12. A Court of Thorns and Roses: ''Fairy Smut'' or Fantasy Sensation?

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 castading into the room and my father's terror-stricken face.”

Somehow, I wound up in front of my sisters, even as the creature read onto its hind legs and bellowed through a more full of fangs. [MUSIC] 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. My knees quaked. I couldn't escape this.

Couldn't outrun this. Couldn't even try to run since he blocked the way to the door. Don't do it outside. Not here. Not where my family would have to wash away my blood and go.

If even let them live, the fairy-huffed of vicious love. [LAUGHTER]

“For having the nerve to request where I slaughter you, I'll let you in on a secret human.”

Pravian 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 get you like swine or you can cross the wall and live out the remainder of your days in Pravian. So that was, of course, from Sarah J. Masses long awaited a court of thorns and roses.

The first in her five book series and that was published in 2005-15.

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 Romanticie. And this is one of the fastest growing and most commercially successful literary subgenres in the world. 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 that 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. And we will definitely be digging into the phenomenon itself after the break. But, I mean, just to give a sense of how massive it is, the Romanticie tag on TikTok has almost a billion views. With billions for Masses books alone, she is now one of the best selling authors in the world.

She sold more than 75 million copies of her book's worldwide and this series alone has sold an estimated 30 million copies since its publication. 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 long-time lover of Romanticie and have a particular pawnshot for sexy goblins and tights. Wow. So without further ado, what did you make of this? What did you make of a court of those and rotors?

So do you know what? We've done a lot of books, say far on the book club, that are canonical.

That are extremely well known. We've done Frankenstein in 1984 in the Great Gatsby and so on. But we always wanted when we did the show to have a kind of mixed diet.

To have books 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 I'll be honest until I did this show, there was nowhere to read these books because 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 because I think they're very, they're appeal overwhelmingly to women, don't they?”

Yeah, it is. 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 Sergei Masses fans, they're certainly the final quarter of the book. I read it all in one sitting, and 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 I will say no more. I should leave my penetrating analysis. Not sure what the penetrating is the word you want to choose when it's this kind of book. Oh, yeah. But anyway, I will leave my decisive analysis to later in the episode.

You love this stuff. Don't you or am I being, am I caricatureing you? I think you're caricatureing me.

“I think you're making them a stake, so many people make about romance.”

You know, assuming because I am a young woman. I love it.

I actually read it first during lockdown, because it was really, you know, rising to the fore 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 anything that kind of features fantastical worlds, mythical beasts.

I'm kind of there for all. It didn't change my life. I would say. Yeah, I found the worlds in there. I wouldn't say that I fell in love with it.

I think maybe there was a situation in which I might have done. But I found the inclusion of like very real world themes. I mean, all like fantasy generally has something to say about the real world. Well, they're 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 swippers. And, you know, real world, social media, driven terminology. That's actually gotten the way of the escapism that I look for 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

taring these books, part of scenario. Because those are some really, really interesting kind of backstory to them. The way that they meld kind of high fantasy with folklore, with fairy tales. So we're going to be digging into all that during this episode. Right.

“Because I think there's lots of different elements to this.”

One is the extent to which the books draw on long literature traditions. So we'll be talking about the story of keeping in cycle. We're talking about beating the beast and so on. So these books are kind of rooted in a genuinely, really interesting kind of cultural tradition. But also the phenomenon of romanticity.

And what it says about readers in the 2010s and 2010s and 2010s is that is genuinely very interesting. It's so interesting. Future historians will find it a brilliant window into the preoccupations of our own moment. So we're talking about all this. So I'm guessing there's quite a lot of people who listen to the show.

Who have never read these books. You know, because I mean, I know some of them.

And I know they would never read a romanticy book in a million years.

I'll produce this. Right. Exactly. So shall we explain exactly what the book is about. First of all, give us a sense of the plot of the book. Yeah, that's.

And flesh out the world a bit. You set this off, don't you? You take us. Let the adventure begin. The adventure begins.

Okay, now. There will be some spoilers inevitably. But we're not. We're going to try to do it. Said that we don't.

“If you want to read the book, we're not going to ruin it for you.”

So our heroine is called Theura, which I think is a slightly weird name, but there you go. I love that name. Okay, very good. So I was tankerated. She's 19 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. And that the world of the fairies is called Privian.

Now, just on fairies, if you're thinking about the kind of characters that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thought existed and they're cutting the photographs. So little tiny things with wings. That is a mistake. They're not like that.

Fair, they're basically elves, talkings elves. Is that fair, Tabby? Yeah, well, there's two sort of subsections of fairies. You get high-fay. They are essentially talking.

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.

But I'm pretty in a resetti. Yeah, because they, they'd more gobblin like. And they're winged sometimes or whatever. Yeah, exactly. There are lots of different types and kinds and some of kids.

