Penguin Random House Announces New D&D Romantasy Book

Penguin Random House has announced The Feywild Job, a new D&D novel written by World Fantasy Award and Nebula-winning writer CL Polk. The new book is a romantasy novel, a popular and wildly growing book genre. The book features a rogue tasked with stealing a gem called "The Kiss of Enduring Love" and is teamed up with their ex-lover, a bard. The twist to the novel is that the rogue has a magical pact granting them powers in exchange for never falling in love.

The new novel is written by CL Polk, a writer with serious bonafides in the fantasy community. Polk's debut novel Witchmark won the World Fantasy Award in 2019 and their 2022 novella Even Though I Knew The End won the Nebula Award for Best Novella that year. Based on their website, this appears to be Polk's first foray into licensed media.

Below is the full description for The Feywild Job. The book will be released on June 30, 2026.

Sparks fly when bitter exes are forced to team up for an elaborate Feywild heist, in this cozy fantasy romance by the bestselling author of the Kingston Cycle and Even Though I Knew the End.

Saeldian has sworn never to fall in love. That oath isn’t just a personal promise, but rather a magical pact, granting them powerful abilities. The only catch? They must never give their heart away—a deal that Saeldian is perfectly content with. They’ve seen firsthand how messy love can get.

Saeldian prefers their no-strings-attached life as a con artist, pulling off heists and leaving a trail of broken hearts behind them. But when a grift goes horribly wrong, they catch the eye of a mysterious patron with a job offer they can’t refuse.

The mission? Steal a gem called “The Kiss of Enduring Love” and return it to the Feywild. Simple enough, until Saeldian discovers their ex-partner, Kell—a charming bard—is part of the team.
The last time Saeldian saw Kell, things hardly ended on good terms. A kiss became a betrayal, leaving Kell hurt and confused for almost a decade. But Kell can’t just walk away—not when this job might finally be his ticket back to the Feywild.

Forced to work together again, their adventure takes them from high-society parties to Feywild couple’s therapy. But as Saeldian and Kell rekindle their chemistry, they realize the gem is much more than a fey bauble, and their simple heist has summoned powerful enemies. . . .

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Because those are artificial things designed to put humans in boxes. I generally prefer to keep people out of boxes as much as possible.

Racist terms for ethnocultural or ethnoreligious groups are also usually constructed. I won't use any examples because, y'know, offensive. So: Why do you find this particular callout of a forcing-people-into-boxes construction a problem?

I was just curious about why Paul thought these particular words specifically were "artificial", seeing how gendered pronouns go back to prehistoric time before there was any kind of constructed language. His reply was quite interesting, and I kinda agree with his perspective.

Anyway, I just put you inside the quote box. Sorry about that, but it's how the forum works.

 

[Dire Bare]

Cozy seems exactly opposite of what a D&D game is. Fits some of the itch indie games better where they sit around an inn and talk about significant others and make soup.

The core of D&D is adventure fantasy, sure. But what's wrong with stretching the genres of fantasy we can play in with D&D?

 

[Dire Bare]

I was just curious about why Paul thought these particular words specifically were "artificial", seeing how gendered pronouns go back to prehistoric time before there was any kind of constructed language. His reply was quite interesting, and I kinda agree with his perspective.

Anyway, I just put you inside the quote box. Sorry about that, but it's how the forum works.

Gendered pronouns are older than language? Okay. What languages do you think are not constructed?

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Gendered pronouns are older than language? Okay. What languages do you think we're not constructed?

Constructed languages are languages like Esperanto, that were intentionally designed rather than evolved through use.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Constructed languages are languages like Esperanto, that were intentionally designed rather than evolved through use.

But that doesn’t make other languages “prehistoric”. English is only a few hundred years old. There are elves older than English (which was the logic behind Yoda’s way of speaking). I don’t know enough about linguistics to know when and where gendered pronouns first appeared. But I suspect in English it was the Normans what done it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Bring back thee/thou!

But ONLY if people actually use it appropriately.

"Thou" is a subject word. It is the second-person equivalent of "I" and "he/she". "Thee" is an object word. It is the equivalent of "me" and "her/him". "Thy" is a possessive word, the equivalent of "my" and "hers/his". "Thine" is to be used only in two contexts: where you would put "thy" in front of a vowel sound (e.g. "To thine own self be true", NOT "To thy own self be true"), or in places where, if you were personally the subject, you would use the word "mine" (e.g. "that book is mine" -> "that book is thine").

SOOOOO many people use "thy" completely in the wrong place, or use "thee" as a subject word, or "thou" as an object word. That is just as bad-sounding as the way Bizarro is characterized, where he says things like "Me am smart!" Use thou/thee/thy/thine correctly and I'm 100% in favor of bringing it back. Use it incorrectly and I want to stab out my own ears.

 

[Scribe]

Cozy seems exactly opposite of what a D&D game is. Fits some of the itch indie games better where they sit around an inn and talk about significant others and make soup.

