the female gaze. So we're seeing everything through a woman's eyes. Um do you I mean you were saying it's does it celebrate female sexuality do you think or does it is it objectifying it kind of yet again? Yeah so it's an interesting point because it throughout the book men are constantly kind of looking Faer up and down with these kind of long lingering glances. But I actually think that this book is massively kind of a celebration of the female gaze and female sexuality and female pleasure. It's always directed the, sex scenes, everything, what is attractive in the male heroes or characters. It's very female. And also, it's Fera is narrating the story. So she is the one that's telling us that these men are giving her these long -lingering looks. And so she is basically acknowledging that she's seeing it. She's observing this failing in men. She's highlighting it. She's noticing that it's kind of not okay. That doesn't mean that I think it's a massively feminist book either. Could you not argue? She's defined entirely by her relationships with men. There's maybe her sisters, but apart from that, and there's one maidservant in the magic house called Alice that she kind of ends up being quite palli with. But by and large, this is just about her and the hunky blokes. I guess why shouldn't a woman write that kind of book for other women? That's just at this stage in her arc, I think. Like this is when Faya is still, you know, discovering her strength, if you will. Later on, she is generally in status much higher than any of the male characters that she encounters. And her female friendships become central and crucial and the cast is massively broadened in terms of female characters. There's all sorts of kind of strong kick ass women. But I'm gonna ask one last question, Tabby, before we move, because I know we've got to move on to romancing more generally at some point. Now I know that there's one character that you hate more than any other in all modern popular culture. And you know who this is gonna be? It's Ray from The Force Awakens. So Daisy Ridley's character in the Star Wars reboots. You hate Ray and you're always slagging her off and dissing Daisy Ridley to me, which is boring. Not Daisy Ridley. I'm I think Daisy Ridley's great as far as No, you confuse the character. You no, that's a lie. You absolutely confuse the actress and the character. It's shocking. But anyway , you always say you don't like Ray in Star Wars because she's a stereotypical, what do you call her? A girl boss. She's really, you know, she's uh implausibly heroic, implausibly brave, blah de blah de blah blah blah. She's too perfect and you don't like her. How is that different from the character in this book? Because you could say all of those things about Fayra. I mean they've almost got the same name, frankly. So my issue with Ray, these kind of girl bosses, is I want my female heroines to be human. I I don't want them to be perfect and I don't want them to be infallible. I don't want them to be the ones that solve every single problem with this kind of messianic power. I want to be able to like relate to them and see them, you know, struggle and strive and develop. Faira does do that in this book. You know, she grows in you know strength and courage and she is riven with vulnerabilities and guilt. But that being said , I don't think this is a massively feminist book either. The girl boss element of it all is for me a little bit surface level. Actually, a lot of romanticity books do this, but to sell the series as kind of feminist or about women claiming their power. I think that's just a bit jarring and it only goes so deep. I think it's a lot of fun. I don't think it's like gonna give me massive insights into the female condition or what it's like to be a woman or to overcome things. And like, for instance, there's this girl called Christina Clark Brown who recommends books on Instagram, and she writes that romanticity allows women to have it all. There is no damsel who needs saving, but rather women are allowed to be powerful, go on epic quests and find love with a partner who is an equal to them in every way. That's definitely true. They are powerful, um, they are always you know equal to their romantic counterparts, love all that. But the reason they have it all is because they are exceptionally beautiful, exceptionally clever, exceptionally talented, and imbued with exceptional magical powers. So I think for women in the real world, they're kind of about as aspirational for women as like James Bond. Yeah, James Bond or Gigi and Belahid or something. So that's sometimes what annoys me about romanticity is like stop trying to make it deep. It's a lot of fun. Okay, well let's talk about romanticity more broadly because this is this is the literary phenomenon really of the last ten years or so. It's a genre that did not exist till the beginning of the twenty-first century. You know, we talked about fairy tales. Would it be a stretch to say that the seeds of romanticy were always there in kind of folk tal taleses and and fairy things, do you think? Yeah, I kind of see fairy tales as the very, very first origins of romanticity because it blended romance with kind of magic and folkloric worlds. And you know, maybe there's a there's a soup of the medieval romance about it all, like Tristan and Issault, the idea of forbidden love, that kind of thing. You know, there's a bit of romantic and gothic literature of kind of the nineteenth, twentieth centuries. Or eighteenth cent ury gothic stuff. Castles, maidens. Exactly all of that. But and you know, these dark, brooding, Byronic heroes. That too. But the thing that really, I mean, to be truthful, launched romantic with social media and more particularly book talk. And it was actually masses books have a huge part to play in making it the phenomenon that it is because they captured people's attention on book talk and these videos would go viral of people, you know, making their predictions, talking about their favourite characters, dressing