Some are leveling some goods. You know, it's quite narnier in that way. It's a strange mishmash of kind of folk laws.

But they always have a side.

So, fairer lives with the humans on one side of this barrier. She is mortal. It's important to say. Yeah, of course. And we meet her.

We're right. We're plunged right into the action from the very beginning. She's soft hunting. She's 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 formally wealthy. But now, in poverage family. So, this is your classic.

I mean, people to give away what we're going to be talking about. This is a story. Obviously, ripped 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,

one of the fairies. Because these fairies can kind of disguise themselves as animals or whatever. 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 realm.

So, that's a bit of a worry for her.

“And actually, in the scene that we performed, I think, performed rather than red.”

Yes, performed. There, 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? Terrified. He is exactly a sort of feral beast that's like bear wolf. You know, it's hard to pin down exactly what it is.

Yeah. And he's come to get revenge. And basically that her punishments is she will be brought back to the fairy realm, which is Privian, 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-fay, which we spoke about just now, you know, beautiful and mortal. He's called Tamlin. And he is, in fact, the high lord of the spring court,

because Privian is divided into different kinds 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.

I was just a word of warning for Elisons.

“Like if Tabi is allowed to talk for too long and challenge,”

she will just get deeper and deeper into the lore of this world. Yes, exactly exactly. And 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 Ferris, stepping into unknown territory, she doesn't entirely know who everyone is, as an element of disguised everything. And Tamlin is the manifestation of spring,

kind of in human form. He's taught his blonde, his green eyes, his powers are kind of tied up with nature. He's a hunk, isn't he? He's a must of hunk.

He's not my type in truth, but he's definitely a bit of a hunk. And he, his right hand man, is another high-fake 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 this spring court. This is like their castle, if you will.

“And over time, Ferro goes from loathing Tamlin,”

and living in fear of the Ferris, 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 ripped, exactly.

And they end up falling in love, so it's your classic kind of enemies to lovers, and they sleep together. But then what happens is that this strange, mysterious stranger arrives in their midst.

It's a guy called Ressand. He turns out to be the high lord of the night court. He too is kind of the physical manifestation of darkness of night. And he warns Tamlin that some mysterious she has sent him to tell Tamlin that his time is running out.

We don't know why Ferro 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 Ferro back home to her family, who are now wealthy again.

So she goes home. She's had a lovely time with this bloke, who, a pet occasionally, is like a kind of wolf-like bear. He lets her paint, which is very kind. They've been painting, they've been going for lovely country walks,

they've been sleeping together as wonderful. Anyway, she goes back home, she's a bit miserable. She finds that her family watch has been going to be elevated to wealth and status, which is his doing, isn't that nice of him?

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 she discovers, now this is a big, you know,

if you're really going to read this book, stop listening now because this is a slight spoiler. Come back for the analysis, though. Yeah, too, don't stop listening. He has been taken prisoner by this evil queen,

called Amarantha.

And basically, everything that Ferro thought about the plot

so far was a mistake. You know, reading this, it genuinely was a surprise to me. I thought this was a great twist. She's told this by a made servant. Basically, there's no blight and plague,

like she thought, which is why the M.S. Actually, what happens is Tamlin and Kara have been cursed by this evil queen, who's basically come from Ireland. She's come from a place called Hyburn,

this island of the coast of Prithian. I'm believable. I mean, I'm not being a hyburnerphobic, Tabby. This is the truth. This is the truth.

This is the truth. You're kind of encouraged to be a hyburnerphobic. You are. Yeah, yeah. So, for complicated reasons,

this evil queen called Amarantha, tricked all the other Ferro's into giving up their powers almost or sort of. The other high lords and high fay, yeah. Sorry, Tabby's going to keep correcting me whenever I make mistakes

The masks that they wear are symbols of their loss of power. They're a masculination, I suppose, for the male Ferris, I guess. They're lots of autonomy.

The amazing thing that we discover

is that all that stuff with the hunting and the beast and like, offending the treaty and being taken back, that was all a bit of a con. It was engineered. Yeah, it was engineered.

Because basically, under this curse, Tamlin was given 49 years to find a human girl who hated Ferris and make her fall in love with him. And he had basically taken Ferra, and this was his attempt to break the curse.

And Ferris really shocked by this gosh, you know, a poor guy, what a terrible thing. And she decides, I'm going to 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 going to 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. She's surrounded by these terrifying creatures. The Ferris. Can she do it?

Will love triumph?

“Will she get to embrace this incredibly ripped hunky guy yet again?”

Yeah. And what's the story with the other bloke you mentioned, Tabby? Rusan. The dark character called Rusan. Yeah.

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 out.

