Before ACOTAR & Fourth Wing, This Was The Romantasy Every Reader Was Obsessed With

Published Sep 6, 2026, 5:30 PM EDT Cher Thompson is a Senior Staff Writer at Screen Rant, where she covers everything from explosive reality TV moments to cast interviews about the twists and turns of scripted dramas. With a background in creative writing, marketing, and teaching, Cher knows how to spot both the storytelling genius and the guilty pleasures in pop culture. Her work blends wit with insight, making readers feel like they’re chatting with a friend who just happens to know way too much about TV. Throughout the past few years, romantasy has become one of the most popular genres in the world, especially with books like A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas and Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros taking hold, but one title had readers obsessed long before. While these newer titles have transformed fantasy romance from a niche sub-genre to a popular, mainstream genre of its own, the books and series thereafter have been built on the backs of other popular titles that came before them. Romantasy isn't a new wave, but instead one that's been building steadily over years. The appeal of the romantasy genre comes from the willingness to embrace mature storytelling, which can sometimes be glossed over in direct romances and intense fantasy works. Romantasy novels are not simply fantasy adventures with romance woven into them, they're well-balanced stories that bring in fantastical elements, dark romance, and allow their narratives to pull the threads of both genres in raw, real ways. With sweeping world building, intense relationships, and complicated conflicts, romantasy has always been a genre that pushes boundaries, even in the years when the books were being whispered about among friends rather than finding mainstream popularity. One novel, which debuted in 2001, feels like the true precursor to the hype of romantasy in the past few years. With similar sensibilities to ACOTAR and Fourth Wing, Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Dart delivered a sophisticated blend of romance and fantasy, teasing out mature themes that helped it become influential. Kushiel's Dart Helped Define Modern Romantasy Before The Genre Had A Name Although novels like Kushiel's Dart feel like they're everywhere today, Jacqueline Carey's sensation arrived on the scene in 2001, when there was a far different landscape sprawling over the publishing industry. Unlike today's romantasy market, there wasn't much to be said about romance in fantasy work. While fantasy itself was thriving at the time, the genre was mostly comprised of work that delved into epic quests, political conflicts, and invented worlds. Romance existed, but it wasn't a key element or a main piece of the genre's puzzle, if it was there at all. Instead, fantasies had their own intense quirks. Carey's Kushiel's Dart was a standout, approaching fantasy from a different angle. Following Phèdre nó Delaunay, a woman raised in a culture built around the principle that love is sacred, the novel sees its main character becoming entangled in conspiracies that threaten her home. Combining espionage and politics, the novel's romance plot is a massive piece of the book's identity, and the maturity in the relationships was revelatory for the genre. Placing relationships at the center of the larger story, the personal decisions made throughout the novel have larger consequences, and romance doesn't interrupt the narrative. Rather, romance enhances it. Jacqueline Carey's Novel Still Holds Up In The Age Of ACOTAR And Fourth Wing Although there are some massive differences between what Kushiel's Dart did to help develop the romantasy genre and what novels like ACOTAR and Fourth Wing have done to propel it forward, there would be no current state of romantasy without the 2001 novel. Kushiel's Dart adopts a very deliberate approach to incorporating the fantasy elements of its time, which means the novel does sometimes deviate from its romantic roots in order to delve into broader worldbuilding concepts. Kushiel's Dart keeps its romantic elements at its core, knowing that in its explorations, the romance is always what it comes back to. The novel's influence is evident in many ways, but especially in the fact that two decades after its publication, it's still one of the flagship romantasy novels that readers look back to. Frequently recommended alongside newer successes, Kushiel's Dart is still praised for being an ambitious novel with an intricate plot that infuses the fantasy and romance elements into a fascinatingly relevant story. Carey's novel demonstrated that a book could successfully combine the worlds, and paved the way for others of its style to try to do the same as the romantasy genre finally came to life on its own.