Recommendation
MM romantasy
Every fantasy epic has two men who would die for each other and a narrator insisting it's about the prophecy. Romantasy is the shelf where somebody finally admitted what people were turning up for.
Ten here. Heat and ending on every one, and the ending matters more than it usually does, because most of these are volume one and most of them don't finish.
Updated 28 August 2026
What counts as romantasy here
Three rules, so you know what you're in for:
- Two men, and the romance is the point rather than a thread. Plenty of fantasy has a gay lead and no love story worth the name.
- Fantasy, which means a world that isn't this one. Space is a different shelf.
- Heat and ending stated plainly for every book. The ending matters more than usual, because most of these are volume one and most of them don't finish.
What the heat ratings mean
The five point scale romance readers already use, lowest to highest. Every book below is marked on it.
- Glimpses and kisses a kiss at most, and no sex on or off the page
- Behind closed doors it happens, but the door shuts first
- Open door at least one scene you are in the room for, written without the explicit words
- Explicit open door two or more scenes, explicit, and a range of things happening
- Explicit and plentiful several explicit scenes spread through the book
What is MM romantasy?
Fantasy romance between two men, and the word is new even if the books aren't. Romantasy caught on around 2023 for fantasy where the couple is the plot rather than the subplot, and MM romantasy is the same thing with two men in it.
The thing worth knowing before you start any of them: this is a genre of first volumes. Contemporary romance trained you to expect one book, one couple, one ending. Here the couple is often three books from settled, and one of them ends with the pair barely on speaking terms. The Ending field is the one to read.
Every MM romantasy worth reading
Not ranked. Every entry carries its rating if you want to sort by that.
The House in the Cerulean Sea
T.J. Klune
AboutLinus Baker inspects orphanages for magical children on behalf of a department that would rather he found fault. The island he is sent to holds six children nobody else will take. Arthur Parnassus runs the place and answers none of his questions, and is the reason Linus stops wanting to go home.
Read it ifYou want a love story that arrives slowly and quietly between two men who had both stopped expecting one.
DifferentThe stakes stay small and the tone stays warm the whole way through. That's the appeal for most of the million people who read it, and the complaint for the rest. The magic is there to make the children unusual rather than to drive anything, so if you came for the fantasy you'll find it thin.
SettingA quiet island orphanage for magical children
HeatGlimpses and kisses - 1 of 5 on romance.io
EndingHEA, and it finishes here.
SeriesFirst of two. Somewhere Beyond the Sea followed four years later and is Arthur's book.
Rating4.35 on Goodreads, from 1,095,096 ratings
Fun factOver a million ratings, which makes it one of the most read fantasy novels of the last decade, and a kiss is as far as it goes.
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A Taste of Gold and Iron
Alexandra Rowland
AboutKadou is the queen's younger brother and has just lost her trust in front of the whole court. Evemer is the bodyguard handed to him afterwards, and treats him as a liability rather than a prince. They're sent to look into a break-in at one of the guilds and turn up a counterfeiting operation big enough to bring the currency down.
Read it ifYou want bodyguard and charge, you want it slow, and you want a court where the politics are actually worked out.
DifferentKadou has an anxiety disorder written from the inside and a lot of the book turns on it, which is either the reason to read it or the reason to stop. The complaint everybody has is the ending: they get together and the book finishes almost straight away, so the part where you watch them settle into it happens in the novellas.
SettingArasht, a court modelled on the Ottoman empire
HeatOpen door - 3 of 5 on romance.io
EndingHEA, and a thin one.
SeriesFirst of the Mahisti Dynasty, and the only novel in it so far.
Rating4.04 on Goodreads, from 14,070 ratings
Fun factThe magic is one sense rather than a system: some people can judge the purity of a metal by touching it, which is why a counterfeiting plot is a threat worth a novel.
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A Marvellous Light
Freya Marske
AboutRobin Blyth is handed a civil service job by mistake. It turns out to be liaison to a secret society of magicians, which nobody mentions until he already has the desk. Within days somebody curses him, and Edwin Courcey, the magician who was meant to brief him, has to help sort it out and would much rather not.
Read it ifYou want manners, a murder and magic in the same book, and you like a magician who is bad at magic.
DifferentEdwin is prickly on purpose and some readers never warm to him. The magic system takes up a lot of room, so this sits closer to a fantasy novel with a romance in it than the other way round.
SettingEdwardian England, and a magical civil service
HeatExplicit open door - 4 of 5 on romance.io
EndingHFN, and the story is finished by the end of the trilogy.
SeriesFirst of three Last Binding books. The next one follows Maude and Violet, with Robin and Edwin still about. Swordcrossed is Marske's standalone if you'd rather not start a trilogy.
Rating3.92 on Goodreads, from 53,899 ratings
Fun factMarske is Australian. It won the Romantic Novel Award for Fantasy and the trilogy went on to a Hugo nomination for Best Series.