You will find out after the break and the very dramatic cliffhanger that you left us on their domineg. 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,

Ferris is narrating it. And her language as narrator, and both, you know, as a character which he speaks, it's full of very modern kind of colloquialisms. There's a lot of repetition.

As the journalist Joanna Thomas Courses, they all sound like modern teenagers who talk about barthing and suffering from separation anxiety, despite battling evil and wielding magical powers. Yeah, so she will shout at the Ferris.

They'll come at her. And this is not the Lord of the Rings. She will be like, "Back off, bitch." And all of this kind of thing, which nobody says in Gondor.

You asshole. Yeah. Right. No one says that 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"”

because 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, I know we have American listeners.

Maybe they don't find the word "pants" of putting in a fantasy book. I mean, it is funny. You know, as you say, you have this language and that you're set in kind of the legendary mythological, folk-loric world of kind of an old England,

or mythological England, or whatever, it's very interesting. And the plot itself on spools very slowly.

Not much happens with the first three quarters.

And then, as you said, the last quarter is incredibly dramatic. But 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,

I think. I found the first three quarters I should give myself away. I found them very slow. See, but I think that reveals something about romance. See, about the popularity of romance, 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 on from painting again and going for a country walk and looking at the flowers. And that's not actually, like, patronising a reductive. Like, I genuinely like all that.

I liked hearing about Ferris Gowns, and about 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 Ferris is totally shocked

“by what happens to her, because she is an unreliable narrator, isn't she?”

Yeah, yeah, I like that, because I like that, because I like, I like to be surprised. And I genuinely was surprised. Ferris 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, Lucian, this boat resound, 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, to the book really have themes. And absolutely does. It does, it definitely does.

and people are hiding their true nature behind a mask,

whether it's a physical mask or a sort of a metaphorical one. And I thought that element was very well done, actually. Yeah, agreed. We'll just say a little bit about the author herself, maybe Tabby, to give people a sense of it.

Because we're often talking about authors and it's easy to do when you're doing John Steinbeck or Emily Brontow. Yeah, exactly. But Sarah J. Mass herself. So she's born in New York in 1986.

She's, you know, a fantasy mythology enthusiast. 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 immortal, resound.

And a lot of fans of this series believe that he was the inspiration for resound because they shared the same birthday. And that's quite a big clue as to resounds destiny and due course, I think.

Oh, are you giving it a little clue then? That's nice.

So her first book, which was called Throne of Glass,

she supposedly went to her 16 years old and then was published in 2012. And this is basically the Cinderella Story. So she loves a fairy tale 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 more not, 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 Tabby. Yeah, 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 masks 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's kind of feeling it out,”

but you can see in that book. I mean, not even just the seeds. You can see the whole trunk of the world that will become prithian, the high-fay, all of that, you know, that world has high-fay,

beautiful, a beautiful kind of kick-outs 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, loving dress, people not being who they appear. But, throne of glass,

just getting back to the romanticy of it all, throne of glass massively contributed to the success of a quarter-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 Akata, I was about to go.

I mean, you're using the technical term, Akata. Akata is aimed at a slightly older audience. I thought, would guess, like, people in that early 20s probably? As the series progresses, older and older, I would say.

Right. So she wrote this, she claims, in five weeks. And I quote, I wrote book one back in 2009. It was one of those, can't write fast enough books. Imagine 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've ever written a novel.

“I'm a little bit skeptical of that, I think,”

because the thing is that, Romanticy books are famous for their rapid turner rounds. People write them very, very quickly. I think maybe the writing suffers for that. But because they are pushed to,

because they had these clamoring fan bases that are hungry for more, more, more, more. And I think the publishers, you know, a part of that. So I was interested to, I was...

You found a fascinating fact that Sarah James asked in you. Go on. I was trying to find a fact. I was trying to find a good fact. That would give us a clue to Sarah James's writing.

I think this is very indicative of who she is. That's the appeal of her books. The tremendous sales. I mean, there are so many writers who would get anything to have her success. Yeah.

The single most interesting fact I could find about her was, and I quote, Sarah has an entire shelf and her fridge 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 that. Maybe that's triggering, like, mad nightmares from which, you know, these books are born. Autistic inspiration. Anyway, let's get into the world.

It's self a little bit. Yeah, let's forget the cheese getting into the world. Yeah.

So the first thing I said to you when I started reading this,

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 people like to root, I think, fantasy in, like, this mythological old England.”

I don't know whether that goes back to the author and legends or something. It kind of gives it a credibility, I think. 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 said it's Prithian is made up of these courts. And you can see mass managers to kind of tell us all about the world

Autumn, summer, winter, we're easy enough to pick out. Then above them, two glowing courts. The southernmost one, a softer red appallet. 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 mass of 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 skeptical 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, or 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 way that its denizens look and the way that their powers manifest. I loved all this.

