Sarah J. Maas Is My Fantasy Daddy

Fantasy Aisle is a monthly column about horny dragon books by Jackie Jennings.

When rumors started flying that Sarah J. Maas, the author of the A Court of Thorns and Roses series, would be on Call Her Daddy, I was concerned. I doubted host Alex Cooper’s fandom; does she even know about reverse harems? Does she even care where Vaughn is? But my fears were pretty unfounded; Cooper (or at least the cohort of horny nerds on her staff) came prepared with all the right questions, even pushing Maas to the point of mild discomfort when asking about fan theories. Maas revealed a ton about her inspiration (her husband is not Rhysand); her process (lots of Diet Coke and Cheetos); and, of course, huge news about her next books. But more than specific information—of which there was a lot—I came away from the interview with the sense that Maas, like her leading women, is a lady with a plan who won’t compromise her creative vision for anyone.

The big news, which Cooper and Maas of course saved for the final minutes of the nearly two-hour interview: There are not one but two new ACOTAR books on the horizon, dropping on October 27, 2026, and January 12, 2027. Though the books are already being marketed as ACOTAR 6 and ACOTAR 7, that isn’t entirely accurate: Maas talked about the books as one, saying, “It’s meant to be read, ideally, as one massive story.” 

Maas said that she realized she was writing something expansive when she was about 400 pages into writing part one of this upcoming release. This is, of course, the best possible news for ACOTAR fans who have waited years for the next installment in the series. Fantasy fans, and fans of Maas in particular, have no problem reading gigantic tomes; in fact, we prefer it. And to hear Maas talk about it, she’s also excited by such an enormous undertaking too, reveling in the idea of taking her work “beyond the constraints of a single volume.”

However, there are publishing realities to contend with when writing a story that huge. Like, for example, how to literally put together that many pages, apparently an impossibility for a book the size that Maas was writing. And here I will read between the lines a little bit; Maas never explicitly mentions her publisher, Bloomsbury, but I wonder if they couldn’t agree on how to divide and market the books? Did Bloomsbury push for cuts or further divisions? Eight months have passed since Maas’ announcement that she was done writing the books; could some kind of marketing disagreement be to blame for the delay? We’ll probably never know, and maybe there was no drama. But it’s clear that Maas is determined not to be, as she put it, “held back by the realities of the glue.”

When it comes to developing characters, Maas talked about how her lifelong mental health journey and traumatic pregnancies have informed her writing, particularly in creating sisters Feyre and Nesta. When leading-man-turned-nightmare-fiancé Tamlin came up, Maas told Cooper that readers, including her close female friends, have seen their own controlling, abusive relationships reflected in the dynamic between Feyre and Tamlin, which complicates how Maas feels about the possibility of redeeming him. But, she promised, such an arc “would be done in a way where it doesn’t erase what he has done.”

“I pity him,” Maas added, explaining that she sees Tamlin as a product of a traumatic childhood and a man who doesn’t have “the emotional toolkit” to process all he’s lived through. 

Unsurprisingly, Maas didn’t say much about what to expect in the upcoming volumes, though the moments when she demurred (as opposed to outright denying fan theories) are revealing. When Cooper asked about whose POV the next volume will be written from, she merely said, “You get a lot of insight into various things”—which suggests to me that we will be seeing new character perspectives, perhaps dipping into the past. When Cooper pressed on the topic of characters’ lineages (another huge debate in the fandom), Maas grew visibly uncomfortable; she refused to comment (but looked pretty twitchy) on whether Mama Archeron is an Iron Teeth witch, whether the King of Hybern or Rhysand have last names, and what exactly Mor’s powers are (though she did say that “there might be more about that”).

But on one topic in particular, Maas was emphatic and clear: She will be in control of any future film or TV adaptations of her work. She told Cooper near the top of the interview that the rights to all her projects had reverted back to her after an aborted attempt to adapt ACOTAR with Hulu. 

“I want to know everything about how it gets made, not because of control but because I love movies, I love TV. … I want to see everything adapted the way I envision it and the way I know fans want it,” she said. While that does sound controlling, why shouldn’t she be? Maas has a vision for her worlds and this work is the work of a lifetime! Maas started her first series, Throne of Glass, when she was just 16. As she approaches 40 (she told Cooper she’s planning a week-long celebration in the Bahamas), it’s clear that Maas isn’t interested in compromising her vision. “I view it as my legacy, in a way. … The physical version needs to be aligned. It can’t be someone [else’s] take on that.” 

Maas deserves that! Her books have sold millions of copies and she played a leading role in creating a literal genre of fiction. With that on her resume, I think our queen of romantasy absolutely deserves to have complete creative control of her work. And I for one am extremely happy to call her daddy.

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