Romantasy heroines go to the dark side in tales of sexual assault

Extreme scenarios that feature enslaved women are a hit with readers

- Ellen Peirson-Hagger

In Alchemised, a 1,000-page novel by the US author SenLinYu, the protagonist is an imprisoned woman who is repeatedly raped by her captor. The pair end up together. It is a gruesome read, but an immensely popular one: in the UK, it sold almost 50,000 copies in its first week in September, while in the US it entered the New York Times bestseller list at No 1.

Alchemised is among a number of popular novels published this year that feature a heroine who is owned or enslaved by her love interest. Others include Firebird by Juliette Cross, which is set in an alternate Roman empire, and Julie Soto’s Rose in Chains, whose protagonist is a princess auctioned off to the highest bidder. All involve attempted sexual assault and sex scenes of dubious consent.

These novels are “romantasies”, a portmanteau of “romance” and “fantasy”. Spearheaded by Sarah J Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses and Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing, the genre is known for its high-stakes drama and explicit sex, which fans refer to as “spice”.