I was very keen on it. Well, you hold on. You have a massive advantage of it, for me, because you've read other books in the series. So I'm just facing 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 Roth of Sarah J Masses fans.

Basically, I live in terror of 22 year old American women. Do we all? I'm attacking me. So, so I should restrain myself a little bit. But I would say that I found the world building in book one quite thin.

I felt that I liked the fact that there's a slow reveal of information. She doesn't do it all in one big dump 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 them. It's one of the things that we first had to wear bonded over. Bonded over. Isn't that nice?

That's nice for me. You could have said that slightly less cynically, but you chose not to. I actually couldn't. 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. That's what came first. Yeah, more than the narrative exactly right. In this, I felt that it didn't have, clearly doesn't have the depth and consistency of the Lord of the Rings.

Maybe it's unfair to expect it. And 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 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, mass said of her earlier series, Throne of Glass, that the main character, Selena Sardofian, was inspired by Buffy the Vampice layer, 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, according to 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 mishmash of sources and that's Harry Potter.

So she's basically doing the same kind of thing, which is taking loads of stuff and put it into a blender. I mean, you could argue that lots of writers do that, I don't mean that harshly. But I think that's, that's so much of what fantasy writing is. It can't be original, really, but let's get into, for instance, what some of the things that inspired, of course, Phones 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 does a bunch of research. A bunch of research, I love that. This is the way they write, that they speak in the book as well. She says, if a story is inspired by classic literature or folklore,

I'll do a bunch of research on it first. I want to keep, or discard, and you can see this, but there's one glaring example for a quarter-thorns and roses, and that's Tamlin. So obviously, the main theory is Love and Trust, and 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 hadn't 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 Carter Howell, 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 Ferra rescues her Tamlin from Amarantha.

And then there's also a big bucket of Greek mythology in this. Some ways, it's a retelling of Haley's and Persephone,

And I also noticed, I looked up,

“Mass's most recent series for the crescent city books,”

and they are just jam-packed with mythical creatures, satters, fonds, manticles. So this is clearly something that Mass has in her mind in her kind of world, you anyway. I mean, the thing that jumped out of me from this story is the story of Cupid and Cykey.

So Cupid and Cykey 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 Appaliers.

And Appaliers was a Roman writer, second century AD,

who lived in New Media, so North Africa. And this book that he wrote is basically the only novel in Latin that survives intact. And it's a sort of body-pick-a-resc novel. And there's a story within the story, and the story is if this girl could psyche each.

She's one of three sisters, so we're ready, we can see the parallels. She's very beautiful, and Venus sends Cupid to shoot her, so she falls in love with something horrible. That's sort of Panisher, because Venus is jealous. And 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's actually Cupid and 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.

At the end of the story of Cupid and psyche, psyche is rewarded by Zeus. She is elevated to the ranks of the Immortals, and she and Cupid are happily married. So Tabby, I mean, you can obviously see the parallels with the...

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but you can also see a very, very strong fairytale element in, um, in a quarter-thorns and roses. So fairytales, there's a brilliant definition of them by an American critic called Stif Thompson,

who was the late 20th century expert on folklore. So the fairytale 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 that's filled with the marvellous,

and it's a never-neverland, humble heroes,

killing adversaries, they succeed to kingdoms, and they marry princesses. Yeah. So there's something sort of a fairytale floats free of definition. It's in this sort of magical world where anything could happen,

and it has the quality of a kind of fable. And a quarter-thorns and roses, I mean, obviously it feels very fairytale 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 fairytale retellings

in the 2010s, and I was kind of wondering why that may be, I guess part of the reason that, you know, romanticier such a hit, and that's because it's kind of a familiar emotional entry point,

and it's a useful way to blend romance and recognizable character arcs. For instance, the latest season of Bridgeton is a retelling of Cinderella, so. Oh really?

It's obviously something that continues to appeal to cultures and generate and society, but we mentioned that beauty in 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 completing the beast, sub-eating the beast originates from the 18th century. The first version written down was by a French,

by a French writer, 1740, called Gapquail, Suzanne Barbo de Ville Love, and she was writing in what was called the Salon tradition, the kind of pocheseers 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 point to them. And they'd inherited the tradition from the godfather of fairy tales, who was called Shal Pejo, who was an official at the court of Louis XIV.

And pairer basically invented fairy tales, as stories told within the court. So red writing hood, Cinderella, Pussin Boots, Sleeping Beauty, and so on. We think of these as children's stories,

“and the original French tell us of them, I think.”

Talked about them as though they were stories of children, but told them to each other. So it's like, here's a lovely children's story, but you're actually telling it to adults, to while away the evenings.