Find A Marvellous Light
Untitled Age of Sail novel
Lorraine H.
Not written yet
Untitled Age of Sail novel
Lorraine H.
AboutEvery account of a siren agrees on two things. They're women, and they kill. A naturalist sails out to catch one and settle what they actually are, and what he brings up is a man, which nothing written down has ever described. Getting him home is the easy half.
DifferentHe is the love interest and the specimen at once, and the book doesn't let the naturalist off that. Every siren anyone has ever recorded killed the men who found her. Nobody knows whether that holds for him, and neither does he. One book, not a series.
SettingThe Age of Sail, and an ocean nobody has charted properly
HeatExplicit and plentiful
Swordcrossed
Freya Marske
AboutMattinesh Jay is marrying the daughter of another merchant family to prop up the wool business, and expects to be challenged for her hand. He hires Luca Piere to duel for him. Luca is a part-time con artist, and by the time the wedding comes round Matti wants him and not her.
Read it ifYou want the hired help falling for the groom while the wedding gets closer, and you want it finished in one book.
DifferentThe recurring problem is too much detail. The religion, the guild system, the wool and the silk all get worked out at length and the plot waits while they do. There's also a lot less swordplay than a book called Swordcrossed leads you to expect.
SettingGlassport, a preindustrial trading city where duels settle things
HeatExplicit open door - 4 of 5 on romance.io
EndingHEA.
SeriesStandalone, and Marske's only one. The Last Binding is her trilogy.
Rating3.88 on Goodreads, from 8,281 ratings
Fun factThe premise came off a listicle about wedding traditions: the best man was once whichever friend was handiest with a sword, in case somebody tried to carry off the bride. Marske wondered what you would do if you had to hire one.
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Untitled bloodline series
Lorraine H.
Not written yet
Untitled bloodline series
Lorraine H.
AboutSix Houses, and the magic is what runs in the blood rather than anything anyone casts. No robes and no incantations, just what you inherited and who else knows. One House holds what all the others hold, and nobody outside it knows how.
DifferentEvery book is a different couple, most of them inside the Houses, and what happens in one lands on the next. Sometimes you get the same event from another part of the kingdom, more often you get what it set off. And because it all runs by descent, a ruler falling for the wrong man is a question of legitimacy rather than a scandal.
SettingOne kingdom, six Houses, and a throne nobody is close to taking
HeatExplicit and plentiful
The Last Sun
K.D. Edwards
AboutRune Saint John is the last of a burned-out court and takes work he should turn down, finding Lady Justice's missing son. The son is Addam, and getting him home turns out to be the start of it rather than the end.
Read it ifYou want a world built out properly, one noble house per tarot card, and you can wait for Rune and Addam to get anywhere.
DifferentThe romance barely starts in book one and the epilogue is there to sell book two. Rune was fifteen when his court was destroyed and the men who did it kept him alive and hurt him for hours. It happens off the page and the book returns to it directly rather than gesturing at it, so read the author's content notes before you start.
SettingNew Atlantis, built on a drowned Nantucket
HeatOpen door - 3 of 5 on romance.io
EndingNo romance resolution in book one, and an epilogue that opens the next.
SeriesFirst of four numbered Tarot Sequence books, with novellas in between.
Rating4.16 on Goodreads, from 12,673 ratings
Fun factThe world runs on the twenty-two major arcana of the tarot, one house per card, and the series is named for it.
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Silver Under Nightfall
Rin Chupeco
AboutRemy Pendergast hunts vampires for a kingdom that despises him for his mother. Sent to work with a vampire court he is supposed to be killing, he ends up between Xiaodan and Zidan, who are engaged to each other and interested in him.
Read it ifYou want courtly vampires, you want three rather than two, and you want the hunter to be the one everybody looks down on.
DifferentA triad rather than a pair, so if you came for two men this isn't that. And in the last chapter Remy is put under somebody else's control and made to kill a man who was a brother to one of them. The book stops there rather than dealing with it, so you finish on the damage and wait for book two.
SettingAluria, vampire courts and the hunters who serve them
HeatOpen door - 3 of 5 on romance.io
EndingNo resolution and a hard place to leave them. Court of Wanderers continues it.
SeriesFirst of two. Court of Wanderers finishes it.
Rating3.93 on Goodreads, from 8,647 ratings
Fun factChupeco writes the vampire court as a bureaucracy, with rank and protocol, rather than as a gothic mood.
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Captive Prince
C.S. Pacat
AboutDamen is heir to the throne of Akielos until his half-brother has him handed to Prince Laurent of Vere as property, stripped of his name. Laurent has no idea who he has been given, and Damen can't tell him without dying for it.
Read it ifYou want the MM fantasy everybody else has read, and you can take a first book that spends most of its length with the two of them wanting each other dead.
