Your Beloved Hockey Homosexuals Are Dipping Their Toes Into Romantasy

Hockey romance Heated Rivalry simply wrapped up its first season on HBO Max—which means followers of the present should flip to different sources to get their steamy repair. There’s at all times the source-material books, Rachel Reid’s Sport Changers; the TV present adapts the primary two, however there are six complete within the queer, sports-themed series. And now there’s an adjoining possibility that can particularly attraction to io9 readers: Heated Rivalry stars Connor Storrie and Hudson Williams are getting into the realm of romantasy.

As Variety experiences, “The actors are set to relate Ember & Ice, Quinn’s three-episode immersive audio romance. Per the official logline, Ember & Ice follows fae princes Dane and Finn from rival Solari and Lunare kingdoms. The collection, ‘set in a richly imagined fantasy world formed by historical past, responsibility, and forbidden want,’ is ‘a narrative about selecting love in defiance of expectation’ and amplifies ‘each second of rigidity, longing, and intimacy.’”

All that’s lacking, in different phrases, is an ice rink. Quinn, described by the commerce as “the main audio erotica platform and the vacation spot for female-first audio erotica,” will drop the primary two Ember & Ice episodes December 30; the third one arrives January 6, in line with Cosmopolitan. You will discover out extra and take heed to a preview here.

Romantasy might need as soon as been a little bit of a punch line, however these days are effectively prior to now. Not solely is the style presently full of bestsellers from authors like Rebecca Yarros, Sarah J. Maas, and Carissa Broadbent, however it’s additionally filtered into different components of tradition: Hulu’s animated alien present Photo voltaic Opposites had a complete romantasy-author subplot in its final season. And Carol Sturka, the wry predominant character within the Apple TV sci-fi collection Pluribus, simply so occurs to be a famous romantasy author.

“I learn a few chapters of a few totally different types, simply to listen to some totally different cadences, and admittedly I used to be extra stunned by, I’m embarrassed to say, the breadth of various types of the romantic style,” Pluribus star Rhea Seehorn told io9 in a recent interview. “It’s not like they’re all written like these steamy novels. I went to the Ripped Bodice, which is a romance novel retailer right here in Culver Metropolis, and I used to be blown away by what number of subgenres there are and the way particular it will get. And I went to a few guide readings, and simply listening to the followers discuss concerning the creator was very eye-opening.”

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