When you got your gigantic wig. I love that. I think that would be, I mean, I'm going to give myself away. I think that would be an unbelievably boring way to spend an evening. Oh, I think you'd share a story.

Tell me a fairy tale, but you would love that. So feelin' the right storybeats in the beast, but the version we are most familiar with in a bridged version produced 16 years later, and this was produced for children,

and it's by another interesting year, another female writer,

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 spoiled their entitled, their greedy, their 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 mellow, 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, Alia in the chat's approducer is writing Stockholm syndrome, which I think is literally... Famously, yeah.

“Alia is even more cynical than New clearly, Debbie.”

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 Thornton, which is an allegory. I mean, you have fairer, you know, she's kind of beautiful, slender.

She has unusual eyes. Very dissenting princess in that. She's kind of got some special skills 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, Tameline, the beast. Yeah. And she teaches him to love.

Yeah. And then you have Tameline, who initially seems kind of arrogant and bad tempered, but then over time, he's spent with his princess with fairer. He turns out he's actually quite a good guy.

He's shy. Yeah. He's misunderstood. He's kind. Dominic.

I don't think I can noted that in my reading. No, no, no, no. That was all X-Men. That was all Wolverine. And his mask in this is equates to the beasts, you know,

horrible disguise. But obviously it's very amount to see. So the he ever can't be ugly. It also serves to kind of hide in this. Tameline's emotional vulnerability because

Romanticy is kind of led by emotion rather than in a way that classic fairy tales actually do not. And then fairer sister Nesta. The mask devices used in the same way later on as well. So you have beauty, fairer, the beast, Tameline,

fairer like Belle, falls in love with her, her imprisona. Yeah. But there's a final kind of major influence. In on this story. And I think for Romanticy in general.

And that's just, you know, classic high fantasy and Zero J Masters 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. Yeah. And there are tropes in this that you can map on to 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. Mm-hmm. And then of course, fantastical world building, featuring strange creatures and magic and all that.

“And I think the first instance of this that you can spot in,”

like what Thor's in Roses is, is Lloyd Alexander's pretty and isn't it? Would we both, I'd turn that red when we were little? Yeah. So the black cauldron, isn't it?

Yeah. Exactly. The tower and who used to be a pitkeeper. Yeah. And rise has to become high king.

They're clil, they're American, they're rooted in wealth mythology in the map in Ogion. And they are written, obviously, four children. I think they won a lot of awards in the '60s and '70s. I loved them, actually.

And Sergei Mass was completely up front about it. I found, I think, the shit written on Twitter,

when she said, basically, you know, I love those books.

I got the name. It's a preview and it comes some pride in which is in his books, which is basically a Welsh word for Britain. I think. So there's that.

Obviously the Lord of the Rings, the idea. Mass, the idea of the elves. The high fay. The high fay. Exactly.

Both of them have these objects of great power. They're kind of set everything in motion. And needs to be destroyed. The ring. And this is the cauldron.

You have this thing of immortal mortal love, which is replicated and kind of cycles throughout the generation. So you have R when an Aragon. And they are kind of the descendants of Baron and Luthian. In this fairer and tamlin, it turns out,

and not the first mortal and immortal to fall in love. Because before them, there was Clifia and Durian.

Yeah, it is. The difference, I suppose. So here's the difference. 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 fairer is the outside of the girl from the wrong side of the tracks.

The evil queen, Ameranthor is basically the queen B of the school.

There's the school quarterback who is kind of Tamlin, who's hunky and blond. Yeah. This is Sardonic, mate, Lusian. There is the, the bloke, who's a crony of the queen B.

But who actually turns out is quite interesting. And he's got these kind of smullering dark looks. And that's resound. And at the end of it, it's not, I don't want to spoil it. But basically, end of it, the climax does involve the queen's

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 in the, in the changing 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 thing. You know what I mean? It's like this meeting. They're fighting over this guy.

Do you love him? Don't you love him? Yeah. You don't really love him all this kind of thing. Yeah.

“And I think that's obviously, that is obviously a part of the soup.”

The, you know, it would never have occurred to Gerard's OK.

And a million, if he'd lived to the age of 100,000, he would never have, he would never have, he would never have incorporated a kind of teenage romantic, romantic, try, 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 don't saw messy in this, you know, the Keats poem. Yeah.

Traditional romance people sitting in field staring at each other, kind of moonlight, 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 romance he does is it 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, Dominique. But after break, we'll pose ourselves before we get,

we'll compose ourselves. Yeah. Of that we'll be exploring kind of the purpose of sex in romance. Is there one? Is it just kind of shameless titillation?

“And we'll also be digging into romance itself”

and the massive plot twist at the heart of a course towards roses. So exciting. Take off to the break. See you after the break.