up as high fei. And then the term itself properly first appeared in 2008. So why now? That's the question. Like women have always read books. Women drove the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century. So it's not surprising that there are genres dominated by women today. But what is it about this genre in particular that appeals to so many millions of incredibly enthusiastic younger women. I mean Rebecca Yarros, there's a quote from her, you can find it online, she says it's because the real world sucks. There's probably a more professional way to say that, but people want to escape. Sure. But I mean the real world has often been very dark and terrifying, and people have always wanted to escape, and it might have been in the nineteen thirties, they would have been escaping by reading Agatha Christie Who Dunnett's which tell us a lot about the intellectual climate, the cultural climate of the nineteen thirties. We live in an age when there's lots of talk in the newspapers or whatever about mental health, about trauma, about sexual abuse, about sexual empowerment, all of these kinds of things, about harassment , about living your truth. Do you think is it too simplistic to say that basically romantic is the fictional embodiment of all those things, do you think? The escapism it provides is very different from that provided by, say, Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter or Game of Thrones, because if the focus and the driver in romanticity is emotion, the emotional stakes are generally the point of everything, they're the heart of it all. Whereas traditional fantasy is more about like the outside, it's about world building, it's about elaborate la ws, quest structures, external stakes. So it's like the make-believe that you loved as a child, but then as you get older and you know arguably more emotionally complex and you're kind of buffeted by the social concerns of the day. As you say, mental health is a big concern these days. It's part of our cultural conversations. It's all over social media. What it does is it binds that into these escapist worlds, but makes it feel at least superficially relevant. And maybe that makes it kind of more permissible. Like if you're a 30-year-old woman and you're sitting on the tube, maybe you feel a bit silly reading Harry Potter. You wouldn't feel silly reading about like a woman over coming PTSD even though she was wielding a sword. Right. It's almost as though the plots and the world building in romanticity, it's it's like there's almost something that feels a bit half-hearted about it sometimes. It's almost like a means to an end, the end being to kind of maybe tick without being too cynical, trauma and mental health boxes. For instance, Faya's journey under the mountain. It's kind of more about will she choose Tamlin? What will it do to her her mental health and her feelings about herself rather than, you know, will evil prevail in Prithian? Aaron Powell So that's why, for example, when Sarah J. Mass uses the device of masks. Ultimately, why they're wearing masks is not that interesting. You know, the reveal that it's about a curse rather than a plague. I mean, who cares? The point of the masks for her is the emotional truth, which is that we're all wearing masks and you know, we're ashamed to be who we are and we're putting up barriers and all of that kind of thing. And Ferah's sister, Nesta, wore a mask metaphorically, pretended to be horrible when actually she was troubled and But that was because she was troubled and suffering. Nobody loves Tolkien more than I do. But it would not have occurred to Tolkien to talk about those kinds of elements. Elrond's rarely anxious, I would say, you know, or exactly. His characters, some of his characters undoubtedly are troubled by Frodo, most obviously at the end of the Lord of the Rings. You know, he's damaged and that's why he basically has to leave the story. But most of his characters do not have mental scars. They don't suffer trauma in the same way. Some of them do, but most of them don't. Whereas in this, you get the impression that they're all battling with their demons, aren't they, to some degree? Definitely. So it treats that as central rather secondary, and it also treats the romance as central, not secondary. So in um other fantasy series, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, the romance it happens on the side and maybe it has some kind of purpose, but it's not really the point. Whereas in this, it's all about the romance. And the she er fact that it blends romance and fantasy is just massively significant because those are two of the highest-selling genres worldwide, anyway. So you get the kind of addictive, kind of dopamine triggering format of romance, you know, enemies to lovers, will they, won't they? And then you blend that with this sense of like world-shaking destiny and soulmates and the escapism that affords and the sheer spectacle of it all. And then throwing a kick-ass heroine. That massively appeals to kind of a generation brought up on the aesthetics of social media. And that's the other thing is these worlds are very aesthetically pleasing. You get lovely details about how the bed hangings look, you know, about Fayra's dress , about how her hair is arranged, about what they eat. So the aesthetics of it, the linen is always good. That's definitely an appeal. And that's very kind of the shiny, polished world of social media. Yeah. What about um so I see in you wrote down some notes and in the notes you have the word influencers. Yeah. You see the characters as the fantasy equivalent of influencers, basically. This is probably very, very cynical of me, but I think maybe there is a slight element. I actually wouldn't say so much in Mars' books, but maybe in some of the other romanticity books that I've dipped my toe into. Wherein, you know, influences, they're kind of perfect looking people doing perfect things. Yeah. But they also, you know they're telling you their truth and they're telling you their story