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. . . .

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Back that up a touch.

I will always say things to your face. That’s how discourse works. You don’t have to agree with me, and that’s fine. As far as ‘queer’ in this context? That’s lucrative and there are tons of it out there published.

I also didn’t say I wanted you to stay in a lane. Never even hinted at it. I said publishing channels want it. This is a basic truth, they want books that sell. They look at what is selling. The quantify it into genre and tropes. They want more of what sells.

If you mix genres, heist and cozy romance, publishers pull back. Yes, you might get someone to look at it and publish it. And maybe you have to self publish or sit on it for a bit until you have something else sold under your name.

Anyway, my main point was that D&D is about adventure novels. Often high stakes, grand adventures. Dragonlance, forgotten realms, spelljammer, Planescape? Tons of novels. Romance was SOMETIMES a subplot. Never cozy, except as something to baseline how disrupted the characters lives are when the adventure starts.

But yeah. They probably want onto the romance train. I just hope Wizards can leave the author alone to make something good, as opposed to micromanaging it into… well. Something not.

You know what, my apologies. We've had some issues here with hate speech, but my guard was raised to high and I lashed out; that is an explanation, but not an excuse.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Luis, so you are aware - use of "they" or "them" as an individual, non-gendered pronouns in English goes back to the 15th century, at least - William Shakespeare made use of it, for example. It is not some new evolution by some small group.

While Shakespeare is a particularly important example, given his influence on modern English, we can definitely say goes back even further. Chaucer used it in the Canterbury Tales, in the 14th century.

It was also used by more recent famous authors, such as Dickinson and Wordsworth, even when the gender of the subject was clearly known. The Shakespeare quote from Hamlet, for example, does that:
(Polonius) ’Tis meet that some more audience than a mother,
Since nature makes them partial, should o’erhear
The speech of vantage. Fare you well, my liege. (Hamlet, act 3, scene 3, li 34-36)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

So why did you call out gendered pronouns specifically for being artificial, when all language is?

For some things a word is necessary, and there will be a version in any language. So, even though the word is made up, the concept it describes is not. However, words for some things only exist in some languages but not in others. In that case the concept itself is made up as well as the word.

 

[plecostomus]

I’m not exactly a guru on the genre, but 'romantasy' is a category that covers a LOT of ground these days. The steamy shadow-daddy BookTok faves like Fourth Wing and ACOTAR probably get the most hype (and according to a friend of mine who is a very successful writer in a not-unrelated field, they sell in bonkers numbers and are basically keeping the publishing industry and physical bookshops solvent right now). But there's a lot more to the genre than that, and the lines do blur and it can be a matter of emphasis and marketing. Someone mentioned Priory of the Orange Tree as a romantasy example above, while I've read that but I personally would have called it a regular fantasy with a romance subplot, albeit most often a male-viewpoint one. Most of the hundreds of early-90s D&D novels had a love interest - are THEY romantasy? I mean, as one prominent example you could certainly make the argument for Dragonlance Chronicles fitting in there, the Tanis/Laurana/Kitiara thing.

When I saw that Priory of the Orange Tree romantasy call-out, I knew I merely had to wait to see "Dragonlance is romantasy". I'm here for it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Artificial as in a product of human creation, not a product of the laws of nature.

Then all language is artificial by that definition

 

[MichaelSomething]

Singular they and them isn’t even a younger generation thing, unless you’re over 700 years old. People objecting to the singular they and them is an extremely new development.

Bring back thee/thou!

 

[Parmandur]

For some things a word is necessary, and there will be a version in any language. So, even though the word is made up, the concept it describes is not. However, words for some things only exist in some languages but not in others. In that case the concept itself is made up as well as the word.

Well, it isn't that Hungarian and Gagalog speakers don't have a concept of "gender" in social or biological terms, they just don't decline nouns the way Indo-European languages do. Some other languages decline nouns with completely different genus categories than social or biological gender: the Baganda language has ten grammatical genders: people, long objects, animals, miscellaneous objects, large objects and liquids, small objects, languages, pejoratives, infinitives, and mass nouns.

Mandarin also has no verb declensions indicating past, present, or future like Indo-European languages tend to, but they have those concepts in general.

 

[slobster]

people, long objects, ... large objects and liquids, ... pejoratives, ... and mass nouns.

Finally, someone getting back to the actual topic of this thread: D&D romance!

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Finally, someone getting back to the actual topic of this thread: D&D romance!

It is the story of two star-crossed lovers, one a tiefling and the other an aasimar?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It is the story of two star-crossed lovers, one a tiefling and the other an aasimar?

Or a gnome and a kobold?