Hello, welcome back to the book club. All kinds of delights, awaits, physical and intellectual. Oh, he went there. So it's heavy. Well, let's start with the plot twist.

Let's start with the intellectual side of things. So here's the big surprise, right? Basically, for three quarters of the book, Pharaoh has been pining for one bloke above all, who is the beast. And in love with him.

And she's falling 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. He's just a sort of generic presence.

Yeah. And he's surprisingly uncompelling, actually, altogether, Tomlin. He hasn't literally no sense of humor. And he's not as kind of dramatic and stylish as serodermasses other romantic love interests.

Right. So this, I mentioned before the break, that he's a bit of the kind of the quarterback of the host. Hmm. But with all of that in place, right?

Which is that he's ultimately a little bit boring. And one dimensional. But in the final quarter of the book, this bloke has been hanging around who's sort of, you know, a bit sinister and dark.

He's been basically been sold to us as a batty, who is called Nissan. He turns out to be more complicated. And she starts to against 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. Hmm. He's quite witty.

He's quite sardonic. He's quite teasing. So the dynamic between he and Farad Fayra is much more playful, much more enjoyable to read than the Fayra's with Tamlin. And I mentioned earlier that influence of kind of the,

the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades. And I think that that will unfold. That does unfold between Farad and Restand. So it overtakes the beauty, the beast, 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. Yeah. She will have to spend one week every month with him. But not only is he doing that.

So, you know, very much has the sort of the gender politics

“and the sort of me to awareness that you would expect.”

He's also basically drugging her and making her

lap dance for him during the final quarter. Tabby. I mean, that seems a bit weird to me, frankly. There is an explanation for that, though. And we won't come onto 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 Romanticy books, this book, "According to Women's Roses,"

there isn't actually much sex. That will really disappoint some of our creepyer listeners. Right. But there's basically one big sex scene between Fera and Tamlin. And as with many sex scenes in Romanticy,

it's surprisingly full of kind of animalistic, sort of really beast-yield 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,

also in this. And I quote, "I bet his lip and the silent command that had him growling into my mouth," says Fera. And then, with one long claw, he shredded through silk and lace and my undergarments

fell away in pieces, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then completely yielding completely to the writhing wildness that had a broad life inside me. So this is very, this is very common for the sex scenes in Master's Books and there's far more in them later.

Yeah, there's basically there's an enormous amount of roaring, growling, claw action. Yeah. But sort of surprising these, you said, surprisingly tender claw.

Yeah, yeah. And the prevailing sort of metaphors for the Fera, there's a lot of heat. There's a lot of warm glows. There's all this sort of thing.

Yeah, so this is actually an interesting element to all this, because the question is, is the mass amounts of sex in most romance C-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. It's not a two-fold. Yeah, I think it's kind of two-fold, 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 female pleasure

and female gaze. And also, the sex is often used to demonstrate whether or not two characters in masses of universe. Anyway, are mates, mates is like soul mates in this world. She really believes in the idea of soul mates.

She totally does, and if the sex scenes are particularly kind of imbued with magic, if there are kind of explosions of magic, so there's a scene in the front 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, soul mates. Okay.

So Tamil and Fera never really have this.

No. I mean, on the other hand, other romance

“that I've tried, I think mass is the best of them, like Rebecca Yarris'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 sexual relationships or the sexual feelings that Fera has in a court of thorns and roses?

They are, you could argue, they're coerced. So A, she's been taken prisoner by Tamil and B, a recent, the other guy who she kind of ends up fancying. She has forced her to come, he's going to force her to come to his court one week every month.

I mean, Hades, when people tell the story of Hades and Persephone, nowadays people say, "Well, this is a story of rape." Is it his rapist? Yes. Do you think, I mean, do you think that's true of the scenes in the,

because 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, Tamil, and he bites her at one point. This is before they sleep together. Yes.

As you've seen when 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, isn't we? Not her, or am I misreading that, Abbey?

“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 stuff like that. So at this stage, Fira isn't at the height of her powers. You know, as the book progresses, she will grow

to a 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 Tamil and kind of,

another thing 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, resan 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 Tamiln, not the other way around. To pay 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, it's this basic, I hate to use this sort of just like a jargon, but the basic of the female gaze. So we're seeing everything through a woman's eyes. 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 interesting point because it throughout the book, men are constantly kind of looking fairer 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 fairer 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, it's 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 relationship to men. There's maybe her sisters, but apart from that.

