Shané Oosthuizen

Court of Thorns and Roses.

Because it was new adult, right?

And I reckon I was kind of, I've been working on a theory, which is purely a theory that I've only discussed with you two.

But there's these like three waves of romanticism.

The same way that you have like your three waves of feminism.

So I feel like Twilight was one, which was kind of that paranormal era.

You know, we always fell in love with an angel or a werewolf or a vampire.

Yeah.

Then you had your Sarah J Maas, but specifically when A Court of Thorns and Roses and A Court of Mist and Fury, Empire of Storms was published, which was kind of where you get that smuttier, spicier, but in this high fantasy setting.

And then Fourth Wing, I would say, was another one where we kind of shifted away from immortal Faye to creature fantasy, I would guess, and also with like the book talk explosion.

Yeah.

I think everything comes back because, I mean, this has also got its kind of vampire characters as well, which, you know, that was very much a 15 years ago thing, which has come back.

So it's an adjustment for me.

Yeah, I was going to say, definitely, because I feel like even in books where you have evil vampires, you always have your good ones that you root for.

Like I was immediately thinking of, well, Vampire Diaries, of course, but then Vampire Academy, where you can have your strigoi, which are kind of evil.

And they reminded me a lot of the siphons.

I highly doubt it.

I do think that that's kind of, I mean, obviously there are so many different

kind of sub-genres of fantasy, and Romanticy, I would say, is kind of one of them.

And I do feel like a lot of the second books do explore the world a little bit more, but I think that that world building, while it can be beautiful and fleshed out, I think that the point is that it's kind of all anchored around the romance, which is why I do think you tend to see some of those more closed stories where something like Throne of Glass I wouldn't even classify as Romanticy because I think that that is such a kind of broad...