and sometimes maybe that's all about how they've overcome some sort of mental health challenge or whatever it is. Sometimes I feel like in some of these books, it's like perfect looking people doing perfect things, falling in love with perfect people. And then like they kind of maybe crowbar in a massive dollop of trauma into that. I was about to ask you about the trauma. Do you think the trauma is unearned? I don't think it is. The emotional investment that a lot of readers have in these books, they believe in the trauma, right? They believe in the psychological suffering of the characters and they see that as inspirational. Yeah, definitely. And that's another thing that I just I think is great about romanticity, and I think people are too harsh on rom anticity about is the fact that it does afford it means so much to so many people, and it affords so many people so much joy means it must be a good thing. And I think within these narratives, the characters say Ailen in Throne of Glass failure in this. They go through terrible things, their trauma is earned. But like sometimes I think, do you need to be that violent? Do you need to go that far? Yeah, there's a fair bit of violence towards women in this. Yeah, I feel like sometimes it's a little bit exploitative. It's like a series of social media vignettes or tropes or clips. That's got to be more violent than anything you've ever read. That's got to be more romantic than anything you've ever read. Yeah. Social media is not a subtle place, neither is romanticy. So it's a series of set pieces, basically. A series of very and there's a lot of I mean there are people in publishing, aren't there, who are anxious about romanticity. A bit like the argument that people made a few years ago about the Marvel films and cinema , that it drives out all other stuff that is commercially dominant, that publishers don't have the courage to take other stuff on. I have to be honest, I don't find that a very plausible argument because I think people have always made that argument about other genres . So you could have made I mentioned detective fiction. Detective fiction and romantic stories probably appeal to a quite a similar demographic. So we're talking about women in their twenties and thirties. And people at the time might have said, God, you know, penguin are only interested in publishing who done it's these days. They're driving out all else. I think it's unfair. I mean, if people want to read romanticy, that's what publishers should produce, right? Because publishers are are serving the market. Yeah, of course, absolutely. And also I don't think people should ever be shamed for reading anything. I think anything that gets people reading is brilliant. Who knows, these books could serve as a wonderful gateway to more sophisticated maybe fantasy worlds, which could then mean that they leapfrog over into reading, I don't know, the classics, whatever it may be. And you're right, like people said about you know, some authors I have seen online said of this of Harry Potter, that it was destroying literacy, that it was kind of melting people's minds. I hate that tone of like totally bonkers. I'd never kind of get that. Do you know what I did when I was a teenager? When I was 14, 15. Video games. I did I did. But also, I tell you what I was addicted to. Absolutely addicted. The nov els of Jeffrey Archer. Now some people listen to this will never listen to this podcast again. They'll be like, why would you? I loved them. I like Tom Clancy. I loved all of that stuff. I read every Agatha Christie. Yeah, I hate bookish snobbery. It always annoys me. And also, you know, the other thing is people say that it's taking attention away from other books and stuff. Great things are still being published. And I suspect that anything that is, you know, brilliant, whatever that means, reading is so subjective. They will endure. You know, for instance, last year, Dosto evsky's novella, White Knights, suddenly had this massive upsurge on social media. That is a very tricky, gritty book to get your teeth into. You know, it's it's not an easy read, but you know, that's still coming up, coming back. Completely agree with you, Savvy. I think I'm bewildered actually when people look down on stuff. I mean it must doesn't necessarily mean that I think it's great. I I I wouldn't go to the other extreme of the inverted snobbery and basically saying, Oh, it's brilliant because people like it. I don't take that view. But I think it's fine. It's like it's fine to have fish and chips. You don't always have to have Michelin star food. No, no, exactly. It's really enjoyable. There is much more to it than you know inverted commas goblin sex. They're founded in kind of folkloric tradition s. There's shades of kind of Victorian romance, there's Byronic heroes, there's fairy tales, sexual in their temptation. You know, they're quite amusing. I like the world building. And, you know, no one ever said this about game of Thrones. No one ever said that, you know, Game of Thrones was brought in people's minds and or anything like that. And I think because they're much more masculine books and these are much more female books. People are always and they always have done during back to the eighteenth century, they have always liked to sneer at what women, particularly young women, read. There's nothing wrong with being, you know, a commercial writer. Jane Austen was a commercial writer, George Elliott was too. But sometimes I feel like they have like a list of boxes that they need to tick that will like feed the ravening audiences of romantic lovers. They're like sex scene every chapter, tick, a good dollar per trauma, tick. And I find sometimes that trauma element, you know, with characters saying things like, he was respecting my boundaries, I was speaking my truth. That's fine. But do you have to say it so on the nose? It takes some of the power away from me, you know. Lord of the Rings is so full of emotional depth and power about overcoming suffering, about