And there's one made servant in the magic house. It's called Alice that she kind of ends up being quite palied 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 this stage and her arc, I think. This is one fairer is still 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, the conceptual and crucial and the cast,

is massively broadened in terms of female characters as all sorts of kind of strong kick-ass women. But I'm going to ask one last question, Tabby, before we look at it. Because I know we've got to move on to romance in 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. You know who this is going to 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 slacking her off from Disney Daisy Ridley to me, which is ball. Not Daisy Ridley, I think Daisy Ridley is great as far as I know. No, you can fuse the character, you know that's a lie.

You absolutely confuse the actress and the character is 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 implausibly heroic and plausibly brave,

bloody, bloody, bloody, bloody, bloody, bloody, bloody, bloody, bloody. She's particularly 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 fairer. 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 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 relate to them and see them, you know, struggle and strive and develop. Fairer does do that.

Okay. In this book, you know, she grows in, you know, strength and courage, and she is ribbon 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 Romancey books do this, but to sell the series is 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 going to give me massive insights into the female condition

or what it's like to be a woman or overcom things. And like, for instance, there's this Google Christina Clark Brown who recommends books on Instagram. She writes that Romancey allows women to have it all. There is no damsel who need 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.

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 impued with exceptional magical powers. So, I think for women in the real world, they're kind of about as aspirational.

For women is like... James Bond. That sometimes wouldn't always be a very romanticist. Stop trying to make it deep. It's a lot of fun.

Let's talk about Romancey more broadly. This is the literary phenomenon really of the last 10 years or so. It's a genre that did not exist till the beginning of the 21st century. We talked about fairy tales.

were always there and kind of folk tales and fairy tales and things do you think?

“Yeah, I kind of see fairy tales as the very, very first origins of Romancey”

because it blended Romance with kind of magic and folkloric worlds. You know, maybe there's a soup sort of the medieval romance about it all, like Tristan and it's all to the idea of forbidden love, that kind of thing. You know, there's a bit of romantic and gothic literature over kind of in 1920 centuries. Or 18th century gothic stuff, castles, maidens...

Exactly all of that. But, you know, these dark, brooding, bironic heroes, that too. But the thing that really, I mean, to be truthful, launched Romancey with social media and more particularly book talk. And it was actually Mass's 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, about the favorite characters, dressing up as high-fay, 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 18th century. It's 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 Yeros, 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 1930s. They would have been escaping by reading Agatha Christie, who diamonds,

which tell us a lot about the intellectual climate, the cultural climate of the 1930s. 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,

“what are these kinds of things, about harassment, about living your truth?”

Do you think, is it too simplistic to say that basically romantices,

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 game of thrones. Because the focus and the driver in romantice is emotion. The emotional stakes are generally the point of everything, they're the heart of it all.

Whereas traditional fantasy is more about the outside, it's about world buildings, but elaborate laws, quest structures, external stakes. So it's like the make believe that you loved as a child, but then as you get older and 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, you're sitting on the tube.

Maybe you feel a bit silly reading Harry Potter. You wouldn't feel silly reading about a woman overcoming PTSD even though she was wielding a sword. It's almost as though the plots and the well-building in romantices. It's like there's almost something that feels a bit hard about it sometimes. It's almost like a means to end the end being to kind of maybe tick without being too cynical.

Trauma and mental health boxes, for instance, various journey under the mountain. It's kind of more about will she choose Tamlin? What will it do to her mental health and her feelings about herself rather than, you know, will evil prevail in Prithyan?

“So that's why, for example, when Sergei 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 fairer sister, Nesta, war a mask metaphorically, pretended to be horrible when actually she was troubled. 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 something like that.

Exactly. His character, some of his characters undoubtedly are troubled by, you know, 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. Some degree definitely. So it treats that as central rather secondary. And it also treats the romance as central, not secondary. So in 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.

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 a sense of like, world-shaking destiny and soulmates, and the escapism that affords, and the sheer spectacle of it all.

And then throw in a kick-out 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 famous dress, about our hair as a range, about what they eat.

So the aesthetics of it, the linen is always good.

That's definitely in appeal. And that's very kind of the shiny, polished world of social media. Yeah, what about, so I see you break that some notes 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 Master's books, but maybe in some of the other Romancey books that I've dipped my toe into. Where in, you know, influences, they're kind of perfect looking people doing perfect things. 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 unarmed? I do 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 Romancey. People are too harsh on Romancey. About it's the fact that it does afford. It means so much to so many people and it afford so many people. So much joy means it must be a good thing.

And I think within these narratives, the characters say Aelin in Throne of Glass Fair in this. They go through terrible things, that trauma is earned. But like sometimes I think, Do you need to be that violent?

Do you need to go that far? Yeah, this is a fair bit of violence towards women in this. Yeah, I feel like sometimes it's a little bit exploitative. Like a series of social media vignettes or tropical clips. Yeah.

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. No, there is romanticity.