DifferentDamen spends the whole book as property and the first act is violent. Read the content notes before you start rather than after.
SettingAkielos and Vere, a secondary world
HeatOpen door - 3 of 5 on romance.io
EndingNone in book one, which stops at a truce.
SeriesFirst of three. Book two rates 4.37 from 97,284 ratings, well above this one, which is the shape of a trilogy people finish.
Rating3.78 on Goodreads, from 132,182 ratings
Fun factPacat is Australian, born and writing in Melbourne.
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Danmei, and why no other list has them
Chinese web novels about men in love, with readerships that dwarf anything published in English. They get shelved as manga or as Chinese literature rather than as romance, which is why you may not have come across them.
Two things to know before you start. They were serialised, so an English volume is a slice rather than a book, and the heat moves between volumes: The Husky and His White Cat Shizun is open door in volume one and explicit by volume five. And they run long. Heaven Official's Blessing is eight volumes.
Heaven Official's Blessing
Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
AboutXie Lian ascended to godhood, was thrown out twice, and comes back a third time as the laughing stock of heaven, collecting scrap to fund his own shrine. A ghost king who has waited eight hundred years for him is the one person who never stopped.
Read it ifYou want the one with the animated adaptation and the enormous following, and you don't need it explicit.
DifferentVolume one is mostly setup and cosmology. It's far less explicit than people expect danmei to be. The name density is real and volume one is where people give up.
SettingA heaven with a civil service, and the ghost city below it
HeatGlimpses and kisses - 1 of 5 on romance.io
EndingHEA, eight volumes in. Volume one resolves nothing.
SeriesVolume one of eight.
Rating4.58 on Goodreads, from 49,414 ratings
Fun factThe animated adaptation, Tian Guan Ci Fu, put it in front of an audience most published romance never reaches.
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Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation
Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
AboutWei Wuxian was torn apart by the clans he had wronged and wakes thirteen years later in a stranger's body. Lan Wangji, who has spent those thirteen years being the most correct man alive, knows him instantly.
Read it ifYou want the one that started the wave, and you want a mystery running underneath the romance the whole way.
DifferentThe timeline jumps constantly between now and the war thirteen years ago, and readers either love that or lose the thread. Five volumes. The middle of the story is grim in a way the fan art doesn't prepare you for.
SettingWarring cultivation sects, and the man they all blame
HeatGlimpses and kisses - 1 of 5 on romance.io for volume one, and 4 of 5 by volume five
EndingHEA, five volumes in. Volume one is the first fifth of it.
SeriesVolume one of five.
Rating4.55 on Goodreads, from 34,255 ratings
Fun factThe live action adaptation, The Untamed, couldn't show the romance at all, and is beloved anyway.
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The Husky and His White Cat Shizun
Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou
AboutMo Ran conquered the cultivation world, lost everything worth having, and kills himself at the top of it. He wakes as his teenage self with all of it still ahead, and his teacher Chu Wanning alive again.
Read it ifYou want the man who ruined everything given a second run at it and not let off, and you don't mind how long it takes.
DifferentMo Ran in his first life does terrible things to the man he later loves, and the novel doesn't wave that away. This is the one to read the content notes for. Fifteen volumes in English and the heat climbs as it goes, from open door early to explicit later.
SettingA cultivation sect, and a second run at the same life
HeatOpen door - 3 of 5 on romance.io for volume one, higher later
EndingHEA, eleven volumes in, and volume one is a long way from it.
SeriesVolume one of eleven.
Rating4.44 on Goodreads, from 15,518 ratings
Fun factKnown everywhere as 2ha, short for erha, the Chinese word for a husky, which is what the title is calling the lead.
Find The Husky and His White Cat Shizun
Frequently asked questions
What does MM romantasy mean?
Fantasy romance between two men, where the couple is the plot rather than a subplot running under a quest. Romantasy caught on as a word around 2023 and the books are much older than it. If a fantasy novel has a gay lead but the love story could be cut without changing the book, it isn't this.
Which MM romantasy should I read first?
Swordcrossed if you want one book with a real ending, which almost nothing else here offers. The House in the Cerulean Sea if you want gentle. Captive Prince if you want the one everybody has read and you've three books in you. Don't start with a danmei volume one unless you're committing to the series.
Do these books finish the romance in book one?
Mostly no, and it's the thing that catches people. Swordcrossed and The House in the Cerulean Sea do. A Marvellous Light gets to HFN. Captive Prince, The Last Sun and Silver Under Nightfall don't, and Silver Under Nightfall leaves the couple somewhere genuinely rough. The danmei all resolve, several volumes later.
What is danmei?
Chinese web novels about men in love, serialised online and then translated into multi-volume English sets. They get shelved as manga or as Chinese literature rather than romance, so somebody browsing the romance shelf never meets the most-read MM romances in the world.
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