Post Tashas D&D has absolutely trended towards cozy, twee, soft, lacking in edge, whatever one wants to call it.

5.5 went even further, and...it's only going to continue until sales fall.

 

[humble minion]

So, you are saying that you think a typical D&D game is full of explicit sex? Because that’s not my experience playing with adults. I’ve seen it once with teen boys.

There's a fair bit more that defines the 'cosy' fantasy genre than simply the explicitness of the sex scenes. Cosy fantasy doesn't even need to HAVE romance in it or as a major element, really. The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (which won a Hugo) might be an example there.

Violence and horror will often be toned down and left vague or threatened rather than being in your face. There will often be an emphasis on building a wholesome independent life (book shops, tea shops etc) with found family, establishing and strengthening relationships, etc. Many/most problems will be solved socially, with trickery, intellect, reconciliation, or conversation rather than outright destroyed in combat.

I think there's the same/similar genre variations in non-magical romance. I mean, there's entire genres of romance novels where the male love interest is a ruthless Russian mafia boss or brutal motorcycle gang enforcer, and also there's genres where the newly-divorced female main character opens a bookshop in a small quaint seaside town and meets a gruff but charming local author with a nicely-fitting turtleneck. Different stakes, different challenges, different ways of meeting those challenges, and different happy endings (pun ... not intended, but probably inevitable).

While I'm not an expert, a good introductory example of recent cosy romantasy might be the Tea Princess Chronicles, by Casey Blair (whose partner I believe is Django Wexler who wrote the recent Spelljammer book). Stephanie Burgis does a lot as well. And I'm sure there's MANY that I don't know about.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

But that doesn’t make other languages “prehistoric”. English is only a few hundred years old. There are elves older than English (which was the logic behind Yoda’s way of speaking). I don’t know enough about linguistics to know when and where gendered pronouns first appeared. But I suspect in English it was the Normans what done it.

Er...sauce on that "Yoda logic" thing? English has never been spoken that way. At best you can argue that Yoda's native language uses OSV order while Galactic Basic uses SVO order, but even that seems shaky when we have things like the Old Republic continuity, where nothing has meaningfully changed--and even in the films, folks are able to read records literally thousands of years old without major effort.

The sources available to me indicate that the reason Yoda speaks the way he does is that it forces the audience to actually listen to what he says--they have to put in the effort just to make sense of it. He's a philosopher, making sometimes-nuanced philosophical points, and Lucas wanted that to get special attention.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

So, you are saying that you think a typical D&D game is full of explicit sex? Because that’s not my experience playing with adults. I’ve seen it once with teen boys.

Nah. I believe what they're saying is that D&D, of its nature, is an adventure with, to some degree, relatively "high stakes". "Cozy" fiction, romantic or otherwise, has intentionally low stakes.

Like you could sort of put it on a two-axis grid; it'd be a bit reductive, but that's kind of unavoidable. One axis is bright(/positive) vs dark(negative). The other is high-stakes vs low-stakes.

Bright + high stakes = High fantasy
Dark + high stakes = Dark fantasy
Dark + low stakes = Gritty fantasy
Bright + low stakes = Cozy fantasy

This isn't to say that it's impossible to run a D&D-like game that is bright and low-stakes, but doing so is challenging because you're running counter to multiple elements that went into D&D's design. It intentionally aims for a high-stakes situation, and loosely moves in a High Fantasy direction as you gain more levels, though admittedly the reason why it does so is very different in different editions. (Early-edition, it's because you became a Lord or a Bishop or an Archwizard, where politics and national-threat dangers start to matter to you, which is clearly moving to high stakes, and you have made the world bright through your past actions; current editions, it just naturally moves in that direction because of all the spells, more or less, plus it's generally what folks want out of D&D nowadays.)

Cozy fantasy as a D&D thing, IMO, requires intentionally slowing progression to a glacial pace, creating a world that is already pretty good but faces lots of very mundane problems, and giving players a reason to really really care about a specific place, a specific person or group of people, and/or a specific ethos or mission that is very down-to-earth and local. You aren't "adventurers"; you're chefs going out and collecting exotic ingredients to keep your barely-surviving restaurant alive, or you're innkeepers trying to disaster-proof your inn because of all these DAMNED ADVENTURERS that keep wrecking it, or you're the town militia (because the King's army hasn't been through in two generations) making friends with local orcs to stop them pillaging Farmer Gothan's fields and collecting honey from Miss Flauric's giant apiary and (etc.) Nothing that ever grows beyond the scope of your small town and its small problems; your life is rarely in any danger, and if it were, it's because you've taken on a truly monumental task relative to your usual work. But you still have to put food on the table and keep a roof over your head, and that is challenge enough.

D&D is not particularly well-suited to "cozy" fantasy. That doesn't mean you can't do it--but I would recommend something like Humblewood, at the very least, or preferably a system actually built for it, like Mouse Guard.