So it's a series of set pieces, basically. Yeah, it feels like that. Lowered set pieces. Yeah. And there's a lot of, I mean, there are people in publishing aren't there.

Who anxious about Romancey. But 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 Romancey stories probably appeal to a quite a similar demographic. So we're talking about women in their 20s and 30s. And people at the time might have said, "God, you know, Penguin are really interested in publishing.

Who done it to these days? They're driving out all else." I think it's unfair.

“I mean, if people want to read Romancey, that's what publishers should produce.”

Right? Because publishers 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 that this is Harry Potter, that it was destroying literacy, that it was kind of melting people's minds. I hate that tone of like. Totally bunkers.

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. But also, I tell you what I was addicted to. Absolutely addicted.

The novels of Jeffrey Archer. Now, some people listen to this. We'll 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 brilliant, whatever that means, reading is so subjective.

They will endure. You know, for instance, last year, Dostoevsky's novella, White Knight, suddenly had this massive upsurge on social media. That is a very tricky, gritty book to get your teeth into.

You know, it's not an easy read, but you know, that's still coming up, coming back.

“Completely agree with you, Sabi. 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 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.

No, exactly. It's really enjoyable.

“There is much more to it than, you know,”

inverted comers, goblin sex. They're founded in kind of folkloric traditions. There's shades of kind of Victorian romance. There's baronic 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 brossing people's minds and 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 doing best 18th century.

They have always liked to sneer at what women, particularly young women, read. But there's nothing wrong with being, you know, a commercial writer. Jane Austen was a commercial writer to what Elliot was, too.

But sometimes I feel like they have, like, a list of boxes that they need to take. They will, like, feed the raffening audiences of romance sea lovers. They're, like, sexy in every chapter. Take a good doll of a trauma, take.

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's all in the nose?”

It takes some of the power away for me. You know, Lord 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 some of those two of us. 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 where the female gaze so you can decide.

All right. Well, Dominic chose this, obviously, as a massive fan of goblins and tights. We're going to rate it out of ripped 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. Come from legal ass of all people.

Unbelievable. So, I'm going to give it six. Wow. Oh, my God. Isn't that what you gave normal people? Yeah, 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. To what? I've actually, I've come down from where I thought I was going to come in.

I thought I was going to come in with seven. Wow. Because you know what? She loves it. 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. Yeah. And I bitterly resented really east of Eden. More than that tip. You know what, I think.

“I think you're racing that so highly, because you're secretly in other kids.”

Right. What is another kid? You put that in the notes. Tabby, littered the notes with these weird sexual terms. They're not sexual furries. Therians and other kids aren't sexual.

Yeah, what are they? I don't want to Google them in case. They're not having a deep spiritual, psychological or metaphorical connection to an entity that is nonhuman. You know, if you were to identify as a dragon, more power to your brother.

Okay. Well, listen. I'm going to 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 in the beast. I genuinely didn't see that coming.

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 were a few other twists with the characters like Tamlin and his heart.

Which I didn'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 answer to the riddle at the end of the book is so obvious. I have to be absolutely deranged not to guess it.

I would say. It's blind in the obvious. Yes. So six out of ten for me, Tabby, please tell me you're going to come in lower. I'm actually also giving you the six.

Oh. I think I like. I think it's so much fun. I love the world. I genuinely love the world.

I like all the folkloric staff, 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, it 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 taught that much about the prose. Because there's not that much to say. It's work.

Yeah, it's work. And I got sort of tied to the repetition. You know, mix it up with bit Sarah J. Mas. But you know, she does manage to inject a hell of a lot of passion into it. But I am going to deduct a couple of points because,

while there is a lot to admire and fairer. You know, genuine need, Maya. And she's not too dimensional. I didn't really, I didn't like that much. And I didn't found that I cared as much about her fate.

I found resound and loosey and entertaining. But Tamlin, oh my god, despite his bulging tides, there's just absolutely nothing interesting about him.

She's kind of like a casting cut out.

Yeah, 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 going to 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 fairer.

“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 pointed 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, the spring court,”

and the court of nightmares. I'm probably from the court of nightmares now. Yeah. So, we've got the woman in white, and then after that, we have a total change of tone, because we're doing Toni Morrison's book. They love it.

After that, we are doing Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, a great classic of the early 20th century. Then we're coming back into this sort of territory again, we are doing the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. And after the Hunger Games, it is the war trade of Dorian Gray, but Oscar Wilde.

Then the code of the Worcesters by PG Woodhouse is just one of my absolute favourite books. That's the word of Jews and Worcester.

“And then my book that I actually have taught, would you believe?”

When I was in academic, little women by Louise and May All-Cott. And on that bombshell, we should probably draw a veil, draw a gossom of veil with our claws. We're getting bogged down now in fancy metaphors. Goodbye.