soldiering on, about being brave. But they never have to say it out loud. It's sometimes too overt. But it's a lot of fun. Well, do you know what? We are going to give this a mark out of ten. Before I read this book and before we started to do it, Tabby said to me, You can't give this one out of ten because everybody will hate you and no one will listen to our show and all of this kind of thing. And do you know what having read the book, there's no way I'm going to give it one out of ten because I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought. So What's our rating system this week? This is about a female gaze, so you can decide. Alright. Well Dominic chose this obviously as a massive fan of goblins and tides. We're gonna rate it out of ri pped fairies with hearts of gold out of ten. So I tick three of those boxes personally. Sorry, two of those boxes. I don't tick three of those boxes, I tick two of those boxes. Dream on Gothmog. Coming from Legolas of all people. Unbelievable . So I'm gonna give it six. Wow. Oh my god, isn't that what you gave normal people? That's insane. That's I can't believe that. We don't make a claim to consistency. I've never felt happier. I just I feel like Do you know what? I've actually I've come down from where I thought I was gonna come in. I thought I was gonna come in with seven. Wow. Because Because I didn't mind reading it. I can't remember where we are in the in the series, but we did East of Eden. And I bitterly resented reading East of Eden more than I did this. You know what? I think you're rating that so highly because you're secretly an other kin. Right, what is another kin? You put that in the notes. Tabby l littered the notes with these weird sexual terms. They're not sexual. Furries, therians, and otherkins aren't sexual. Yeah, what are they? I don't want to Google them in case it's not having a deep spiritual psychological or metaphorical connection to an entity that is non-human. You know, if you identify as a dragon, more power to you, brother. Okay, well listen, I'm gonna give it six out of ten because there are some things about it that I liked. I did not see the big twist coming. So when it turns out it's not really Beauty and the Beast, I genuinely didn't see that coming. I genuinely found the last hundred pages, and I'm not just saying this for the purpose of the podcast. I genuinely found the last hundred pages very readable and dare I say it, exciting. I wanted to find out what was happening in the trials . I kept reading. There are a few other twists to do with the characters, like Tamlin and his heart, which I won't give away because it's a big spoiler, but I thought that was quite clever. I didn't see that coming. I'm marking it down from seven to six because the ans wer to the riddle at the end of the book is so obvious you would have to be absolutely deranged not to guess it I would say it's blindingly obvious. Yes. So six out of ten for me. Tabby, please tell me you're gonna come in lower. I'm actually also giving it a six. Great minds, think alike. I think it's so much fun. I love the world. I genuinely love the world. I like all the folkl oric stuff, the mythical creatures, I like all the stuff with the different courts, I like the pacing, you know. I'm happy to just live in a world with not much happening, you know, allows me to get a feel for it. The writing isn't amazing by any stretch of the imagination. No, it's the prose, by the way, we haven't really talked that much about the prose, because there's not that much to say. It's workman-like. Yeah, it's workman-like, and I get and I got sort of tired of the repetition, you know, mixed it up a bit, Sarah J. Maas. But it, you know, she does manage to inject a a hell of lot of passion into it. But I am going to deduct a couple of points because while there is a lot to admire and Fara h, you know, genuinely admire, and she's not two dimensional, I didn't really, I didn't like her that much. And I didn't find that I cared as much about her fate. I found Rissand and Lucy and entertaining, but Tamlin, oh my god, despite his bulging tights, there's just absolutely nothing interesting about him. And also Amarantha is a bit underwhelming. She's kind of like a car scene cutout. Yeah she is. She's an evil queen. Yeah. That's it. And I found the scattering of kind of modern phrases and references a bit jarring. But I massively enjoyed it. I'm not gonna rush to the next again, but I massively enjoyed it. Do you know what I want to rush to the next but, I can' t. I want to crack on with the series and find out what happens to Farah. Is that because you need to read The Woman in White? That's because I need to read The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, which is our book for next week. Out of interest, which court do you think you'd be in if you had pointy ears and long hair? So I'm looking at the courts. There's the night court, the day court, the dawn court, the winter court, the summer court, the autumn court, and the spring court. And the court of nightmares. I'm probably from the court of nightmares, maybe. So we've got the woman in white and then after that we have a total change of uh tone because we are doing Tony Morrison's book, Beloved. After that we are doing Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Wolf, great classic of the early twentieth century . Then we're coming back into this sort of territory again we're doing the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. And after the Hunger Games, it is the portrait of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde. Then the Codes of the Worcesters by P. G.G Woodhouse, which is just one of my absolute favourite books. That's the word of Jeeves in Worcester. Yeah, it's wonderful. And then a book that actually I've taught, would you believe, when I was an academic, Little Women by Louisa May Olcott. And on that bombshell, we should probably draw a veil, draw a gossamer veil with our claws. We're getting bogged down now in fancy metaphors. Goodbye. Bye.